Pack of Lies [2]

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “You’re late.” Nifty stood by the coffeemaker, impatiently waiting for it to finish brewing. He looked as dapper as always, but there were traces of dampness at the hem of his chinos that made me think he hadn’t been there all that long, either.

  I shook off my umbrella and shoved it into the closet with my jacket, running fingers through my hair to assess the damage done by the rain and wind. “I know. Sick-passenger delay. We got our marching orders?”

  “Not yet. Stosser wanted everyone to show up before we started. Don’t worry, you’re not that late. Nick’s last man in, today.”

  “We should start a pool.” Actually, we shouldn’t. I might not lose, but I’d never win, either.

  “Is the coffee ready yet?” Pietr came in from the back offices, mug in hand. “Hey,” he said to me, casual and calm as he ever was.

  “Hey,” I said back. “Not yet, based on the way the big man over there’s lurking.”

  “Damn. My coffeemaker died last night—totally shorted out.”

  Current-flare during sex could do that, even low-vulnerability tech like coffeemakers and alarm clocks. If he was trying to make me blush, he was going to have to work harder than that. But he just dropped the comment into the conversation and went on, like there was no ulterior motive at all. A part of me I hadn’t been aware was tense, relaxed. Copacetic.

  Nick came in just as the coffeemaker made the all-clear beep. His hair was plastered wetly to his forehead, and his mood was thunderous even at a distance. Great. What now?

  “Told you not to buy that cheap umbrella,” Pietr said, and disappeared back into the office. Nick made a face, and I relaxed, making a note to buy him a decent rain hat, something really dorky. Coffee properly doctored, I followed Pietr’s tracks, with Nifty and Nick bringing up the slightly damp rear, pun totally intended.

  “Good morning, everyone,” Stosser said. He was wearing another of his funky, trying-to-be-crunchy-granola outfits today. That always freaked me out, because flannel and denim so didn’t work on him; he’d been born to the bespoke-suit brigade, same as J. Venec was standing by the single window, holding the blinds away with one hand to look out onto the street below. Or maybe he was checking to see if it was still raining. He looked over when Stosser spoke, and did a weird kind of almost-invisible double take that I felt more than saw.

  Huh. And uh-oh.

  I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to a certain distinctly feminine pleasure at the fact that I knew that Venec knew something had changed, but at the same time part of me just wanted it all to get shoved under the table—or better yet, out the window. This was part of why I hadn’t planned on fishing off the company pier, damn it. I’m an uncomplicated girl: work is work and sex is sex and the two shouldn’t get tangled, ever. The fact that I had only myself to hold responsible didn’t help, either.

  Not that it was any of Benjamin Venec’s business. He was my boss, not my keeper, no matter what kind of wonky current had sizzled between us.

  I took the seat next to Sharon, who was busy jotting something in her notebook. I leaned over to read, trying to distract myself, and she raised her arm, warning me away. I took the hint and moved back, watching everyone else take their seats. Venec stayed by the window, exuding a sort of silent-brute brooding force that was only partially playacting. All right, he was going to be Tough Dog today, and Stosser was going to be Guide Dog.

  “Mash informs me that the girl will be staying with him for the duration. She is traumatized and shaky, and he strongly suggests that we not approach her further.” Ian’s face twisted a little at that, and I suspected that Mash had used stronger words in his suggestion. From what I’d heard and seen, Mash didn’t have much patience with things like tact or diplomacy, and probably hadn’t given Ian more than three syllables before slamming the door in his face, physically and metaphorically.

  “So that avenue of investigation’s shut down,” Sharon said. Her voice sounded resigned, making me think she’d been privy to that bit of news already.

  “I don’t think we were going to get much more from her anyway,” I said. “Whatever else happened, she was seriously scared about those threats, and now? The only one who could get her to talk would be the ki-rin, and it won’t associate with her anymore.” Knowing why it was acting that way—that it didn’t really have a choice—didn’t make me any less angry.

