Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves

by Robert N. Charrette

  He was not supposed to be there, of course, but he didn't let that bother him. The guards that CaranelliCo hired to watch their project were not the best—easy for Holger to avoid. The adjunct security systems were almost as easy to spoof. He'd found the places where neither live nor electronic eyes watched, and there he took his refuge.

  From his unwatched sanctuaries hidden among the great structure's bones, he could keep watch. The building would one day dominate the skyline of the East Side, rising as it did against the side of the Hill and stretching taller than the land form from which it thrust. From its heights he could see most of the city. Everything was all laid out before him like a situation map. And he studied that map, looking for the clue that would reveal his way to escape. And he watched the city because, while he watched, he wasn't sleeping.

  Eventually, inevitably, he would sleep, and sleeping, dream. He didn't much care for his dreams. They were ram- / bling torments wherein reality changed as he watched, helpless to affect anything. A normal enough situation in dreams, but these changes were different, deeper, more real and profound. He hated being helpless.

  He tried not to sleep much.

  There was one of the Pend Foundation's talking posters on the hoarding around the construction site. Sometimes, late at night, while he was watching, someone or something would trigger the poster. He would hear its message drifting in the quiet air and filling him with memories of better times, better lives.

  But how much was memory and how much was dream?

  That was the essential problem that faced him. He had to sort the one from the other, and both of them from the lies. Yet each day the distinctions seemed less clear. He had no benchmarks, no checks, nothing to hold on to. He envied the conviction he heard in Mr. Pend Foundation's voice. He'd had conviction once, in the old days when memories were not traitors.

  The poster was talking again. The air was clear and carried the sound perfectly—directly to him, it seemed. Mistrust coincidence, Mannheim had said. Hadn't he? If he hadn't, he should have. Was this his clue? Holger listened, taking in the message. The message was no different than before, but tonight it touched him. He found himself hoping that when he finally slept, he would dream of a green and pleasant land, hut it was a hope without faith. So he sat and he cried, listening to that sincere voice, until finally he slept.

  "You wanted to see us, Captain," Manny said.

  "Sit down," Captain Hancock told them.

  Charley Gordon closed the door behind him as he entered the captain's office. Sitting down was the cue that something unpleasant was going to happen. With the door cutting off the continual clamor of the squad room, the office was as quiet as a funeral parlor. Hancock barely let him get seated.

  "I've got a new case for you. Tabloids are calling it the Holyoke Haunting. Falerio and Vuong did the prelim, but they're overloaded, so it's going to you two."

  "Like we ain't overloaded, too," Manny complained.

  Hancock ignored him. "I want you to get out there this morning and do a face-to-face with the eyewitnesses, especially this Thomas Rudge. He's got a history of hoaxes. I think we can get this one buried if you two dig deep enough."

  This wasn't quiet room stuff. What was going on? "Come on, Captain, we've got real work to do. We don't need to be cleaning up Falerio and Vuong's messes. I just got a lead on the Sandowski homicide that—"

  "That you can pass on," Hancock finished for him. "The Sandowski homicide is out of your hands."

  What? A slow roller churned Charley's stomach acid. "What about the Marino case?"

  "Not yours anymore."

  Shit! He had only told Hancock about the connection between the killings last week. "It's all of them, isn't it?"

  "List of reassigned cases is already in your boxes," Hancock told them. "Why?" Manny sounded offended. "You can't do this," Charley said, wishing it were true. Hancock sat back and glowered. "I don't need any shit from either of you. You've got other cases assigned to you. You'll work on them. You'll work on this Holyoke thing. You'll work on whatever I goddamn tell you to work on. Insubordinate cops get suspended."

  Who was going to suspend the monster? The thing that had come off the Wisteria was somewhere in New England. Wherever it had come from, it was here, and that made it Special Investigations's problem. SIU had made it Charley's problem; a problem Charley hadn't yet solved, and a problem that was still loose and still killing.

  "You can't do this," Charley said again. "Captain, we've got a killer out there."

  "And there are competent people to chase him down," Hancock retorted. "You can't save the world by yourself, Gordon."

