Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman

by Duncan Eagleson

  By six o’clock the following friggin’ bleary gray morning, Dobbs sat in his runabout outside the City Arms apartments. He wasn’t really a morning person, but he could drag himself out early when he needed to. Evans had seen the mutie leave his apartment at eight to go to the dentist, but dental appointments meant variations in schedule; there was no telling what time the mutie customarily left his place in the morning, so Dobbs was there extra early to make sure he didn’t miss the fucker. Dentist appointment, Dobbs mused, that’s pretty mundane for a mutie serial killer. He supposed even the Beast had to get fillings now and then, but wondered if there were something darker behind it. Have to look into the dentist. Meanwhile, he thought, keep your eyes glued to that front door.

  Watchful as he was, Dobbs might have missed the bastard if it hadn’t been for the coat. It was about eight when he noticed the stylish blue trench coat. There was no doubt in his mind that the coat on the man coming out of the Arms belonged to the mutie; Dobbs had seen it too many times to mistake it. He set down his paper cup of coffee in the runabout’s drink holder and stared. The dark hair and glasses and the olive skin tone were wrong, but once he’d recognized the coat Dobbs ignored the man’s appearance and concentrated on his movements. The body language was right, he decided. It was the mutie disguised as a normal.

  That had to be how he got past Evans. The mutie had gone into the jakes and changed into his normal disguise. This was getting better and better. The mutie—he had charged his drinks once, and Dobbs had discovered his name was Aguilar Cordoba, but Dobbs still thought of him as “the mutie” or just “the fucker”—headed off toward the tram station. Dobbs got out, locked the runabout, and followed.

  5. WOLF

  Neither Roth nor Weldt felt the need to be present, so it was just the three of us and Chief Gage who walked into the lobby of the City Administration Building, the scene of the killing of Treasurer Czernoff. Cavernous and marble-clad, two stories high, the lobby was split by a broad central stairway, with banks of elevators to either side and a security desk at the front, where a group of guardsmen clustered. Outside the thick glass doors, wide steps ran down to an open plaza. To one side of the steps lay a bloody corpse, presumably that of the treasurer. The place had already been cordoned off by the guard, essentially making the whole front of the building inaccessible from the plaza side.

  The corpse lay in a pool of congealing blood, several steps down on a broad step that was virtually a landing. It was barely recognizable as human. One arm was twisted beneath it; the other, severed, lay two steps down from it. The chest was opened as if for an autopsy, white ribs gleaming amidst red and brown muscle and fat. The face had suffered several parallel slashes, exposing eyeballs, nose cartilage, and teeth. We’d seen worse, but not often. On the pavement beside the body a mark was painted in blood—three vertical slashes above a squat oval, presumably the “mark” we’d heard referred to. Investigator Auden joined us as we surveyed the scene.

  “Chief,” he said to Gage.

  “Auden,” the Chief nodded in return.

  The investigator favored me with a slight head movement that, had it been allowed to live, might have grown up to be a nod. He turned back to Gage.

  “Czernoff was apparently on his way home for the night,” he said. “Perp caught him coming out of the elevator. Looks like a quick job, no sign of struggle. Man on the desk heard nothing. Tyburn came down five minutes behind Czernoff and found him this way.” His nod indicated a man in the over-robe of an Allworld priest who sat to one side of the broad stairway. The man was tall, his hair long but thinning on top, and he had a mournful look that I suspected was as much due to his customary demeanor as it was to the tragedy of the killing.

  “No witnesses? Who was on the desk?” asked Gage.

  “John Hamblin. Swears he didn’t hear a thing.”

  “Hamblin?” said Gage suspiciously.

  “Yeah, I know,” Auden sighed. “Ran a breathalyzer on him. He’s clean.”

  “And we’re sure it was the Beast?”

  “No question. Like his technique isn’t distinctive enough already, he left his usual mark.”

  Gage regarded the mutilated corpse in silence for a moment. Finally he took a breath. “Are all the pieces accounted for? Do we know yet?” he asked.

