Fantastic Detectives

by Dean Wesley Smith

  “Do you know what your grandmother did for a living?” I asked.

  She looked up, a sudden smile lighting her face. “She was a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. I didn’t realize how awesome that was until later.”

  “It is awesome,” I said. “She told me stories…”

  Jessica’s smile was guarded, but hopeful. “Like what?”

  With Marilyn’s help, I told stories. She told them to me, I relayed them to Jessica.

  “I wish I could have known her,” Jessica said wistfully. “She sounds like a fascinating person.”

  Oh, how I wished I had the ability to let someone else see the ghosts I spent time with every damn day. I took it for granted, but some people really did want to talk to those who’d passed on.

  “She is—was,” I said. “You look a lot like her.”

  “I do?” She smiled, and the resemblance hit me even harder.

  “You know what’s weird,” she went on. “I…I feel like she’s here, right now, with us. It’s like you brought her with you, Nikki. For the first time in a long time, I feel like she’s watching me.”

  The first time in a long…say, what, now? “What do you mean?”

  “After she died, there were a few times when I felt like she was watching me. I had a dream, once, that she sat on the end of my bed—I swear I felt the foot of the bed depress under her weight—and when I woke up, for a brief second, I saw her.”

  “Really,” I said.

  She stared at her coffee. “I know, it sounds crazy.”

  “No. No, it doesn’t.” I didn’t so much make a decision as know, unequivocally, what I needed to do.

  Needed to do for both of us.

  “Come to the Roosevelt Hotel with me.”

  ***

  We walked the single block, dodging tourists, not speaking. I was grateful for the hot sun for about half a block, then I cursed it again. Marilyn had vanished; I assumed she’d gone back ahead of us, in the way that ghosts can do.

  Inside, I took Jessica through the stunning two-story lobby, with its 1920s Spanish Colonial columns and beamed ceiling painted with heraldic symbols. After the bustle outside, it was cool and dim, almost hushed like a church.

  The mirror sat at the end of a short hall, flanked by tall potted plants. Ficuses or something. Flora is not my forte.

  It was tall, with a dark wooden frame that swooped up at the top like wings. Ruining the glamorous effect was a stupid no smoking plaque on the wall in the space between the wings. On the wall to our left was an enormous white etching of real Marilyn’s face.

  We stood each to one side, our reflections not visible. But I could see Marilyn—our Marilyn—her hands clasped in front of her, her expression so hopeful it nearly broke my heart…but my heart had already been broken so many times, it almost felt like a step towards healing.

  I took a deep breath, and said to Jessica, “So, you know how they say that the ghost of Marilyn Monroe haunts this place? Well, that’s only partly correct….”

  Introduction to “All She Can Be”

  Karen L. Abrahamson returns to our pages with a story that takes place in her amazing Cartographer Universe. Karen has written many novels in a world where the landscape can change with a single magical thought. Some of the novels take place in the past, but Afterburn and last year’s Aftershock happen in the here-and-now.

  “All She Can Be” explores the origin of Karen’s powerful protagonist, Vallon Drake, and her first assignment to the American Geological Survey, the organization charged with making sure the maps—and the landscape—remain stable.

  All She Can Be

  Karen L. Abrahamson

  The midnight air in the Seattle control room of the American Geological Survey headquarters carried the ozone scent of heated machinery and the expectant low-pitched hum of computers. The vibration tingled up Vallon Drake’s legs and right into her core as if in recognition that she was finally, completely part of the great machine that was the AGS. Her father’s workplace before her. The place she had trained for all her years in the Academy. The place she’d finally be at home, accepted, believed in for her talents. The place she’d dressed for in the soft cream-colored cashmere turtleneck and the crisp navy dress pants that right now felt as foreign as a ballerina’s tutu or an evening gown.

  But she was here. If she had a tail, she’d wag it.