  Hell, he wasn't trying to save the world. "They haven't got the history on this case." "They will when you turn over your files. Which you will

  do."

  Charley didn't like it, didn't like it at all. Something wasn't kosher. "This isn't your idea. Why are you doing

  this?"

  "Orders from upstairs," Hancock said, stony-faced. "That's it?" Manny asked with appropriate scorn. Hancock nodded. "That's all I've got to say. Close your investigations down and log all the data."

  "And what's going to happen to that data?" Charley wanted to know. Some of it came from proprietary sources. He'd be burning bridges to those sources if he let the stuff go blindly.

  "That's not your concern."

  "It's the feds," Manny said, leaving Charley to add, "It's Fletcher horning in, isn't it?"

  "The case isn't yours anymore. So stop worrying about it. In fact, you'd both be smart to forget about it altogether."

  "I can't forget we've got a killer sitting in our backyard, « looking for somebody to suck dry," Charley said.

  "You think I like this?" Hancock didn't look happy, but he didn't look like he was going to back down either. "Listen, | Gordon. You put a lot of backs up last year with that verrie 1 stunt over Providence. Buzzing the damn city with a flight of corporate Mambas! We don't need you pulling any more crazy tricks like that, got it? A lot of people are still unhappy with you. You understand? You make waves now, you're history. You'll take Salazar down with you. That what you want? It's one frigging case! And not your only one either! Forget your killer. It's good advice, Gordon. Good for your health. Take it."

  "This stinks, Captain."

  "Easy, Charley," Manny said, dropping a hand on his arm.

  Like he needed restraint. Like he was going to strangle Hancock.

  "Listen to your partner, Gordon. This isn't worth your job."

  Maybe so. It sure wasn't worth anything to stay and argue.

  When they got back to their cube, Manny looked around to see if anybody was paying attention and, satisfied that they had as much privacy as one got in the squad room, quietly asked, "You gonna do it?"

  Worried about your job, Manny? "Yeah. This is a no-win. They'll strip it out of our machines, if we don't hand it to them."

  Manny nodded, satisfied. "Hancock's right, you know. We oughta forget this one."

  "Yeah." Hancock could suck rocks. No way Charley was going to forget.

  So he didn't forget. What could he do? There wasn't a hell

  of a lot he could do. The investigations weren't really going anywhere. Despite the wealth of data Pamela Martinez had dumped on him, he had been unable to discern a pattern to the killings, unable to get a handle on what drove the killer. the victims were too dissimilar, the locations too different. the only constants were the victims' conditions and the fact that all the killings happened at night, but that bit wasn't news in an SIU investigation. The best he'd been able to do was plot a track from San Francisco, where the thing had gotten off the Wisteria, to New England, where it seemed to have decided that it liked the climate.

  Spinning wheels didn't help anybody, and spinning wheels was all he had done. Maybe whoever was getting his tiles would have better luck. He doubted it. He started stripping out the stuff he'd gotten from Martinez and couldn't verify from another source. Then he went after Caspar's contributions.


  Thinking about Caspar, Charley figured he ought to let Caspar know before his cybernetic ear dropped something new in the Wisteria killer's Modus file. It was late in the week and the address Charley had for the ear might not be any good anymore, but Charley felt like he ought to try. He popped an e-mail explaining that he had just been taken out of the loop on Modus 273 and there wasn't any point in sending any more connections.

  Caspar might have been waiting on-line for him, given the speed at which a response landed in his box.

  Suspect connection between current termination and other terminated investigations, was the meat of Caspar's message, but the bones were in the appended list of cases. Some of them Charley recognized, some were unknowns. Most of them weren't even from the NEC. Out of Charley's jurisdiction, but clearly not out of Caspar's sphere of interest.

  Charley was interested, but who had the time? He had half a dozen investigations to close down, write up, and gift-wrap for—whom? He'd guessed Fletcher and his feds, but Hancock hadn't confirmed or denied. No real reason to hide federal involvement. The Wisteria killer had left bodies in a couple of dozen states. Clear interstate crime. So why wasn't Hancock talking? Who was really calling the shots?

  There were times when Charley wished he were back on the streets.