  “The ki-rin isn’t associating with or talking to anyone,” Ian said. “My source says that it’s claimed the privilege of extreme age, and refused to speak to anyone save his own kind.”

  I’d been right, then: the ki-rin was old. The Asian cultures had more respect for that than we did, even now. Combine age and stress and grief, and the ki-rin might as well be on another planet, for all the access we’d get.

  “Great,” Nick said, echoing my own thoughts. “It would take an act of god to get near it, now, and not even Stosser’s got god in his back pocket.” He looked sideways at the boss. “Do you?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Nor, despite Ben’s best efforts, do we have access to the perp, who has been released from the hospital and will not be charged with anything, as the girl refuses to press charges and the ki-rin is legally incapable of doing so.”

  “And the site’s dead,” Sharon said, confirming my earlier thoughts. “I stopped by on the way in, and…” She shook her head. “Clean as washed slate.”

  “So what the hell are we supposed to do, just close the file and demand our payment?” Nifty sounded pissed off.

  “We can’t,” I said. “Ian was right, earlier. This isn’t about who hired us, or why. It’s about the truth. It’s about us being put on the job, and not stopping until we know, for certain, what happened.”

  “Something bad happened there,” Sharon said, adding her vote to the tally. “A girl was attacked and a guy was killed and we still don’t know who was telling the truth and who was lying about what happened. We can’t just walk away and say it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if the check clears or not—I can’t just leave it that way.”

  I cared a lot about if the check cleared or not, but Sharon was dead-on, otherwise. We’d been hired to determine what had happened—the Council might be willing to let things rest, but that wasn’t the PUPI way. We closed the case, not just for our own peace of mind, but for the victims, too. Although I was starting to wonder just who the victims were, here….

  “It’s worse than that,” Venec said, and I got the feeling he was responding to my thoughts as much as Sharon’s words. “If it were just human against human we could maybe let it ride. But the fatae are involved, and now the antifatae movement is involved—or at least someone holding those views is threatening the victim. If we back off now, it will look as though the Council told us to—that the Council was hand-in-glove with whoever threatened the girl, and silenced us, too. We can’t afford to let it go. This is a match, people, and the entire city is tinder.”

  That fell like it had a real, solid weight, and Stosser used the moment after to push his chair away from the table and stand up. “Things happen at a time for a purpose,” he said, and I guessed that was as much of an apology for doubting him as Venec was ever going to get. “The convergence of this case and Ben’s investigations, and our involvement in both, however glancingly, isn’t coincidence. We are meant to be involved—and to act. So do so. Ben, get them moving, and keep me updated.”

  Nifty leaned back to say something to Pietr and Nick, while Sharon flipped open her notebook again and scribbled a new note in it, then looked at Nifty, her expression pure challenge. Fighting off Mercy’s attackers had put the ginger back, and she wanted lead. The question was, did Nifty want it just as bad, or would he give way? It was always tough to tell with him.

  “Where are you off to?” Venec asked, leaning forward across the table toward his partner. His voice lowered a bit, but if he’d really wanted to keep it private he’d have pinged, so I felt no shame in listening in.

  Ian hesitated, only half a second, but Vene
c felt it, and therefore so did I. Boss man was avoiding something. “Oil on water,” Ian said finally. “Some local wire-wits tried to make a fuss over our involvement, claiming we were interfering with the natural order of magic, get us shut down. The usual crap. I have to give our dog-and-pony show again, make nice with the villagers.”

  The same claim his sister had made. No wonder he didn’t want to bring it up. “Better you than me” was all Venec said, and I could feel his desire to be nowhere near the political pow-wowing as though it were my own emotion. All right, that was going to get annoying, fast. I took a deep breath, grounded myself, and rebuilt the wall between us. At some point I’d have to figure out how to make it more pliable, to let him reach me in case of an emergency. But for now, in the same room, it would have to do.

  “Okay, puppies,” Venec said, clapping his hands once to get everyone’s attention as Stosser slipped out the conference room door. “Be brilliant. Find a way to wring new facts from the evidence, and answer the million-dollar question—who is lying?”