  The cavernous room stood about fifty feet across, built on two levels with the outside of the room holding efficient-but-boring-looking desks with the special computers that could read the landscape Changes the AGS was concerned with. So not where she wanted to spend her time. Give her the field work, the crime of Change. That was where she’d shine, but the desk agents were a necessary part of the work. The desk agents monitored a small piece of the landscape through sensory feeds that fed into the computer and also directly into the mysterious part of the agent’s brain that no one had quite located, but that allowed the Gifted agent to Change the landscape.

  And Change it back again.

  Vallon stood behind her training officer’s broad back, fussing with the restrictive sweater collar and inhaling the elixir of ether and ozone with a hint of lightning, unfortunately masked by too-strong men’s cologne. It formed an oversweet aura around the presence of one Dick Manley, the training officer to whom she’d been assigned.

  And he was a Dick alright, barely taller than her five foot seven and old enough to be her father—a fact he’d commented on during his oh-so condescending lecture about the purpose of the AGS—’we’re mandated to preserve the United States from foreign and domestic attacks that Change the landscape’—as if she hadn’t had that pounded into her brain every year she was in training. But oh no, he’d smirked and spouted off while his gaze had raked her up and down and apparently got stuck right where her breasts were. Yup. Dick. Capital D. Manley. And she had to work with him.

  Great.

  Only thing keeping her from showing just what she could do to an idiot like him were triple-cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die promises over and over again to her mentor and father figure Landon Snow, that she would —not cause a problem on the job like she had at school.

  And she meant it. She did. Because working at the AGS meant she could finally, finally use her Gift. Just like she’d always hoped to. Just like her Dad had. In his memory, she’d make him proud even if it killed her.

  Beneath her feet the Seattle landscape was alive. The earth shifted as it slumbered, the Pacific Northwest tectonic plates somnolent—for the moment. The flowing heat of the ley-lines laced like capillaries under the soil, like a lover’s pulse points, the rose scent like a feast after unending hunger. She—reached—down for the rich ether and it flowed upwards from the soil and filled her like a fizzing burst of almost-happiness. She couldn’t help the way the corners of her lips quirked up.

  When she opened her eyes the Dickster was eyeing her like a cat eyed a bird, tail swishing with anticipation. As if she’d let him touch her. But the sweet heat of the power burbled and chuckled and she stepped up into the cologne miasma as ol’ Dick nattered to familiarize her with the workings of the AGS desks.

  Yes, she’d have to learn how to work them, but not for long. They’d see where she was better suited.

  A choked cry broke her concentration on the Dickster’s words and everyone whirled around. The room hushed.

  If the desk agents around the room’s periphery were the worker bees of the AGS, the queen bee hung in the room’s heart. A single fiberglass compartment shaped like a carnival octopus car hung elevated on a stanchion like the head of a dragonfly and was controlled by the agent who rode it. The desk, for it was The Desk, swooped over a technological marvel of a map almost twenty-five feet across that filled a pit in the center of the room. It was a thin membrane of a surface that rippled and changed to fit the landscape like the end of a dream you could not quite remember.

  At the moment the shapes of Seattle, the peaks of Mounts Rainier and Baker, the Olympic Mount
ains all sank. The Puget Sound lifted, the skyscraper’s fell to be replaced by an undulating flattened landscape with a spreading rope of ox-bowed dark green-blue water in the center. Something had drawn The Desk’s attention away from Seattle.

  She could have heard a pin drop except for Manley’s mouth-breathing and the blood pulsing through her ears. Her ears popped and then there came a deep-seated drawing down through her body and out through the floor like a thick milkshake drawn through a too-small straw from Vallon to the earth, to—somewhere—.

  Someone was using the Gift and in a big way.

  She shuddered and studied the landscape on the delicate membrane.

  “Where is it?” she asked.

  The configuration looked familiar, but not something she could place as she followed the tug of power eastward under the mountains.

  “Red River. Again.” Dick muttered. “Damn thing floods every year and every year there’s some yabo with enough Gift to cause small Changes, but Homeland Security won’t let us Change things permanently to stop the floods.”