  John didn't know if Spillway Sue had changed her slump, hut the door at the bottom of the alley stairs was locked. Someone was living there. Recalling how much difficulty he'd had tracking her down before, he decided to wait and see who came home.

  The alley was wide enough for vehicles, but somebody had once decided to deny passage and had built a cinder-block wall across it. Somebody else hadn't liked the idea and had blown a hole in the obstruction. He could still see the scorch marks on the remains of the barrier and the fragmentation scars on the walls of the nearby buildings. There were enough cinder blocks left against Sue's building to offer a seat, so John took it. The spot got him off the damp ground and out of the way while staying close enough to her door to watch and wait, but not so close she'd take his presence as an immediate threat when she returned.

  He let his legs dangle and idly kicked his feet against the concrete, scuffing his fine green elven boots. They were good boots, without a doubt the best-fitting pair he'd ever had, deserving of better care, but they were elven and he had little concern for such things at the moment.

  While he waited, he watched the thick clouds plow across the night sky. They promised more of the rain that had slicked the afternoon streets and brought the first fall leaves, tamping them into sodden, brown masses. Not that there were a lot of trees, in this neighborhood. Pure urban around here. Through a gap in the buildings he could see the southern end of the Hill. There were trees there, many of them already well on their way to winter barrenness thanks to the rain. Unlike the urban barrenness, nature's would give way to renewed life in the spring. Mankind's stripping of the green just went on and on.

  Gloomy thoughts for a gloomy night.

  He didn't have to be here. He could be back at the slump baby-sitting his automated effort to verify the information on the disk. But what would be the point of that? He'd taken the best course, having rigged a cuckoo and set loose half a dozen agents to do data searches. The searches would take time— had already taken hours; there wasn't much he could do to speed it up, and the little bit of boost that he might give could be dangerous. The cuckoo was his cutout to keep him safe from tagalongs that could all too easily run him down if he was doing his hunting live. The minimal contact he'd have with the agents when he dropped in to pick up whatever they had sieved carried a risk of picking up a tagalong, but only a minimal risk. Minimal risk was the key to safe hacking.

  So he was here, hoping to find Sue. Not for the first time, he wondered if he was doing the right thing, and—not for the first time—he figured out the answer. The processing loop got shorter every time he went through it. Sue had been the best thing to come into his life since he'd fled Worcester. How could he not do this? He had to see her and let her know he was back. She'd understand. Their relationship had barely gotten off the ground, but it had a heart to it, a soul. She would understand.

  The sound of voices out on the street told him that his wait was over. One of the voices belonged to Sue. Four people appeared at the mouth of the alley. She was with a trio of guys. Male guys. John listened as they exchanged banter. The talk was friendly, easygoing street stuff—end of the day, see-you-tomorrow stuff—and John worried that one of those three wasn't going to keep walking.

  Sue was wearing a floppy hat, the sort of thing she'd worn before she met him. He'd liked the look then, he liked it now. The hat made her look like an old-time adventurer, in a Iunked, retro way. Her clothes were as eclectic a mix as ever, maybe more so given the extra layers she wore against the chill. But her look was only an outward expression of her self. It was the person inside the clothes John wanted. She didn't have Fraoch's ethereal beauty and she never would, but she had a liveliness, a warmth, that radiated from her. He was getting hot just seeing her stand there.

  His fear that she might have found someone to replace him looked unwarranted. The guys shoved off and she entered the alley alone. He had thought about using the same routine he'd used with Dr. Spae, to give Sue a chance to know it was him before showing his elven face, but he got loo involved watching her to think about spells. Staying inconspicuous wasn't a problem; she didn't notice him until she was halfway to her door.

  Upon seeing him sitting on the wall, she didn't back up, or call her friends, or even reach for a weapon. She stayed cool, collected, squinting a little because the light didn't give her a good view of him. Sue set herself, hands sweeping back her long outer vest to rest on her hips, and looked up at him, deceptively casual. John wasn't deceived. She'd be ready for fight or flight, whatever made the most sense. Streetwise, Spillway Sue was.