  “That’s not the question,” Sharon said. “Bonnie was right, when this all started. The question is…can everyone be telling the truth? Because they all are, as far as we can tell. That’s the problem.”

  “So someone’s lying well,” Nick said.

  Sharon shook her head, stubborn. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Truth’s Sharon’s gig,” Nifty said, handing over the lead gracefully. “Let’s go with that. Short of psychosis, which one of us probably would have picked up, how and why can you believe a lie is the truth?”

  “Love and religion,” Pietr said promptly.

  “Wise-ass.”

  “No, he’s right,” I said. “Not religion, exactly, but faith.” My thoughts earlier, when I was on the site, attached themselves to Nifty’s words, illuminating them in my brain so I could find the edges of the puzzle and fit them together. I thought about Mercy’s expression, the desolation in her eyes, and the fear in her voice not at what might happen to her, but for what already had. Her life had been destroyed…but she still loved the ki-rin. Still had faith in it. Why?

  “For love and faith, people can convince themselves of almost anything,” Sharon said in agreement.

  “And money,” Venec said.

  “And money. But the ki-rin’s got money, and attacking Mercy wouldn’t bring any to our perps, so I can’t see that being a cause. So…love?”

  “Mercy loves the ki-rin,” I said. “Without a doubt. Not human-to-human love, and not a girl-and-her-pony love, either.” I remembered the smeared lipstick, the attempt to put herself back together, when everything inside was shattered. “Something different, but real.”

  Nifty asked the next question. “Did it love her? I mean, it dumped her pretty fast….”

  “It didn’t have a choice,” Sharon said. “She wasn’t pure anymore, by its rules; even though there was no actual rape, she had been tainted.” Her voice didn’t show any emotion but I could see what she thought of that in her face. “It has to follow its nature. I’m betting there’s something in its makeup, genetic or magical, that requires it adhere to the rules, the way mers are stuck in tidal waters, and brownies are tied to specific buildings.”

  “It…was fond of her,” I said, remembering the images I’d seen, still putting them all together with what we’d learned, even as my coworkers were doing the same. “I don’t know if it feels love the way we do—love isn’t restful—but…it was fond of her. It wouldn’t have chosen her, otherwise.”

  “I think it’s safe to say that she didn’t love the guys who attacked her…she didn’t know either one of them, far as the dossier says.” Venec tapped the folder on the table in front of us. We all had copies, but the original stayed in the office at all times, to make sure you could check something at any time, and it was the most updated version. “No connection, no contact… Nothing to indicate they’d ever even been at the same party at the same time. No love, no faith, no money. Not even a way to claim hate as the opposite of love, since neither of our perps, for all their other flaws, had ever come up with antifatae reputations. Two separate pairs, meeting by purest coincidence.”

  “Huh.”

  We all looked at Nick.

  “What?” Sharon asked.

  “Nothing. No. I don’t know.” I could practically see his own pieces slotting together behind his eyes, and wondered if he had something I was missing. “Gimme a minute.” He got up and left the room before anyone could ask him another question, like he was afraid one more word would ruin whatever he was building.

  “Right.” Sharon took point. “Recap.” She stared at the chalkboard wall, where the colored lines mocked us, refusing to explain themselves at all. “All the physical evidence is inconclusive or unavailable, the eyewitness reports contradict, and we’re running out of time before somebody does something stupid, according to Ben.”

  That sounded, depressingly, about right.

  “Nifty, you’re thinking everyone’s got something to hide?” Sharon asked.

  “Professional cynic, that’s me. Yeah. I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t hedging their bets, somehow. But you’re pretty sure the people you talked to aren’t lying?”

  “Ninety percent sure. Maybe even ninety-five.” She hummed a little in frustration, trying to explain it to us. “There’s a feeling people have around them when they’re telling the truth, this rock-steady grounding, but it’s rare. Damned rare. Most people, if they were even slightly unsure of their truth, waver a little. Human self-doubt.”

