by Kevin Hearne
“You’re welcome to come along if you want. But I think you’re more needed here.”
“What is it you need to do, if you don’t mind me askin’?”
“We gotta make my apprentice disappear. And maybe we can do something about that vampire problem.”
Chapter 15
The key to faking deaths is a fine appreciation of arterial spray patterns. One might be tempted to simply smear a bit of blood here and there, but forensics fellows these days are a bit more sophisticated than they used to be. If they figure the scene is a fake, they’ll tell the family and then said family will never hold that all-important funeral for closure. Without a body, the coroner would never issue a death certificate, but the police would at least designate it a cold case if you could convince them there was a high probability of death.
I have found that blood bags work very well at simulating spray with a strategically poked hole; apply pressure to the bottom of the bag, practice a bit, and before long you will be able to write stories of carnage and odes to gore.
A small fan brush—the sort that one dude used to paint happy little trees—can paint a picture of blunt-force spatters if you flick the surface properly. Don’t use a toothbrush; those patterns are recognizable. You could even talk to yourself, as that painter did, while you flick blood around: “And maybe over here we have a nice stab wound. And, I don’t know, maybe there’s a few more back over here. Multiple stab wounds. It doesn’t matter, whatever you feel like.”
When it comes to the actual blood, my former policy was that it was best to use somebody else’s. You could even leave someone else’s hair, as long as it was plausibly the same color, and that was the best practice because magic users would have no way to track you down. Can’t do that anymore, however. Police routinely send all blood and other biological samples to labs for DNA matching, because some of those goodies might belong to the suspect. It’s tougher to fool the coppers these days, but I enjoy the challenge.
Granuaile wasn’t worried about constructing the crime scene, however. She steered me away from that topic.
“What I want to know is how you get around the documentation issues,” she said. She was driving us down to Flagstaff as Oberon napped in the backseat.
“Documentation of what?”
“Of your life before you take on a new identity. I mean, you can’t just show up. You need all this stuff. A credit history. How do you do it?”
“The lawyers do it for me these days. Werewolves in general have the inside line on identity changes. Since they have to uproot their entire packs occasionally and move to another territory, they all figure out some efficient way of getting the job done wherever they are. Hal’s operation is among the best, but you can approach almost any werewolf anywhere and get help with IDs if you need to.”
“All right, that’s good to know, but how do they do it?”
“Well, let’s make a list. You need a birth certificate, to begin with. Then some school records and immunizations. A driver’s license. A passport, a visa, and a green card.”
“What? A green card? Why do I need that?”
“Because no matter what names we use, we are always and forever from Panama.”
“We are? Why?”
“Because that’s where the corrupt officials are. At least the ones that Hal’s pack uses. So you and I—Reilly and Caitlin Collins—were born in Panama to Irish expatriates who died tragically when we were young. We were raised as orphans. We have birth certificates and transcripts and everything. I got better grades than you in school, by the way.”
She ignored this gibe and asked, “Did you do this when you started out as Atticus too?”
“Yep. Mostly all you need is the driver’s license, a Social Security number, and a bank account. Throw cash at a bank and they don’t really give a damn where you come from.”
“How do you get the Social Security number?”
“Same thing. Corrupt officials. Kind of determined ones, though. It’s tough to get around the internal security of the feds, but you can do it if you have the money to spend.”
“But will these IDs stand up under scrutiny? I bet your background as Atticus O’Sullivan is getting searched right now.”
I shrug. “It doesn’t need to stand up. The moment it comes under serious scrutiny, you move on. It only needs to be good enough to fool people at first glance. If it looks authentic, you don’t get the full background check.”
“Who were you before you were Atticus?”
“Still me. Just a different name.”
“Should I call you something else, like your original name?”
“No, Atticus will do. I like that one.”
“Good, I do too. What’s the worst name you’ve ever had?”
“Nigel. It was extremely uncomfortable. Never got used to it.”
Granuaile laughed. “Nigel? When was that?”
“It was only three months in Toronto in 1953, but every day was a new adventure in embarrassment. You never want to be Nigel in Toronto.”
When we got to Flagstaff, we drove to a medical supply store and Granuaile paid cash for some syringes, blood bags, surgical gloves, and other things we would never use. Padding the receipt would throw off the coppers if they ever got this far. I went in first, camouflaged, to make sure that there was no security camera to record the transaction. There was, of course, so I relaxed the silica bindings in the glass lens a wee bit and then allowed them to rebind once more in a different configuration. Light no longer passed through the lens in a sensible fashion, so it recorded nothing but visual noise from the moment Granuaile walked into the store. We ditched most of the purchases in an anonymous trash bin in a residential alley, keeping only what we’d need for the scene.
From there we drove to Shultz Pass Road on the north side of town and pulled over once we saw Shultz Tank below us to the right: a retention area full of stagnant water. There’s nothing in the way of homes or businesses there; it’s ponderosa pine on either side of the road, and the only traffic one can reasonably expect is mountain bikers and hikers heading to a trailhead somewhere—but even they were unlikely to show up on a weekday. Oberon trotted down the road a short distance to warn us of approaching traffic, commenting as he did that this area would be a great place for the death scene of a few squirrels. He kept to the shoulder, where a carpet of pine needles would conceal his tracks so I wouldn’t have to erase them later. He knew where to meet us when we were finished.
