Spitting Image

by Patrick LeClerc

  “How do you know?”

  “I know these guys are bastards. I know that very well. And I know they’re more scared of the rest of the family than they are of me. We saw that at the house in Rowley. This guy was the one who supervised my interrogation. He’s a prick, and he expects everybody else is as big a prick as he is. And the biggest prick move I could make is to turn him over to his own side with a pile of evidence that he’s been double crossing them.”

  “I’ll hand it to you,” said John. “That was worthy of your perfidious ancestors.”

  “If the enemy is awful, use that against them. If they try to enforce the wall of silence by making informing scary, you just use that fear to strong-arm informers.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Sarah.

  “Say you think a guy is spying for the enemy. Say a shopkeeper or a bartender, since those are great jobs to pick up gossip. Well, you just show up at his place in broad daylight, thank him for his service and hand him some payment. It can be money or cigarettes, chocolate, c-rations, whatever people would sell their buddies out for at a given time a place. Try to look like you’re being discreet, but do a bad job. He’ll worry that people will see him taking your bribes, and they’ll assume he’s working for you. Then he has to decide to really start working for you and hope you’ll protect him, or he has to explain to the Black and Tans or the KGB or the Viet Cong or Taliban or whoever that it was just an evil trick of the enemy, and he’s loyal, honest. Nobody trusts anything a spy says, so it’s easy to turn their own friends against them, and they know it.”

  “Sneaky,” she said. “And a little cruel.”

  “If he was on the side of the angels, he wouldn’t be afraid of them,” I said. “And it’s better than they treated me. If I didn’t co-operate, they were going to use impostors to get you and Pete and Nique fired or arrested of blacklisted for various high crimes and misdemeanors. Not sure how bad that would have to be for a tenured professor at a Jesuit school. I mean, genocide and pedophelia get swept under the rug by the Vatican, so–”

  “What?”

  “Yep,” I said. “That was their plan to assure my compliance. It might still be. Which is why we need to finish these bastards. If it was just a threat to me, I could disappear. I’ve probably lost my job, lost you, I may as well do a hitch in the Corps or the Legion and start over someplace new. But I didn’t want to see the ways they could screw with everybody I cared about.”

  She shook her head slowly, her eyes wide. “I didn’t realize just how evil they were.”

  “They’re that willing to get what they want, regardless of who gets hurt.” I suppose that’s a good enough definition of evil.”

  “So you’re just staying and fighting for me? You said if it was just you, you’d vanish.”

  I squirmed a bit as I thought about it. To an extent I was doing it for her. For Nique and Pete as well. But in a way, it was for me. Because the cost of letting them suffer for my safety was worse than the danger of staying.

  It’s not a lack of fear that keeps you from bugging out and leaving your buddy to the enemy. It’s that the guilt and shame of abandoning them are even more frightening than a bayonet.

  I blew out a big breath. “If I left,” I said, “if I went someplace new and started over with a new identity, they’d start messing with you to try to bring me back. If I let that happen, let them destroy your life to keep mine a secret, I’d have to live with the fact that I was a bigger prick than even they were. I’d rather get shot than face that kind of coward in the mirror every morning.”

  “That helps,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to think it was just for me. To win the damsel in distress. If you want to help get rid of a threat to me, that’s great, but I’m not a prize to be won.”

  “You’re not a prize,” I said. “You’re a partner. You’re smart and good at seeing angles I don’t. Help me figure out how to set these guys up. Then we’ll both be safe”

  “OK,” she said. “Let’s start with what they want.”

  “My DNA.”

  “One of the factions wants that,” she said. “The other wants them to fail to get it. Why? Because they want it themselves? Because they don’t like the idea of the one side of the family having it? Do they have a different idea for it? Or just for leverage?”

  “That’s the kind of thing Brad might be able to tell us,” said Bob.

  “OK,” I said, pulling out a notebook and a pen. “Let’s see what we know or guess before we question our friendly neighborhood Skin-Walker.”