  “So you think this certainty’s unnatural?” Venec asked.

  “I interviewed a pure-P psychotic once as part of a deposition, and he had that same grounding no matter what crap he was spouting. It’s usually a warning sign.”

  “You could have made a fortune as a professional witness evaluator,” I said in awe.

  “I don’t make money off my skills,” Sharon said, all Miss Prim again suddenly, and then realized what she’d said, and laughed. “You know what I mean. Not that way. That would have been…unethical.”

  Straight shooter: that was our Sharon.

  Nick came back in, carrying a case about the size of a notebook, and put it on the table at the far end from the rest of us.

  “Are you sure that’s smart?” Venec asked him, worried.

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine. We rigged this one special. The battery’s warded seven ways from Sunday, and up and down, too.”

  “Holy shit, that’s a computer?” I was distracted by the shiny, I admit it. Laptops fascinated me. Desktops you could ground and protect easier, but every Talent I’d heard of who used a laptop singed it within a week. Knowing I couldn’t use one without killing it the first time I forgot and pulled current nearby didn’t keep me from wanting one, though. It was so cute!

  “Jesus, man,” Nifty said. “I have paperbacks larger than that thing.”

  “Talent are always way behind the tech curve,” Nick said, flipping the lid up and waiting for it to power up. “They’re called netbooks, people. Cheaper, lower powered, fewer bits and pieces to get whacked by current, but just as useful as a larger machine. They’re pretty damn durable, but try not to have a spike for the next half hour, okay, everyone?”

  I could see why Venec was worried: mixing current and tech was, well, risky, even for someone like Nick. But if he wanted to work in here, with the risks… I guess I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the brainstorming, either.

  “All right, back to work,” Venec said, herding us into a tighter group at the near end of the table. “Ignore Boy Wonder over there and focus on the problem. I think we’re on the right track, what Sharon and Bonnie were saying. There was a lot of powerful belief on the site, enough to influence the bystanders. What depends on being believed to be true? Religion and politics…I think we can rule those out. Love seems to be an impasse right now. So we’re back to money?”

  “How? Seriously—unless you’re going to claim that someone took out a sexual
hit on Mercy, or hired Mercy to entrap those guys…” My voice trailed off. I couldn’t imagine reasons to support either scenario, and from the expressions on the rest of the pack, neither could they.

  “I still think hate’s a pretty good reason. I mean, the two guys knew each other, maybe…” Nifty’s voice trailed off the same way mine had. “But they didn’t know each other more than a few weeks, and the survivor was, by all his friends’ accounts, fascinated with his new badboy buddy.”

  “What if the wildest theory’s right,” I said, slowly. “What if it was all part of the antifatae group, I mean, from the start? And they jumped her for associating with a ki-rin, the way white girls used to get attacked for dating black guys?”

  “They did?” Pietr looked bewildered.

  Nifty nodded, although I wasn’t sure if he was responding to my comment, or the question. “Yeah. Yeah, maybe. That could work. Damn. I hope not, because there won’t be a chance of keeping a lid on this, then.”

  I had the passing thought that we could bury it, but no, Nifty was right. That wasn’t what we did, and anyway, once you dug something up, it tended to stay up.

  Sharon picked up the thread. “Bonnie, do you think that could account for the blackness you felt? Hatred? Something so nasty it can’t be burned clear even by current?”

  I thought about it, trying to remember the icky, sticky feel of what I’d sensed.

  “No. Hatred’s clearer than that, not sticky and…greasy. Grimy.”

  “Madness,” Venec said, maybe catching one of the tendrils of my memories, because he shuddered a little, so slightly I was probably the only one to notice. “You felt madness.”

  “Yeah.” The bits clicked into place once I had the word to identify them. “Yeah. Rage and fear and scared and funny, all at the same time. Ugh.” I was the one to shudder then, and Venec’s hand reached out to touch mine, almost like he wasn’t aware of what he was doing. Flesh-to-flesh, and the shudder left me. Just like that: I was grounded and steady again.