I drew blood from Granuaile—not a full pint, but the better part of one.
“Aren’t they going to find traces of you in here?” she asked, indicating the interior of the car.
“Yeah, but that’s okay. I’m already dead, so I couldn’t be the one who killed you. They’ll be assumed to be old traces. But I bet this is going to get Detective Geffert all excited when he hears about it. Your death will just emphasize for him that I must have been up to something awful. But the loose end here is really going to be Oberon. They’ll find traces of him in here too and wonder where he went, since he obviously hasn’t been found abandoned or stray anywhere. Not much I can do about that.”
Once Granuaile’s blood was drawn and a bit of adhesive placed in the crook of her elbow, we packed everything we would take into a backpack and reviewed the plan as I drew on a pair of surgical gloves and carefully held a stitching needle between my lips. Performance theater. Granuaile left her handbag with her “old” ID and everything on the passenger seat. I searched for a suitable fallen bough among the ponderosas and found one, then meticulously covered my tracks on the passenger side of the car. I made no effort to cover the dim tracks coming out of the forest, even though they would be nothing more than faint impressions in the carpet of pine needles and bunch grasses.
Oberon, how we doing? Anybody coming?
Okay, we’re about to start.
Granuaile had to be inside the car for this or the
glass wouldn’t fall around her body properly. She’d get a few scratches, but that was okay. She did hold the backpack up between the window and her face, though; neither of us wanted that to get cut. She locked the door using her key fob, activating the car alarm, and then left the keys in the ignition. Let them puzzle out why she was parked here in a locked car. I didn’t care.
Standing outside the car, bough held like a bat, I began to count down. Granuaile picked up her old cell phone and dialed 911. And I started beating the hell out of her window, which was a bit more awkward with a neck brace on than I’d expected. She screamed at the dispatcher that she was being attacked, Shultz Pass Road, oh my God, no, etc. And she didn’t have to fake being terrified about glass exploding next to her head. While she yelled into the phone, I reached over the broken glass, careful not to cut myself, and unlocked the door manually before pulling it open. That caused the alarm to go off; it was Oberon’s signal to leave his post and meet us at the rendezvous point and would also provide us some cover noise for the remainder of the call.
“Shut up!” I growled, trying to sound like some road-rage goon, then I swung the bough to thunk noisily into her steering wheel. Granuaile gave a startled yelp and dropped the phone, connection still live. She wordlessly handed me the backpack and I shrugged it on one strap at a time, switching the bough between hands as I did so. Granuaile had a few cuts on the legs of her jeans but otherwise looked to be in pretty good shape. I retrieved the blood bag from the top of the trunk and poked a hole in it with the needle I’d been holding between my lips. I sprayed some blood on one side of the bough and Granuaile helpfully stuck a couple of her hairs onto it. I dipped my gloved fingers into the blood, leaned into the cab, and carefully flicked a few drops around on either side of her head, pointing my fingers in the direction she was facing—because a blunt force blow to the face would hardly splatter drops behind her head. Satisfied, I dropped the bough into the dirt near the rear tire and then handed the blood bag to Granuaile, hole at the top so it wouldn’t leak. Now came the tricky part. I had to drag her out of the car, presumably unconscious or even dead, and she’d get raked across some of the broken glass as she left the vehicle. She couldn’t cry out if she got cut, because the phone call was still live, the 911 operator distantly calling out for her to respond.
She held the blood bag up near her right cheek, sort of like a squishy red shot put. I grabbed her left arm with mine and pulled. Then, as she went horizontal, I supported her rib cage with my right. Granuaile let the hole in the blood bag point down and she squeezed gently to create a trail out of the car. She kept her legs limp and did get lacerated through the denim on her left calf as she got dragged out, but that would just add verisimilitude at this point. With Granuaile now on her back in the dirt outside the car, I began to drag her by her left arm along the ground. She moved the blood bag just over her right shoulder and continued to let it flow out slowly. If she was being dragged, unconscious, by the left arm and had suffered a hit to the face, her head would loll to the right and bleed on that side. Once around the rear of the car, I pulled her downhill toward Shultz Tank. It was extremely uncomfortable for her, but the best way to accurately simulate dragging a body on the ground is to actually drag a body on the ground. Besides, we wanted stray threads and hairs and other trace evidence to be left behind in the path she was making through the pine needles.
Speaking of needles, I had to ditch the one I’d been carrying between my lips. Halfway down the hill and well outside the range of her cell phone’s microphone, I took it out of my mouth and said quietly, “You’re doing great. How you holding up?”
“Promise me I’ll get to do this to you someday?” she asked, her voice all sweet and sugary.
“Sure, except maybe what’s coming up next. I think that’s really going to suck. The water looks foul.”
“Great. Well, can you at least heal up my cuts before I go in? No telling what kind of bacteria are growing in there.”
