by Ryk E. Spoor
“So how did your interview with Sky go?”
“Excellently well,” he replied, offering me a refill on the champagne, which I declined. “Your casual evaluation was, as far as it went, accurate. Mr. Hashima is a true artist, a dedicated one, and highly talented in several ways. I will have no qualms about supporting him fully. He is naturally a bit cautious—I do seem to him to be a bit too good to be true—but I am sure that we shall get past this minor difficulty.”
I sipped, appreciating the unique taste that a real champagne offers. “And the antiquities?”
Verne grinned, a warm smile that lit the room. “As usual, you and Morgan are right. I shall be donating, or selling, many of the items in question to people who will both appreciate them and be willing to place them on proper display. Some discreet inquiries have already elicited several interested responses, and I expect several archaeologists to visit in a few weeks in order to authenticate, insofar as is possible, the artifacts and prepare a preliminary assessment. I have already decided to send Akhenaten, at least, directly to Egypt. Let the Sun Pharaoh return to his home.” He raised his own red-glinting glass in salute. “My thanks, Jason, again. You have indeed found something that I shall enjoy doing, something which will contribute to the world as well. And you have given me your friendship, which I value perhaps even more.”
I managed, I think, to keep from blushing, something I tend to do when praised extravagantly. “It was my pleasure, really. Well, aside from being kidnapped, but that wasn’t completely in your control. I just hope Carmichael has bad dreams about you whenever he goes to sleep.”
“I assure you, your hope will be more than adequately fulfilled, Jason,” Verne said, with the expression of someone with a small secret.
“Why?”
“As I implied, I was quite capable of hearing his thoughts when I extorted certain promises from him, and discovered one quite serendipitous fact.” He paused for me to urge him to finish, and then said, “Many people are afraid of various things, real and otherwise.
“It turns out that Mr. Carmichael’s greatest and most secret fear . . . is vampires.”
I laughed out loud. “Well, I’ll drink to that!”
CHAPTER 17
Laughing Assassin
I really don’t like this one.
I’d done plenty of work for the police, and other people. I may not have been very old, but I’d already done everything from enhance photos and research prior art on patents to, well, finding out that vampires are real. Sometimes you get feelings about things, and right now, I had a very strong, very bad feeling about the job I was doing for Xavier Ross.
Not that I felt there was anything wrong with doing the job; I didn’t think there was anything shady about the kid himself. But I was finding way too many questions for a case that had been closed by police. Way too many. Oh, a lot of them were circumstantial, but the fact was that most good cops pay attention to stuff like that, and this case had been closed up so quick and neat . . .
The door chimed as someone came through, and I looked up from my monitor. Damn. Well, I knew he was coming soon. “Hello, Mr. Ross. Please, sit down.”
Xavier looked hopeful. “Did you . . .”
“I found some things, yes.” I picked up a file and handed it to him.
“For a fairly well-known figure, your brother was good at losing people. He turned out to be pretty hard to track. The bill for this is not going to be cheap.”
He was already glancing through the file. “I know. Will seven thousand dollars cut it?”
That’s about what I’d charge the cops, but . . . he’s serious. “I’d find that acceptable, perhaps overgenerous, but Mr. Ross, you are a minor. I’m starting to get very very uncomfortable with this. I find it extremely hard to believe that your mother would approve of your spending ten thousand dollars on an investigation that may not even go anywhere.”
“Look,” he said, “can we discuss that afterward? I’d really like to hear what you found.”
I sighed. “Okay. But I’m not forgetting this subject.” I turned to the monitor. “I started trying to trace his movements around the time that we first found indications that his records had been altered. At that point he was working on an article for Time on the nightclub revival in New York City.
“Now, that assignment finished up a little before Christmas; he came back up here for the holidays but then went back to New York for several days. He got an assignment that flew him out to Costa Rica, but as soon as that was done he came back to New York and again spent several days there before he came up to visit you.”
Xavier looked up, startled. “But . . . I remember him saying he’d flown straight back from Costa Rica.”
“Not unless he was letting someone use his ID and credit cards, he didn’t.”
“Wait . . . you’re not the police, how could you . . . ?”
“Let’s say that while what I did is technically probably legal, I don’t want to discuss the details and the police would take a very dim view of it.” I couldn’t get direct access to such information without police authority, but there were indirect methods to get people to give you that information.
“All right,” the boy said, settling back into his chair. “I didn’t want you to do anything to get yourself in trouble.”
I shrugged. “I’m not in trouble. Not now, anyway. If you talk about this to too many people, I might be, so it’s up to you whether I’m in trouble.”
“Hey, I won’t talk about this.”
“Okay. Your brother then went to the West Coast and got a couple of assignments in the Los Angeles vicinity. Note that the order there is important. He’d already flown to Los Angeles when National Geographic asked him to do a photo article on modern filmmaking and another for current earthquake research at the universities.”
“So . . . he wanted to go to Los Angeles and found jobs to keep himself there?”
