Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves

by Robert N. Charrette

  John's first thought was that Shahotain meant his foster mother. No, it couldn't be! John just had mothers on his brain because of Bennett's gift. Still, if not her, whom? He had to ask. "What woman?"

  "Marianne Reddy."

  Hell! He wanted that data, now he was being handed it. "Why give this to me now?"

  "It is timely."

  Shahotain left him with that remark.

  Timely.

  There were times when the ways of the people of his

  blood infuriated him. Times when John felt more than a little out of place in Faery and weirded out by the strangeness of the otherworld. Faery just wasn't Rezcom 3.

  Where Marianne Roddy had raised him as her son.

  He had a Sot of questions, but he should have been used to that. Some questions seemed determined to remain unanswered. He'd had some answered here, but the answers often seemed to spawn more questions. Some of the questions he wanted to ask didn't seem appropriate to put to his new friends; he really didn't want to look stupid to them. His tutors might have the answers, but he wanted even less to appear stupid to them. Bennett held the answers to a lot of John's questions, but he was about as forthcoming as a stone.

  Whom could he turn to?

  These days, when the questions got too much, he usually sought privacy. Once he'd turned to Faye as a matter of course. She'd always been there whenever he had wanted another viewpoint. He wanted another viewpoint now, but Faye was not around. That was his fault. Fraoch. There were times when he wished his physical intimacy with her was matched by a spiritual one.

  John felt very alone. He needed to do some thinking, get some kind of handle on what was going on. He was going to have to do it himself. Who else was going to help him?

  CHAPTER 12

  The guard at the apartment door didn't belong to the C-Kure™ rentacops who held the contract on the rezcom. She wore an Armianco uniform. Armianco was the corp that owned the place. Not a real cop in sight, but the monitor beacon proclaiming the apartment a crime scene was a New England Cooperative issue, which meant the locals had at least been here. Ah, the joys of cooperation. Charley hoped to God that the corp mooks had managed to preserve some of the evidence.

  Charley breezed past the guard, a flick of his wrist displaying his badge. Manny stopped to do the check-in talk, which was fine by Charley. Better him than me. Manny would let him know later if he had done any more than waste time. Charley had more important things on his mind than corp etiquette.

  Fifteen minutes before they'd gotten this assignment, Caspar had posted an addendum to his Modus 273 file. Caspar was one of Charley's cyberspace ears, a damned good one, and it had been months since Caspar had posted on anything but bad ones, the ones that didn't have the logical explanations that the department said they had. Caspar had posted this location, adding it to the Modus 273 file that hadn't previously shown anything in NEC police jurisdiction. Charley just knew he'd hate the reason, but he needed to find out what Caspar knew that he didn't about how this new incident was connected to the Modus 273 killings.

  Armianco's Stamford rezcom, like the rest of the town, was more a part of New York City than the New England cooperative, but technically all of Connecticut still belonged to the NEC, at least until the amendment went through. Until then, this kind of shit was the NEC's problem, and NEC cops would be doing a job that was too big for them. Too bad New York didn't send any money for enforcement to go with the crime they let slop over the border.

  It was a bit surprising that Armianco was being a good corporate citizen and cooperating. They had actually called in the NEC police, even though the deaths had happened on their ever-so-precious corporate turf. Which they only did when it was a mess that they didn't want to clean up themselves. The situation stank, even without the omen of Caspar's modus link.

  The apartment stank too, of cold, old death. Charley had scanned the prelim file on the way over, curious as to how bodies could go undiscovered in such a state-of-the-art place as the Armianco rezcom. According to maintenance, the tenant, one Anthony Marino, had called in to say he was going on vacation, and the apartment's systems had been set low, even the Tidibot™ drones were shut down. Nobody from maintenance would have checked the place for another week if the rezcom's electronics hadn't been fritzed in the blackout when Eden Again bombed the Agassi power station. When things came back on-line, a nasty-minded busybody of a supervisor, one Yvonne Browne, had discovered a chance To score points when she noticed the vacation request. Execs like Mr. Marino didn't take off on whimsical vacations; they had to log downtime requests weeks in advance, and Browne knew it. When Browne couldn't find such a request in the log, she had squawked upstairs and found out she wasn't quick enough; there already was an investigation in progress. Execs like Mr. Marino didn't miss work without people noticing. Her yelp put them on the apartment, something that the corp cops hadn't yet gotten around to. Mr. Marino might be a godlike being to Supervisor Browne, but he was still fry to the people who ran Armianco, and by extension their pet cops. At least Marino had been until he'd gone and gotten himself dead. Now he was somebody important and Armianco wanted to know just what the police department was going to do about this tragedy.