“Yeah, I can close up the skin, no problem. We’ll get you on antibiotics as a precaution anyway. Hold on a sec.” I knelt quickly and asked the earth to hold on to this needle for me. It accepted it, closed back up, and now the police would never find it—and even if they did, it was unlikely they’d connect it to the assault on the road when there was a giant bloody bough sitting next to the car.
Okay, thanks for the heads-up, I told him, continuing to drag Granuaile downhill. “Oberon says the police are coming. We need to hurry.”
A few yards from the waterline of Shultz Tank, I stopped and let Granuaile’s arm go. She allowed it to flop down in the dirt. I walked around to her legs and looked for the cuts. The tiny punctures on her thighs were not much to worry about; the piece of glass that had dragged down her calf and shredded the denim had left a much more significant wound. Removing my gloves, I stuffed them in the pocket of my jeans and put a gentle hand on her leg. I usually don’t like to do direct healing on other people, because the risk of screwing something up is too high, but convincing the skin to grow back quickly is harmless.
“Go ahead and continue to squeeze some blood out here to reflect a pause,” I said, “and then empty the rest out when you’re facedown and then in the water.”
“Okay,” she replied.
“All right, done here. You’re closed up.” I stood, gathered her feet in my hands, and pivoted her around so that she was lying parallel to the waterline. “Ready?”
“Let’s get it over with,” she said.
“Remember not to drop your feet once you’re in. Dead people don’t stand up in the shallows.”
“I’ll remember. Just get me out fast.” We could both hear the sirens now. We needed to get out of sight before the police spotted us.
“All right. Here we go.” I knelt down next to her torso and began to roll her down into the tank. Every time she was facedown, she squeezed out more blood into the earth. And then she took a breath as I rolled her into the scummy, stagnant water. I kept pushing her out so she’d be able to float freely, and I waded in up to my hips, careful not to soak the backpack.
I tapped her on the shoulder and shouted, “You can do a shallow tread,” so she’d be able to hear through any water in her ears. Her head came up and she gasped, delivering her assessment of the water’s freshness as soon as she could.
“It’s fucking nasty!” she said.
“Sorry,” I said. She really did look miserable, with fungi scum and who knew what else in her hair. I turned around and shrugged off the backpack, holding it in front of me. Granuaile threw her arms around my neck and pulled herself up, piggyback, the now-empty blood bag clutched in her right hand, and I waded out of there, making a glorious set of muddy footprints for the police to follow. They’d assume Granuaile’s body was in the tank at first and figure out only a couple of days later that I must have carried her out with me. I jogged around the edge of the tank to the far side and then began climbing up, where Oberon waited for us in the shadow of the pines. Once on the relatively track-free surface of the pine needles, I dropped the backpack and asked Oberon to carry it for us between his jaws. That allowed me to hook my arm under Granuaile’s legs and make really good time running. We heard the police pulling up to Granuaile’s car after we were only a hundred yards or so into the woods. We’d cut it pretty close.
We ran east through the forest for about three miles until we found a nice outcropping of boulders. “This will do nicely,” I said. Once on top of the rocks, I let Granuaile down and asked Oberon to bring me the backpack. There was a change of clothes inside for both of us, as well as our assumed IDs and other assorted goodies like sunglasses and baseball caps. We retreated to either side of the outcropping to change and then stuffed the wet clothes into the backpack.
“We have to do something about my hair,” Granuaile said. It still had funky alien chunks of somethin
g in it, pine needles, and a film of green algae on top. The rest of her looked great in a fresh shirt and jeans with brand-new sneakers. “It’s utterly gross and I can’t be seen in public like this.”
She was right, but I thought it best not to agree too enthusiastically. “Okay, we’ll get a hotel room so you can clean up before we go to the dealership. Sorry again.”
From here on out she would run with me and I’d feed her energy so that she didn’t get tired. We were going to head south and drop back into town on the east side of Flagstaff, where the auto dealerships were. Colorado graciously agreed to cover what tracks we made for a mile past the boulders; it didn’t matter to me if my single set of prints was traced up to them.
After a half hour’s stop in a cheap hotel room so that Granuaile could wash her hair and dry it, we walked onto the lot of a car dealership and told the salesman we’d pay cash for a hybrid SUV as long as he could guarantee delivery in a couple of hours. We used my neck brace as an excuse for why we needed a new vehicle and didn’t have one to trade in.
“He totaled my old one in an accident,” she explained, and the salesman pretended to be sorry about that. She told him explicitly that he was not to run a credit check, because she didn’t want to take the hit on her credit score. We’d pay cash via wire. We gave him Granuaile’s account number at the bank, he made a call, and then he moved as quickly as he could to please Ms. Caitlin Collins. He even offered a few free hot dogs to Oberon, who was waiting patiently outside.
The salesman waved fondly at us as we drove off the lot a couple of hours later, no doubt thinking we were the biggest pair of suckers to ever walk into the dealership. We hadn’t even tried to negotiate.
The sun said farewell with patches of pink and purple clouds. I felt fully healed now, so I took off the neck brace and chucked it into the backseat, where Oberon regarded it uncertainly.