  For once he didn’t look like he was trying to molest her with his eyes. In the muted silence of the room, the map’s river valley rippled and changed, the water bulged northward as the landscape on the map sank into a huge, new great lake that straddled the US/Canada border. A flashing red light on the map illuminated Grand Forks, North Dakota and the room reeked with the scent of—apples, like the pies Landon sometimes made.

  “Fuck,” Dick muttered. “There we go. Canadians are going to have a cow. International incident if The Desk doesn’t move fast. Watch what happens.”

  The dragonfly desk hummed and hovered and the scent of lightning increased. The desk shifted lower and the female face of the agent became a pale moon as she bent over her monitor. She was older, a mom figure even, and her lips moved as if she was muttering under her breath as the florescent lights caught the sweat forming on her upper lip. Her fingers flew across the console of her desk. The small hairs prickled on Vallon’s arms at the use of power.

  The Desk Agent tried to Change the landscape back, to stop whoever tried to cause an incident between America and its northern neighbor.

  But the map membrane just rippled like a soft wind ran across its surface, leaving behind the huge new lake that should never have existed.

  Hushed whispers ran through the watching agents and trainees.

  Manley just shook his brown head. “Fuck me. What the hell’s going on? Another one we can’t Change from here. I wonder what poor slob’s going to have to go deal with it on the ground.”

  April in North Dakota. Oh. My. God.

  Of course it had to be the two of them.

  ***

  Grand Forks, North Dakota, when the last of the ice was still in the ground and the rivers ran swift and deep and spreading or at least they had been before the Change. The entire valley along the Red River had been on flood alert every year. The last major flood had been in 2009 caused by 70 and 80 degree weather and soil that was still frozen leaving the water nowhere to go. There’d been unseasonably warm weather this year, too, before the winter bluster had come back. Of course the creation of the lake had erased the potential for flood. But regardless of the possibility of flood or the lack thereof, April in North Dakota was exactly the kind of place you didn’t want to be when you could be in Seattle with the rhododendrons and magnolias in bloom. Vallon stood beside Dick Manley in the last slurpy-mass of snow at the side of Sixth Street. She tried to stop shivering. She tried to stop the quiver of excitement that ran right through her. It would be her first sanctioned Change as part of the AGS. She could show what she could do and make Landon proud.

  “So? Are we going to do this?” She couldn’t help herself even though she didn’t want to show the Dick just how eager she was. The way he rolled his eyes, that cat was out of the bag. He could probably smell her eagerness on her.

  The Change back didn’t have to take long. They just needed to be close enough to take back control of the landscape from whomever had done this and stop them from doing it again.

  Manley just motioned her to silence, his movement releasing an assault of floral cologne and his sour scent of pesto on the wind.

  That was the thing about Grand Forks that she’d probably always remember. Wind. It crawled under the high collar of her jacket and lifted her blonde hair to sting her ears. On the drive in from the airport the chill air of the car had cut right through her clothing and down to the bone. But someone had to do this and it might as well be her and the Dick.

  That was the thing with the Gift. A few had it full blown like Vallon and the other Agents of the fledgling AGS. But across the population there were a heck of a lot more that had it a little bit and they had the potential to cause unsanctioned Change. They, and foreign Gifted, were the ones the AGS guarded against: the dreamer who placed a mountain in his back yard. The businessman who suddenly took over the neighboring business lot. The grasping man who planted a swimming pool in his back yard and the desperate homeless who created a house where nothing stood before. Those were the transgressors of a secret statute that said that the continental United States landscape would remain the same, untrammeled and untampered with for the sake of the greater part of the unGifted population whose memories shifted to meet whatever new reality the Gifted caused. But the result had been the terrible decision not to allow the AGS to increase the New Orleans levees or protect the shoreline of Sandy Hook.

  Instead of preventing the damage, they found themselves here: two fully trained Agents changing back what never should have been needed in the first place. The AGS and their Canadian counterpart—if there was one—could have fixed the Red River flood so easily.