“That’s my guess. What I can’t figure out without further research is where he went exactly. I can show you the hotels where he stayed and some of the restaurants where he ate, but where he went when he was on his own . . . I really don’t know. There were a couple of locations that I got lucky and made a hit on—Thanation Research and Development apparently hired him during his visit as a photographer for a big release event, for instance—but for the most part? No clue. I’d have to hire some real talent to do gumshoe work through the city, and the trail’s already pretty cold.”
Xavier rolled his eyes skyward. “Damn. What about those pictures?”
“The girl?” I shrugged. “I did quite a bit of looking through various file references but I haven’t turned up an ID yet. Now, if you could wait a few months . . .”
He started to shake his head violently, then controlled himself with a visible effort. “Why a few months?”
“Because I might be able to get access to an online image comparator that can access a very large database of photos, if I ask the right people nicely. Something I’d really like to have but it’s way out of my price range, unfortunately.”
“What about hiring those . . . people you mentioned to do the work to find out—”
No. “Xavier, that would start to get very expensive. Very, very expensive. I don’t care how much your . . . bank account has in it, this is going too far outside of my comfort zone. This is something much more for the police than for someone like me. I’ve given you some circumstantial evidence; maybe they’ll reopen the case. But at this point, I think I have to stop. If you were an adult . . . maybe. Probably. But honestly? It sounds like you’re obsessing over this.”
Xavier glared at me with those startling gray eyes.
“I understand you cared about your brother very much—”
“She laughed,” he said suddenly.
“What?”
“The bi . . . girl that killed him. She killed him, and he was screaming, and then she picked the phone up and laughed about it.”
Crap. I could see the
anger—very cold, very hard—in his eyes, and hear it in his voice. Xavier Ross might be a kid, but he was apparently old enough to have an adult’s desire for justice . . . or revenge. “You heard this?”
“He was . . .” his voice caught, then he managed to control it. “He was talking to me when she did it.”
“Sure it was a ‘she’?”
His smile was tight, without much humor. “Yeah. I can’t prove it, but I’m sure. Real sure. Almost sounded like a little girl, and the way my brother reacted before . . . before she did it, he didn’t think she was a threat, just someone who wanted to use the phone.”
That was surprising on multiple levels. His brother had obviously called him from a public phone—not a hotel room, not using a cell phone. And then he’d been apparently killed quickly and savagely by someone he didn’t think of as threatening. Given that my research had shown Michael Ross as a survivor of dangerous situations around the world, and an expert in both armed and unarmed combat . . . whoever took him down had to be something special. “And she laughed?”
“Oh, yeah.” His teeth clenched so hard I could see the muscles jump at his temples before he relaxed. “I . . .” He swallowed. “I heard Mike scream, and then . . . she laughed. Like a . . . like a happy little girl. And she said ‘Oh, so pretty, so pretty, the patterns in the moonlight. But oh, such a waste of blood.’ And then she whispered ‘Michael’s quiet now. He says good-bye,’ and hung up on me.”
Jesus H. Christ. I couldn’t blame Xavier for his anger. That was one of the most macabre stories I’d ever heard. “I’m sorry, Xavier. That’s . . . hideous.”
He looked at me. “But you’re still not going to help me anymore.”
I shook my head reluctantly. “No. This is clearly police business. Take the evidence I’ve got, bring it to Lieutenant Reisman—you know her?”
He nodded. “She interviewed me.”
“Okay, take it to her, tell her you got it from me. I’m sure they’ll have to reopen the case, especially if you and your family push for it.”
He looked unconvinced, but apparently the expression on my face convinced him I wasn’t going to change my mind. “Okay.”
He got out his credit card, but I waved it away. “Not taking any more from you, not after that story. Consider it a public service. Someone like that shouldn’t get away with it.”
His expression brightened, just a hair. “Thanks. I mean it.”
“You’re welcome.” I shook his hand. “Good luck, Xavier.”
I watched him go out the door. They damn well better reopen that case, because he’s not taking “no” for an answer.
PART III
Photo Finish
August 1999
CHAPTER 18
Action and Reaction
“But I thought we would be seeing The Thirteenth Floor tomorrow night,” Syl said.
I winced. Truth be told, I’d forgotten all about our movie plans in the past few weeks, and Verne had made an appointment—after hours, naturally—to discuss several interesting opportunities he was looking into. I hadn’t yet let Syl in on the situation with Verne, and if her unique . . . sensitivity had clued her in, she hadn’t let me know about it. “Sorry, Syl. How about Saturday evening?”
She shook her head, miffed. “You know my reading group meets on Saturday evening. And Sunday I’m visiting my parents.” She looked at me with a sudden sly smile. “You know, this is the third set of plans we’ve had to cancel in the last couple of months. Are you going out on a date tomorrow, Jase?”
Though there had been a few times I had dated in the last few years, the thought of going on a date with Verne made me laugh out loud. “No, no. It’s a business meeting, I just forgot about our plans. And of course, tonight’s bowling night.” I went bowling with Renee Reisman and not Syl because Syl found bowling utterly boring. “Sorry. Really. How about Monday then?”