  The department sent Charley and Manny, though why was unclear. The prelim report had contained lots of details, sordid ones. Mr. Marino had died in the arms of prostitutes, who were also dead. There were drugs involved. Nothing in the report pointed to a case for Special Investigations. Of course, the cause of death remained undetermined, but that was not in itself suspicious; examinations took time these days, especially for corporate citizens. No CoD just meant that the crime wasn't an obvious murder. Charley just hoped that when the coroner's report was filed, it would end their assignment to this case, but his sour stomach kept telling him he was being foolish. Caspar wasn't interested in ordinary deaths, even homicides.

  The apartment was huge, wandering off into nooks, crannies, and other rooms. Charley knew from the report where to go. The bodies were in the main bedroom, off to the left. The door was open and the light on. When he laid eyes on the bodies, he popped an antacid tab even though he'd already had the bottle-prescribed limit for the day. He needed it.

  What he saw was a trio of stiffs. Mr. Marino's bio listed him as thirty-two. The prostitutes' registrations showed them in their twenties and the DNA scans supported it, give or take a few years. But the bodies looked like old people. White hair. Shrunken muscles. Papery skin. The corpses looked ancient, almost like mummies. The withered husks looked dry enough to blow away if a wind ever penetrated the sacred air-conditioned confines of the rezcom.

  He understood now why the report didn't have anything that looked like an SIU crime. This was one of the bad ones. The less data about it loose in the system, the better.

  The brief sound of a rush of water from the bathroom caught his attention. There shouldn't be anyone here but

  cops. Cops didn't wash their hands at a crime scene. So

  who?

  The bathroom looked bigger than his own apartment. I'rom the doorway, the mirror showed him a woman seated on the chair by the vanity. An Armianco ID tag lay atop the shoulder-strapped briefcase near her elbow. She was brushing with a cloth at dark flecks staining the front of her business suit. Charley caught a faint whiff of something that was not perfume, the same odor coming from the john. Bad enough that she was here, but if she had compromised evidence—

  He entered the bathroom, warming up to slag her down for interfering in a police investigation, then he realized that he had seen her before. Association chains fired in his brain and his anger cooled. A little. Well, maybe not much, but curiosity overrode it.

  "Dr. Spae, isn't it?"

  She started at his voice, first looking into the mirror, then turning to look directly at him. When her mismatched eyes focused on him, there was no hint of recognition. Her voice was shaky when she spoke. "Do I know you?"

  Charley hadn't needed to hear her voice to cinch his ID; her
eyes had done that. "We met a bit over a year ago, Doctor. Norwood Hilton, during their poltergeist problem. Since then our only contact has been on the net." He could see that she was still having trouble placing him. "I'm Charley Gordon. NEC Special Investigations Unit."

  "Gordon? Detective Gordon?" Charley nodded politely. She nodded back, forced a smile. "I suppose it makes sense that they assigned you."

  Makes sense to whom? "Just doing my job, Doctor. I have to say that I'm surprised to see you here. I don't remember seeing your name on the list of witnesses." Not that there were any witnesses, and even if there had been, they wouldn't have been detained here at the crime scene. Still, he thought he ought to at least start the conversation politely.

  "I'm not a witness. At least not to the event of this abomination."

  That was an odd phrasing. "You know something about this?"

  "Know?" Her gaze strayed to the door into the bedroom. Her eyes were bleak. "God, I hope I don't know."