  Auden scrubbed a hand across his face. “We’ll know for sure when the coroner gets here,” he said. “But you want my guess? No. There’s... parts unaccounted for.”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Kind of blows our theory to hell, doesn’t it?” Gage said at last. “Czernoff was well known as an atheist.”

  “Theory?” I asked.

  “We hadn’t got to that yet,” Gage said apologetically. “The only connection we’ve made so far among the victims has been that each was involved in some sort of religious activity. We were considering that if the Beast’s killings aren’t just random, there might be some religious motivation behind them.”

  “There still might,” said Auden, staring at the body. “There are religionists who can’t stand the idea of an atheist.” He looked at me.

  “I suppose,” Gage allowed. “So why’s Tyburn still here?”

  “Some sort of ritual thing, helping his friend’s spirit move on. Thought it was polite to let him stay, seeing he’s a city official and Czernoff was a close friend. He promised to stay out of our way, and he did.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” I said. “We could have contacted the dead man’s spirit and had the best witness of all. If this guy has seen the victim’s soul off to the other side, he’s just made collecting evidence from the spirit impossible. Excuse me a minute.”

  I walked over to where the mournful-looking Allworlder sat. “Brother Tyburn,” I said, using the Allworlders’ title for their priests, and held out my hand. “Wolf am I, Walker of the Rails Between the Worlds. Twenty-three blessings of Soul-Are upon you and yours.”

  He responded with the customary Allworlder greeting as he shook my hand. “Never thirst, Railwalker. I am Thudisar Tyburn. What can I offer?”

  “Byer leave,” I said as I sat down next to him, “Share words with me. I understand Treasurer Czernoff was a friend of yours. My condolences.”

  “Thank you. Yes, Phillip was a close friend.” He glanced toward the body, and then quickly away, as if not wanting the sight of his friend’s remains to replace the mental image of the person he’d known. “A true man of the spirit, for all he professed disbelief in souls or godhead. In the sense of being a generous, caring person, he was more spiritual than many who wear the cloth of their own denomination. I’m sure you know what I mean; you have undoubtedly met such in your own travels.”

  “That I have. Forgive my intrusion on your grief. Investigator Auden tells us you were here seeing to your friend’s soul?”

  “That is true.” He gave a brief, rueful smile. “I imagine he was rather surprised to discover he had been wrong in his opinions about the existence of the soul.”

  “You imagine? You didn’t speak with him, then?”

  “Allworld priesthood does not train us in spirit travel, or speaking with the dead the way you Railwalkers do, but we have rites and rituals to help the soul pass on. I believe he has truly passed on now. I even took steps to be sure his shade dispersed.”

  That didn’t bode well. I suppressed the urge to strangle the bastard and kept my face carefully neutral. “If you did not speak with the soul of your friend, I suppose you didn’t learn anything about his killer?”

  “Oh...” He blanched. “Oh shit... I didn’t even think of that...” He looked at me, clearly flustered. “It was the Beast, surely...?” Recognition dawned in his eyes. “You... you have been asked to aid the guard in apprehending this killer? And you would have questioned Phillip’s spirit about it? Oh, my. I have obstructed your investigation, haven’t I? I am so very sorry, Railwalker Wolf. It never occurred to me. I was so concerned about Phillip’s transition, the health and well-being of his
soul, I never thought... My profoundest apologies.”

  It could have been that he was lying, that he was allied with the killer, but I doubted it. My sense of when someone was lying wasn’t infallible, but it was pretty good. I thought it more likely he was a well-intentioned blunderer. Either way, it wouldn’t achieve anything to let on how angry I was. We could possibly have sewn this thing up then and there, if it hadn’t been for his meddling. Instead of shaking him until his teeth rattled, I again expressed my condolences. This man would bear watching, but I wasn’t about to jump him to the top of the suspect list, at least not yet. I walked back to where Gage, Auden, and my partners stood.

  “This Tyburn,” I asked Gage. “Who is he?”