  But hindsight was always 20/20.

  Dick stood in the wind, his nostril’s flaring, behind him a lone crow fought the wind in stark black against the blue bowl of sky. Vallon copied his stance and opened herself. The world became a gray haze filled with flickering matchlights for the winter-slumbering trees, the candlelight flames of the ungifted. Slowly she turreted, matching the Dickster’s movements.

  “There,” she said, before he could. A single bonfire flare burned in the landscape. Far more Gifted than she expected in a non-AGS Agent.

  She opened her eyes and saw surprised admiration wiped away by disapproval on Dick Manley’s face. “You’re supposed to follow my lead, not jump the gun.”

  But she hadn’t jumped the gun, she’d simply been faster.

  They faced a faded single-story blue house that hunkered against the wind like a rock standing against erosion. Graying shutters around the windows hadn’t seen white for years.

  He glanced down at her. “Now stay behind me and watch and learn.”

  Oh yeah. Right. Let him be the big man, but she followed obediently behind him.

  At the end of the driveway sat a battered metal mailbox with chipped uneven red lettering. Carpenter, it read. A sad looking tree stood barren in the house’s chain-link fenced front yard that was still largely covered in yellowed, ice-clotted snow. A blue-heeler type dog came yapping and threw itself at the fence as Dick slipped-slid up the driveway to the front door in his Seattle shoes.

  Ring. Ring. The doorbell buzzed in the house and she stood there bouncing from foot to foot to stay warm as the sunlight bounced off the snow and almost blinded her.

  The house gave off the hollow sound of footfall and then the door pulled open. A small man stood there. He was about five foot five, with a narrow chin and narrower chest if that was possible. The whole person gave the impression of narrow. Between the eyes. Head shaped narrow with a bulge above. Long narrow fingers round the edge of the door and he looked from Dick to Vallon for a moment. The aura of the Gift flickered around him and he oozed the familiar scent of apples.

  “Mr. Carpenter?” Dick asked.

  A flicker of recognition passed across the man’s face. Then he tried to slam the door.

  Dick was too fast. He threw shoulder into the wood and
the two men crashed inside. Vallon swiftly followed and closed the door gently behind them as ol’ Dick wrestled the man on the floor.

  Vallon—reached— into the earth for the ley-lines and sent a bolt of energy up through the floor. It singed the Dickster’s hair and caught Carpenter right in the chest. He went down in a heap.

  The house filled with silence, the scent of urine—Carpenter had pee’d himself—and Dick’s rapid breath.

  “What? The fuck? Was that?” he demanded as he righted himself and hauled himself up off the floor, anger like a pungent tar on the air.

  “I—you looked like you needed help. I just did something I learned in school,” she said. But it wasn’t exactly school. It was more like the unsanctioned practicing she’d done outside the school’s careful monitoring. The kind that always got her in trouble. Shit.

  “Not on any curriculum I ever saw,” he grumbled as he rubbed the bright red burn mark forming on his forehead.

  She swallowed. This so wasn’t what she wanted to happen. Manley turned his back on her and half dragged the moaning Carpenter across the shit-brown carpet towards the door.

  Carpenter groaned and Vallon looked around.

  A hallway ran down the center of the sad little house. Worn brown shag carpet that gave off a dog-piss scent, a room off to one side that had a single sunken-seat couch and flat screen TV, the room on the other side with a worn table and chairs heaped with what looked like laundry. A tired kind of place as if the whole thing could just collapse of age tomorrow.

  “Go bring the car around,” Dick Manley ordered.

  “But I thought we were going to….”

  “Go bring the car.” Spoken through clenched teeth. “Don’t you ever do any damn thing like that again.” His little brown pig gaze drilled into her.

  As if she’d done something wrong. As if she’d done something to wreck the case. Damn guy wasn’t even going to give her a chance. “Fine,” she said. “I’m going. Whatever.”