  He noticed a bit of dead-black ballistic plastic peeping out from just behind her wrist. The black shape was grooved like a pistol butt's. When had she started carrying so openly?

  What else was different?

  She took the initiative, proving that not everything had changed.

  "You're sitting on my turf, friend," she said, neither hostile nor friendly. "Ya got business or is this a social call?"

  "It's nice to see you again, Sue."

  She didn't respond at once and when she said, "Tall Jack," she didn't sound like she believed that she had recognized his voice correctly.

  "Haven't answered to that name in a while, but yeah, it's me.

  He dropped off the wall and—thankfully—landed gracefully. As he approached her, he dragged off the watch cap that the bogies had found for Mm; he'd been using it to cover his ears. Time to stop hiding.

  Her eyes narrowed and her face went hard when she got a good look at him. The sudden shift to hostility hit him hard. What she said hit harder.

  "Not a nice trick, Bennett. Watcha want with me?"

  Her words had the element of surprise, like getting a solid rabbit punch to the gut from a kindergartner. "I'm not Bennett," was all John could think to say.

  "Ya can drop the voice, okay? I'm wise ta ya."

  Her misidentification angered him. Holding his hand before him at chest height, he summoned flame to it. She flinched as the flickering flames appeared. He knew she didn't like magical things, but he wanted her to see.

  "Take a good look; I'm not him. Never have been. Never will be."

  She obliged him, searching his face. She was quiet for a long time, her brow dipping slowly into a furrow of confusion. Her mouth opened slightly. Her head gave the tiniest of shakes. "If ya can change your voice, ya can change your face."

  "If I were him, why would I bother not doing it right? Come on, you know I'm me. This is my real face. You asked me once why I didn't look like Bennett; well, now you can see that I do. At least when there's no magic disguising me."

  "Magic's for school brats ta believe in."

  "You know better
than that. You've seen it. You've even been to the otherworld."

  "Been a lot of places, ain't all of them real."

  "I'm real, Sue. This face is. Touch it and see for yourself."

  For a second, she looked like she might take him up on the offer. Then her suspicion took hold again. "Suppose it is you. What am I supposed ta do?"

  "Say hello? Invite me inside?"

  "Hello."

  That was one. "And?"

  "I'll pass."

  "Why?"

  She threw up her hands and stomped toward the wall. She spun before she reached it. "Whaddaya mean, why? Ya shimmied out on me, Tall Jack!"

  "I didn't mean to."

  Her face was pinched in a scowl. "Looked like ya walked out under your own power ta me."

  "I came back as soon as I could."

  She laughed. A bitter, mocking laugh. "As soon as ya could? Tell me another one."

  Her attitude cut him, but there was a familiarity to her obstinate disbelief. A real, close-to-home familiarity. Hadn't Bennett claimed to be unable to visit John during his youth? John hadn't believed him. And now here was John telling the truth and not being believed.

  Maybe Bennett hadn't been lying either.

  John didn't like being on the other side of such distrust. It hadn't been his intention to be away so long. He didn't really deserve her scorn. He certainly didn't want it. He wanted things to go back to the way they were.

  "It's true," he told her. "Where I was, time was, well, different."

  "Drop the puppy-dog look. And don't give me any magic shit. I ain't buying."

  "If you won't let me tell you the truth, how can I explain things to you?"

  "Truth? I ain't no corp prole who don't know how ta wipe her ass unless the suits give her vid instructions. I got a lot more ta me than a cunt and a pair of boobs. Ya want truth? I'll give ya some! Save your stories for some starry-eyed virgin outta the rezcoms. I know why ya came back. Ya came back 'cause ya got a little bored. Decided it was time for another romp with Stupid Sue. She won't mind, ya said ta yourself. I'll just pop in, throw a little razzle, grab a couple of quickies, and be off again. No fuss, no muss. Back ta the glam with a 'See ya, Sue. I'll be back.' Ya like empty promises all glossed up with a bunch of slick words and soulful looks? Well you're the only one, dode. I think it'd be a good idea for ya ta take your fancy face and poof before I cram your lying bullshit down your throat. Ya can just go poof, can't ya, being an elf and all? Come on, let me see ya do it."