  “He’s the head of the city’s technology bureau,” Gage told me.

  “And an Allworld Priest? He have a temple here?”

  “He did at one time. I think he just assists there now. Allworlders don’t pay their clergy, so they all hold down regular jobs as well.” I had known that, but most of the Allworld priests I’d known had part-time jobs, or did consulting work. Allworlders tended to work well with technology, especially higher tech like computers and communications. Not many of them held full-time positions as prestigious as a city tech officer. I explained briefly what I’d learned from Tyburn.

  “Stupid dick,” said Morgan. I frowned at her. She grimaced, but said nothing more.

  “We’ll have to deal with what we’ve got.” I took in both Gage and Auden with a look. “But I’d keep an eye on Tyburn, if I were you. I don’t think he was lying, but you never know. He might have had a reason for sending his friend off so quickly.”

  Gage nodded, and Auden looked speculatively in Tyburn’s direction. Gage sighed.

  “Well,” he said, “our forensics people are nearly done here.” He looked at Auden for confirmation, and the investigator nodded. “Unless there’s something else you lot think you can learn from this location, I’d like to get the cleanup crew working. Roth did say he’d like this site cleared up as soon as possible. I can have one of my men show you to your accommodations.”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Since we can’t consult the spirit of the late Phillip Czernoff, we should try our luck with the next to last victim, and as soon as possible. I’d appreciate it if you could take us to the site of Chief Adams’s murder.”

  “That would be our wardroom.”

  I had expected the City Guard wardroom to be a bland, institutional gray, with a dribble of ancient coffee slowly burning to carbon on a hot plate, a deck of cards on a metal table, and not much else. All three of us stopped dead as we entered the place, which looked almost like a small apartment. There was a kitchenette with a large table that could have served as a conference table as easily as a dinner table, with a speakerphone in the center of it. The lounge area held a couch and chairs, television and DV player. Calendar, cork board, and duty roster hung on the near wall, one picture hung on another, a view of the bay by Euri Pappas, a sergeant who was also a weekend artist. There were none of the motivational posters you saw in other guard wardrooms. I walked about, surveying the room. Rok actually almost smiled as he looked around.

  “Nice,” he said quietly, nodding.

  “And empty,” I said. Late on a week night, the wardroom would normally be fairly quiet. Tonight it was deserted.

  “Since the Chief’s murder, a lot of the guard have been finding other places to spend their break time,” said Gage. That made sense. Once forensics had finished, the place had been cleaned up, but you couldn’t clean the memories of what had happened there out of the mind.

  Gage stood back and watched silently as we set about our tasks. I set up a small brazier in the center of the room, loaded it with pieces of charcoal, and lit them. I took out several small packets of herbs, which I placed beside the brazier, along with the blood samples we’d collected from the evidence room, and the slip of paper torn from the bottom of a day roster with Adams’s signature on it.

  Morgan approached the wall phone, then glanced around the room. She noticed the phone on the table. “Speakerphone,” she said. “Score!”

  She unplugged the speakerphone and, producing a screwdriver from her pack, removed the casing to expose its inner works. She removed the phone cord and replaced it with a short cord with the wires of the far end exposed. These she attached to a small battery.

  Rok looked quickly through the cabinets in the kitchenette, found a bowl, and filled it with water from the sink. Into the water he emptied a packet of graveyard dust. He took out a small rectangle of metal, about the size and shape of a stick of gum, placed it in the water, and muttered quietly over it. He left the metal piece in the bowl and went around the room, unplugging electrical devices—toaster, microwave, television.

  Gage was watching me as I stood back, waiting for the charcoal to catch. “If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly are you doing?” he asked.

  “We’re going to try and contact the shade of your murdered chief.”

  Of all the murder victims, Guard Chief Adams was not only among the most recent, but was also the one most likely to be able to give us useful information. I had little doubt that even as he died, some part of the old chief’s mind would have been recording all the relevant information—his attacker’s height, weight, eye color, distinguishing marks, all the little details a good investigator registered automatically.