  “So if Caruthers is probably these aliases, what name do we think belongs to the woman you met at the house in Rowley?”

  “She’s probably Amelia Bennett. That was the name connected to her phone number and on the registration for the Walther. She’s probably got more aliases, but let’s go with that.”

  I drew a line beneath each name. “So what do we know that each one wants? And what do we know they’ve done?”

  “We know Amelia wants your swimmers,” said Bob.

  I nodded. “She pretty much admitted that. Admitted stalking me at work, posing as an EMT, kidnapping and impersonating Sarah, all that.” I wrote each item beneath her name. “But she denied the real strong-arm stuff. I think she wanted to get the goods and move on, leave us none the wiser.”

  I looked at Sarah. “Just so we know what lines they’re happy to cross, what did they do to you? Or threaten to do to you?”

  She looked over my shoulder, into a distance from which the memory was bearable, let out a long breath and spoke. “They never hurt me, never actually laid a hand on me. They tricked me. Somebody posed as you took me for a drive, then when they got me to the cabin and I asked about plans...whoever was playing you...got evasive. Colder and harder than you are. Like you were trying to be funny, but coming off as just mean. I said if you were going to be an asshole, you could just take me back home, and then you–he–whoever– told me I wasn’t going anywhere, so get used to the cabin. They kept me in the cabin, fed me, never said much. I couldn’t figure out what was going on.” She turned to look at me again. “Then you and Bob turned up and rescued me, like I’m fucking Rapunzel, which yes, I know you had to, and thanks, but I don’t like it.” She shrugged. “I don’t like feeling helpless.”

  I nodded. I understood, sort of, how it would bother her to need to be rescued. I have no baggage about the cavalry riding in to save me, but I don’t have a thousand years of cultural cliche weighing on my shoulders.

  “You saved me right back tonight,” I said. “Even a charming and resourceful man of action like myself needs rescuing sometimes.”

  “I get how they hoped to keep you isolated if you bought into the romantic weekend thing,” said John, “but once you’d seen the true face of the enemy, what were they keeping you safe for? Not that I want to see you hurt, but these people couldn’t afford to let you go to the police.”

  “They seem to put a lot of faith in blackmail.” I said. I thought back. “No. Wait. Back in Rowley, when we questioned Amelia. She mentioned something about letting Sarah go ‘unharmed and with her memory wiped,’ or something like that.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “I don’t think they can, but they probably know who could,” I said. “Supposedly that’s a power of one of the families. It would save them having to dispose of a lot of bodies.”

  “So what does Caruthers want?”

  “It seems mostly to keep Amelia from getting what she wants. He’s the one who tipped me off about the original plan, and probably set up the scene at the college so I’d think you were cheating and do something stupid, probably in the direction of Amelia’s group, who were the only ones I know were messing with me. And this latest attack, when they kidnapped and tortured me, I don’t think that was Amelia.”

  “How can you be sure?” asked Bob.

  “It’s tough to be sure of anything, but the woman I fought was probably a man shifted to look like a woman, just based on body mass a
nd muscles. When John tossed Amelia around in Rowley, she weighed what it looked like she weighed, and she tried to get my DNA the old fashioned way, which only a woman could do.”

  “So why would a man try to look like her if he couldn’t...get your sperm?” asked Sarah.

  “That bothered me all along. Hadn’t put it together until now. Now I’m thinking Sarah is right. It’s a family feud. The kidnapper looking like Amelia was misdirection. Make it look like the whole thing was Amelia’s group, not Caruthers’. They wanted me to think it was the same woman, but I’m convinced it wasn’t.”

  “But why torture you and question you if they wanted you to escape and go after Amelia?” asked Sarah. “Isn’t that going a long way to piss you off?”

  I shrugged. “They seemed to want to know how much I knew. Maybe wanted to know if I’d roll over on Caruthers as my informant. That would tell him if his secret was safe from the other faction. Damn, this is tangled.”