  "You're not making sense, Doctor." And you're not making me happy. Spae's postings had always been rational, at least once he allowed for her assumptions, and she'd always been as fast to debunk the garbage as the department PR flacks, sometimes faster. That, plus the fact that she'd put him on the right trail on one of the bad ones when nobody else had been holding a clue, had led Charley to put more faith in her responses than those from the usual run of "investigators." "Why don't we start over. Suppose you tell me what you're doing here."

  "Armianco hired my firm to investigate."

  "That firm being?"

  "Lowenstein Ryder Priestly & Associates."

  Charley recognized the name, but wondered why Spae was associated with them; he hadn't heard of LRP taking an interest in his sort of business. They specialized in keeping things quiet and, failing that, putting the best face on whatever dirt their corporate clients had gotten into. That must be why they were involved. He didn't like it. Sure, Armianco had the right to have a private investigation, this was corporate turf; but they shouldn't have had their people on site until SIU cleared access. He wasn't going to push the point. Not yet anyway.

  "Do you have a specialty I don't know about, Dr. Spae?" She looked confused, so he added, "I mean, just why did LRP put you on this particular job?"

  "Armianco's request. They want to know if there was a connection between this and what happened aboard the Wisteria."

  Charley considered popping another antacid tab. "Aboard the Wisteria?

  "The ship with no crew. Surely you heard about it? It got a lot of media coverage. Armianco is a major investor in the shipping firm that ran the Wisteria."

  Yeah, Charley had heard about the Wisteria; he'd heard more about the crewless ship than he'd wanted to. For one thing, Caspar had opened the Modus 273 file with the incident, the same file Caspar had logged this crime to. Clearly ('aspar wasn't the only one thinking along those lines.

  The Wisteria incident had been bad enough as an isolated occurrence. The public story had been that the ship came in crewless. Another mystery of the sea. Only the Wisteria hadn't come in crewless. When the ship's autopilot started asking the San Francisco Port Authority for docking instructions, there had been a crew aboard. A dead crew. Fearing some unknown plague, Port Authority had gotten the lid on fast and, for a miracle, the lid had stayed on, and the real story hadn't gotten to the media. If this incident was connected to the Wisteria, the odds of the lid staying on had just dropped dramatically.

  "I can appreciate Armianco's interest," he said. "Have you found a connection between what happened here and what happened on the Wisteria?"

  "God, I hope not." She sounded like she meant it.

  "Which suggests that you have seen some sort of connection."

  "Pray I'm wrong. I could be, you know. The feel isn't quite the same."

  "You're not making me happy, Dr. Spae. I'd like more substantive answers."

  "I'd really rather do some more work before I say anything."

  "What sort of work?"

  She started to say something, then caught herself. After a moment of consideration, she said, "Tests."

  "Since Armianco has called us in, we get priority on all forensics."

  "That won't be a problem, Detective."

  What the hell kind of tests was she talking about? Had to be some kind of mumbo-jumbo. If there was one thing he hated more than dealing with the bad ones, it was dealing with people who thought they had an inside line on wherever the hell the weirdness came from. She was losing points with him. He remembered her hints that she knew something. Thinking about the evidence she might have destroyed or compromised, he asked, "Have you started any of these tests yet?"

  She shook her head and waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the john. "I had a little problem."

  Have a problem, make a problem. "You should have checked in with the department before you came in here."

  "Armianco cleared us."

  "But not with the department."

  "You lose, Gordon," said another voice. Beryle's voice. "News from the Edge" Beryle, the damned tabloid chronicler who just loved to make Charley's stomach do its tricks. Face half obscured by a recording rig, Beryle was entering the bedroom from an adjoining room. Shit! What's he doing here? This was a crime scene!

  "Notice is on file," Beryle said cheerily. He didn't even look at the bodies as he passed them; he must have already recorded his fill of them. "All nice and legal."