  “You think he’s still here?” asked Gage. “I mean, yeah, the men don’t hang out here much these days, but I haven’t heard rumors of mysterious cold spots, or voices, or shadowy figures or anything.”

  “Uncomfortable with this, Chief?” I asked.

  “Not afraid of ghosts, and certainly not the ghost of Chief Adams.” Adams had apparently been a mentor to Gage. “In fact, the idea of the old chief still being around in some sense, watching over the guard, is kind of cool.” He thought for a moment. “But I’m not so sure I like the idea of his being stuck here. Once you’re done, you’ll send him on his way, right? To the other side, or whatever you call it?”

  “Probably he’s already gone,” I told him. “Ghosts aren’t souls, anyway. When a person dies, the departing soul sheds a sort of psychic residue, like a shadow of itself; we call it a shade. Normally the shade just sort of disperses once the soul has moved on to the land of the dead. But there’s something about violent death that makes it possible for the shade to hold itself together for a while. That’s what people call a ghost.”

  Rok had returned to the kitchenette and taken the piece of metal from the bowl. He now handed it to Morgan. She inserted it carefully into the workings of the phone, and the mechanism gave a short tone. She nodded to me, and I crouched down and began adding the herbs to the coals in the brazier. As they caught fire and began to smolder a pungent smoke billowed up. Its smell was not repulsive, but it was not entirely pleasant, either.

  Morgan set up a small portable computer next to the speakerphone and booted it up. Rok had stepped back to a point beside Gage; he leaned against the wall, arms folded, watching me.

  “So,” Gage asked, “how do you...?”

  I held up a hand to forestall the question. Crouched down by the brazier, I opened the small plastic evidence bag and sifted some of the dried blood onto the piece of paper with Adams’s signature. I spoke the ritual formula quietly. I heard Gage whisper to Rok, “This will bring the Old Man’s shade?”

  “It’s a long shot,” Rok answered quietly. “Even if we connect with the shade, it may not be able to tell us anything useful. Shades ain’t exactly what you call conscious entities. They’re like the smell in the air after a fire—it ain’t the fire itself, or even the smoke; it’s just, like, a fading memory of the fire.”

  I looked over at Morgan, who nodded. “We’re good,” she said.

  I lit a pair of candles and Rok killed the lights.

  Gage looked at Rok, raised his eyebrows. “So it’s like a séance?” he asked. “Are we going to hold hands?”

&nbs
p; “Nah.” Rok laughed. “The more electrical stuff is working nearby, the more interference. So we unplug everything, turn out the lights.”

  “What about the computer?”

  “Low voltage, direct current.” Gage frowned, as if he didn’t see why that should make a difference. Rok didn’t elaborate.

  I carefully laid the blood-dusted paper on the coals. It didn’t flare up, as paper usually does; it too simply began to smolder and burn slowly, as if it were damp.

  “So why don’t you try to contact his actual soul? Wouldn’t his soul be more coherent?”

  “If he was stuck between, in one of the shamanic realms or in limbo, we might be able to find him and talk to him. But it looks like he’s moved on, y’know? Gone into the light, to the land of the dead.”

  “I thought Railwalkers could travel to the land of the dead.”

  “Nah. Every Railwalker goes there once, during their initiation. But you can’t ever go there a second time while you’re alive.”

  I stood up and stepped back from the brazier.

  “So how do you contact this shade?” Gage asked Rok.

  “We don’t,” I said. “We get him to contact us.”

  The speakerphone rang.

  Despite the number of times I’d done this sort of thing, at the ringing of the disconnected speakerphone, something fluttered in my diaphragm. No one said a word. We all froze, looking at the phone. I held up a hand. You always wait for the third ring in these cases. It rang a second time. One knock for chance, two coincidence, thrice is… There it was. I stepped to the table, leaned forward and hit the “connect” button on the speakerphone. With the volume turned all the way up, a static hiss filled the darkened room.