  “So, let’s make it simple,” said Sarah. “Have we established that Amelia’s group wants your DNA, with as little attention as possible, and Caruthers’ wants to stop them?”

  “Well, Without Caruthers, they’d probably have gotten away with it, right?” I asked. “Why would I ever assume fake Sarah was a replacement? It makes no sense. More likely to figure you were upset and acting different. And Sarah wouldn’t have figured they were impostors either, probably. I mean, would you have believed that wasn’t me who’d kidnapped you before I walked in with my Doppelganger at gunpoint?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No. If they’d dropped me back home and then you called the next day, I’d never believe it hadn’t been you. I’d have been pissed, but I’d figure it was you.”

  “So they blur your memories, or have some guy do that, you go home without any knowledge, I figure you were acting strange, and we work it out. Or we don’t. But we break up and blame each other, never figuring on shapeshifting impostors.”

  “That probably would have worked,” said Bob.

  “Right. So why did Caruthers stick his oar in? If he’d just wanted to help, he could have done a lot more to put me on the trail. As it was, he just kind of pulled the pin and rolled me into the room and let the damage happen.”

  “So was he just trying to stop Amelia from getting your powers for her side of the family, or was he trying to destroy her side using you, keeping his own hands clean?” asked Bob.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But we do know this is an ugly family feud, we know our buddy Brad has been playing both sides, and he’s probably not thrilled about them finding that out, so we see how much he’s willing to tell us to avoid that.”

  “Once you know what they want, what are you going to do about it?” asked Sarah.

  “That depends,” I said. “All I really want is to be left alone. I don’t feel any need to destroy these people if I can get a hold over them. It worked with Doors last year. I’ve kept out of his way, and he hasn’t come after me or anyone close to me. I don’t know what would scare these guys enough to make them stand down, and they’re hard to guard against. I’d have to suspect everyone I met. Passwords would get real old real fast. So the question is how do I ensure they’ll back off and stay backed off?”

  “Any chance you’d pick one side? Help them take out the other one in return for a truce?” asked Bob.

  “I guess,” I said. I didn’t like the idea. “It would depend on exactly what they wanted. What the dispute was about.”

  “Well, I guess we see how much dirt our friend is willing to dish about the family.”

  “Bring him a beer and turn on the ball game,” suggested Sarah. “That always worked at our house.”

  Chapter 24

  I WALKED INTO the office where Brad was tied to the chair. I sat in another chair opposite him and looked at him for a moment. He was trying to keep his expression blank, but I could see fear in his eyes. He had no reason to expect mercy from me.

  “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with you yet,” I said. Let it sink in. Dangle some hope, let him think how he could convince me to let him live. “There are two factions that probably won’t be all that happy with you. I could hand you over to one or the other, maybe as a peace offering. Back off and I hand them the traitor. Stranger things have worked.”

  He blanched just a bit at the idea. I’d seen their version of mercy, seen the fear they had of crossing the family.

  “Of course, I have a score to settle with you myself,” I said. “I’m trying to decide if letting you go is worth giving that up.”

  “What I did wasn’t personal,” he said. “I was doing what I had to.”

  I shook my head. “That didn’t work at Nuremberg, it’s not going to work here. We were both there in that room. I was the guy with the hood on, so don’t look for much sympathy from me.”

  He swallowed, went a little whiter.

  “Talk to me about the factions,” I said. “Help me decide what to do with you.”

  He was silent for a while, but I could tell he was going to talk. His eyes flickered around the room, everywhere but at me, his lip trembled, he took a few shaky breaths and paused, like he wanted to talk, but also wanted to be resolute and silent.

  Finally he spoke. “Leadership of the clan is hereditary. As in all the families. The problem with our clan is that it’s...more difficult to prove true parentage. Even among ourselves, our gifts can allow us to deceive one another. Amelia’s father is the current head of the family, but there are rumors that his line isn’t the purest. The truth is that Winston’s father should have been the patriarch, but the evidence is easy for those in power to deny. An outright accusation, with the implications of incest and deception, would likely start open warfare. The other great families would take sides, and our standing as a whole would suffer. It would be catastrophic.