“I’ll forgive you . . . this time,” she said, tossing her long black hair, making her assortment of beads and bracelets jingle with the motion. “But only if you pay for it all this time. Even the snacks.”
I grinned. “It’s a deal.”
“All right.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh! I’d better get moving. Witan and Sherry are going to be waiting for me!”
I went back to work, which right now was mostly research for people trying to finish up their degrees and a bunch of patent stuff. That made the time both crawl and fly by, a paradox that I didn’t find as amusing as it sounds.
The door jingled and I looked up, relieved to have a distraction. “Hi, Renee—” I caught the expression on her face and changed out relieved for worried at the same time I changed my mode of address. “I mean, hello, Lieutenant Reisman.”
She was even grimmer than I thought as she got closer. “Mr. Wood, do you know a person named Xavier Ross?”
What the hell? “I did some work for a Xavier Ross, yes,” I said, cautiously. “Why?”
“I need to know everything you said to him, everything you told him.”
I shook my head. “That’s client information. You know I won’t give you any of that without—”
She shoved a piece of paper under my nose.
“—a . . . warrant. Which this apparently is.” I glanced it over; this wasn’t the first time I’d seen one, but it was the first time I’d had one served on me. “Okay, I’ll get that stuff out. But why?”
“Xavier Uriel Ross disappeared from home—apparently deliberately, as there were signs he’d carefully accumulated both cash and supplies for traveling—a few days ago.”
I swore, something I generally reserved for serious situations. “I told him to go to you.”
“He did,” she said, and if possible her face looked even more grim, set in stone. “LA wouldn’t reopen the case, no matter how hard I kicked them. And I kicked them plenty hard.”
That’s . . . not good. I started burning a disc containing all the information I’d given Xavier. “Do you think they should?”
For a moment, I didn’t think she’d answer; she might be here alone but she was still in her “official” mode. But then she shrugged. “Wasn’t up to me. But . . . yeah, I would have thought so. That was some real interesting evidence you turned up, especially with the erased hard drive and hidden pictures. Usually that does get people to sit up and take notice, and when I talked to the main detective in charge he sounded interested . . . but after that things just got shut down.”
The disc finished burning; I put it in a case and handed it to her. “Here you go, Lieutenant. This is everything.”
“Mr. Ross paid you three thousand dollars, right?”
“Because I gave him a bunch free. I could have charged him another seven easy, and he acted like he had it to spend.”
“He did. Personal bank account worth over twenty thousand—I have no idea where he was supposed to have gotten that much, but his mother was apparently aware of it—and he’d just about emptied it before he left. Withdrawals in cash, too.”
“Jesus. So this kid went missing with over fifteen thousand in cash on him?”
“Yep. You have any idea where he’s gone?”
I grimaced. “You know just as well as I do where he’s probably headed.”
She nodded. “Los Angeles.”
“Where else?”
“All right. You’d better come with me to give a statement, too. You don’t have to,” she emphasized, “but you probably should.”
“Okay, okay.” I started shutting down for the day. “But since I don’t have to do this yet, at least keep me updated on what happens?”
Renee looked at me, then flashed a momentary smile. “You got it. Now come on, Wood.”
I followed her out, locking the door behind me. Not what I was planning for this evening.
CHAPTER 19
Blood and Moonlight
When I can’t talk and can’t act and can’t work . . . I drive. I cruised down various highways—the Northway, then part of the Thruway, 7
87, back to I-90—the windows wide open and the wind roaring at sixty-five. Even so, I barely felt any cooler; for sheer miserable muggy heat, it’s hard to beat the worst summer days of Albany, New York, and its environs, which unfortunately include Morgantown. It was days like this that made me think an air conditioner retrofit would be a really, really good idea; there were a few drawbacks to driving a 1970s vintage car.
How long I was out driving I wasn’t sure. For a while, I just tried to follow the moon as it rose slowly, round and white. It was the flashing red lights that finally drew my attention back to earth.
No, they weren’t chasing me—I wasn’t speeding; there were two police cars up ahead and flares in the road. I slowed and started to go around them; then I saw a familiar, slender figure standing at one car. That made me wince; it was that same person’s voice who’d caused part of my major upset earlier, and she couldn’t be feeling great about it, either. I pulled up just ahead of the squad car. “What’s up, Renee?” I asked.
She jumped and her hand twitched towards her gun. “Jesus! I didn’t even hear you come up.”
That was weird in itself. “Must be something pretty heavy if you didn’t notice Mjölnir pulling in.”
She gestured. “Take a look if you want. Just don’t go beyond the tape. We’re still working here.”
I went down the steep, grassy embankment carefully, finally pulling out my penlight to pick my way down. Despite the moon, it was pitchy dark, and the high, jagged pines blocked out what feeble light there was; at least it was cooler under the trees. The slope leveled out, and the light from the crime scene started brightening. The police had set up several portable floods and the area was almost bright as day. I stopped just at the tape.