  Brazen as ever, Beryle walked right up to Charley. The red "recording" light gleamed evilly from his rig. Charley counted it a grace that the "broadcast" light was dark. Beryle smiled a false friendly smile. "I have exclusive media rights to Dr. Spae's discoveries, and since she's authorized by Armianco to be here, so am I. Finding that the Special Investigations top cop is involved in this is a plus. A real validator. Want to make a statement for the audience?"

  "Shut that damned thing off."

  "So, you're saying that the police want to cover up the supernatural aspects of this crime."

  Beryle's grin invited smashing, but not while he was recording. "This matter is under investigation. There are no conclusions as yet."

  "But lots of suspicions, eh? Tell me, Detective Gordon, is it true that the federal government has ordered you to shut down any exposure of this crime?"

  "The feds have got nothing to do with this."

  "So you're denying that the government was involved in the summoning of whatever did this?"

  "Why do I bother? You'll twist whatever I say. Try this! You're nothing more than sensation-seeking pond scum. Is that quotable enough? Shut the damned rig off!"

  "If I don't?"

  "I'll have you jammed."

  "That's suppression of the press," Beryle said jauntily.

  "The man said shut it off," Manny said by way of announcing his arrival. He ripped the rig off Beryle's head, none too gently. Beryle's style of sensational journalism hadn't made him any friends in SIU.

  "That's very expensive private property you're holding, ape," Beryle said, rubbing his ear.

  "You'll get it back when we're through." Manny stuffed the rig into his coat pocket.

  "Now we're really talking suppression. You're going to see a suit on this."

  "I got insurance."

  "It ain't gonna be enough. Detective Salazar, isn't it? I want to make sure the name is correct on the writ."

  Manny was spelling his name for Beryle as Charley went back into the bedroom. Nothing had changed. Mr. Marino and his party girls were still as dead as they had been ten minutes ago. Charley punched in a call to the crime scene unit and told them to bring their SI kit. It was official now. SIU business. He had started to make his next call when Dr. Spae joined him. She avoided looking at the bodies.

  "Detective Gordon?" Her expression was earnest. "I'd like to cooperate on this."

  "That Armianco's position?" "I don't know about them. It's my position."

  Interesting. "I'd be very happy to have you cooperate, Dr. Spae.
I like cooperation a lot. You willing to sink Beryle's tapes?"

  She sighed. "David can be difficult to deal with."

  Charley had experience with that.

  "I'll do what I can," she said.

  "And Beryle's suppression suit?"

  "There won't be any suit if I have anything to say about it. I think you would like to see whatever did this put down as quickly and quietly as I would."

  That so? Very interesting. "You're talking like you've got a lead."

  "It's more that I see a possibility. We need to talk."

  "I'll be glad to." It had better not be smoke. "Soon as I make a call."

  Her brow furrowed. "To whom?"

  "New federal ruling," he told her. "Everything we log in about cases like this goes upstairs."

  She didn't look happy about that. Well enough, he wasn't happy about it either.

  CHAPTER

  13

  John knelt on the verge by the magic pool, the disk Shahotain had given him lying before him. Try as he might, he could conjure no image from the pool. All he saw there was his own reflection, an elven face that had no connection to Marianne Reddy.

  Was that his answer? After all, what connection could an elven prince have with a mainline straightline corporate pensioner? Only the bond of love, for a woman who had raised him as her son. Just the guilt of abandonment, for giving up so easily when he tried to discover what had happened to her. She believed John dead. He'd told himself that he had stayed away for her safety. At first that had made sense, what with Mitsutomo so interested in finding John so they could get at Bear; but Mitsutomo was out of the picture now, and what had John done? Sure, he'd visited their old apartment and nosed around a few databases, but he hadn't gotten anywhere and he'd let his efforts peter out. Before he'd left for the otherworld he'd spent more time chasing after Spillway Sue and studying magic with Dr. Space.

  John felt like a shit.

  Had Shahotain given him this disk just to torment him? No, Shahotain was hard, but he wasn't needlessly cruel. He must have had a purpose. He had often said that John wasn't committed to the Way, and that he was still too attached to the sunlit world. Maybe this was a test, a test to see if John could let go of his past that he might embrace his future.