  “If, however, Amelia’s branch were weakened, damaged by you, and if the plot to use you were widely known, then it would be simple for the Caruthers branch to take the mantle of leadership, to right the wrongs and steady the ship. No blood would be on their hands, only on yours, and you would be seen as having just cause.”

  “So Caruthers pointed me at Bennett so I could remove or disgrace his old nemesis?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whose idea was it to try to get my genes in the first place?”

  “That came from the Bennett side. Someone had a contact in the Doors organization. We have agents working near most of the other families. It’s easy for us, and information keeps us a step ahead in the game of politics. We found out about you last year. I’m not sure if the idea to add your bloodline was Amelia’s, but she certainly decided to run with it. And it should have been easy. Low risk, high reward for the family. That could solidify her branch’s hold on the clan for generations.”

  “And it was going so well until...”

  “Amelia is my sister. Half sister. But it was never a happy relationship. She’s older, her blood is more pure. In theory. A theory that depends on believing lies.”

  “Like most of your family’s plans,” I pointed out. That may have been a mistake. I saw him set his jaw. I thought he might clam up, but he was too irate at being marginalized by his sister to stop complaining now.

  “I was treated as a servant. A retainer, not a true full member of the family. I knew the man you know as Winston Caruthers, I’d worked with him and he treated me like an equal. When I heard of Amelia’s plan, I knew it would be something he could use.”

  “So how much coincidence is it that he got hired at the school where my girlfriend works?”

  “None at all. The real Winston Caruthers is a poet. And a pretentious one. William Butler is the real name of the man you met. Butler just met Caruthers by auditing a class, and imitated him to deceive you. He actually staked out the library, expecting you to come by when you didn’t see your girlfriend for a few days. He was posing as a student there. When he saw you come in, he put on his poet act and fed you the informat
ion he wanted you to have.”

  I remembered our first meeting. How he played it that he’d forgotten his office key. I’d believed the absent minded professor act, since it was such a trope.

  “So he figured if he revealed Amelia’s plot to me, I’d charge in like a bull in a China shop, cause her side of the family embarrassment and maybe a few deaths, and he’d look good.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Amelia thought that Butler was working with her. But he wanted to undermine her efforts. That’s why he fed you information, and when you didn’t destroy her or expose her plot, he tried to provoke you again by trying to convince you Sarah was having an affair. He thought you’d blame everything on Amelia’s side, the Bennet side, and sooner or later you’d ruin them.”

  I shook my head, not sure which of them was worse. Amelia was certainly taking liberties, and her plan was deceitful and heavy handed and not a little rapey, but she seemed to be trying to reduce actual bloodshed. Caruthers–or Butler, I guess, was perfectly happy, even eager, to see some people get hurt. Given that one of those people was me, and another was Sarah, I was upset by that. Even if the people who got hurt weren’t me, they were likely to be hurt by me. I didn’t like being used like that.

  That didn’t explain the latest moves.

  “So whom do I have to thank for drugging, kidnapping and waterboarding me?” I asked. “Besides you, I mean.”

  No harm in dropping a subtle reminder that he might want to spread the blame for that one around a little. Give us somebody higher up the chain of command in the hopes of reducing his own sentence.

  He chewed his lip. Looked at the floor for a moment. “It was Butler. He had several reasons. Having your DNA would be a big bargaining chip for any family, not just ours. And if you got free, and you assumed that Amelia was the one who kidnapped you, then you’d be pointed at her again. But most important, he had to cover himself. To see how much danger he might be in. He knew you’d spoken with Amelia, had her at gunpoint and let her live, so needed to find out if you had told her anything about him. If she knew he had pointed you at her. That’s why we interrogated you about how you knew she had impersonated your girlfriend. But you held up and didn’t give him up.”