Lightbreaker tcos-1

by Mark Teppo

  I had been in Paris once upon a time. Like a fairy tale. Self-cast as the hero of that fable, I studied for several years, even reached Journeyman-a neophyte grade in the art of Watching. Journeymen who demonstrate aptitude and ambition become Travelers and go forth to earn their place in the world, always watching and reporting back to their masters. My fairy tale collapsed before I could be graded for Traveler. Every story has a hero, a heroine, and a villain. In the end, the tale got rewritten; I became the villain.

  "And what is your business?" Pender sat in one of the two chairs at the table. He indicated the other chair. While his body language projected indifference, his eyes watched me closely. Witnessing. At the very least, Pender had to be a Traveler.

  "Antiques." I swallowed the obstruction in my throat that had been raised by the shadow of my past. I had carefully avoided the Watchers since I had left Paris, preferring the anonymity of death to the. . headache of being alive. If he reported me to his masters, they would be curious as to why I was running around without a leash. One of them would be more than curious. "My clients have very specific tastes. I have to go where the markets are hot if I want to stay in business."

  "How do your clients find you?" he asked. He gave no hint he had even offered a recognition signal, no sense he was waiting for me to acknowledge his code word.

  Was I imagining a connection which didn't exist? "Personal references." I sat down.

  "Ah, that sort of antique market," he said. "Were you working for a client last night?"

  "Visiting a friend."

  "The traveler on the boat?"

  I shook my head. He had just asked me to acknowledge myself again. When he decided I was unaware of his connection to the Watchers-when he decided I wasn't one of them-the opportunity to dismiss this situation would vanish. What would my options be? To ask for a lawyer and try to get bail posted? To demand to know the charges being levied against me and protest my innocence?

  A pall of silence hung in the room while we both considered which direction to take the conversation. "You pose an interesting problem, Mr. Markham," he said. I didn't intrude into his thought, and he let that statement hang for a minute. He examined the pages in his folder. "Your father taught at Western Washington University, didn't he?" he asked, momentarily setting aside the quandary of my presence.

  "Yeah, he taught Washington State history."

  "Used to be a farmer. Potatoes, was it?"

  I nodded.

  "Fairly successful transformation for a man who never finished high school."

  "He was good at applying himself," I said. "He worked hard for the degree and was proud of it." Proud, and always a little nervous the rest of the administration would discover he was a high school dropout from southern Idaho. His father had died unexpectedly one summer. He had suffered a mild heart attack while working the field, and lost control of the tractor. By the time they found him and the vehicle in the ditch that ran along the southern edge of the property, the sun had taken him away from the family. My father took over and, even with his youthful will and energetic body, the local potato conglomerate still managed to gut the family for the land. It just took a few years longer than their projections. Small victories. My father's mother died in her sleep two days after the paperwork for the sale was signed.

  My mother had always been a frail phantom, a child of New England more suited to central heating and sturdy brownstones than windswept winters and arid summers. She died the winter after the dissolution of the family farm. My father brought what was left of the family-me and my sister-west to Seattle, where he tried to bury the past. For the rest of his life, my father, no matter how hard he tried, felt that he could never fully get the Idaho dirt out from beneath his fingernails.

  He would come home from teaching and obsessively wash his hands. Before he left in the morning, he would repeat the same ritual-soap and water, soap and water-until they were pink and shining. Innocent. Purified.

  I glanced down at my hands, resting on the table. My knuckles, broken more than once; the scars on the back of my right hand, ugly kisses left by steel and bone; the twisted piece of flesh at the base of my left thumb. The things we learn from our fathers: our hands betray what we have done.

  "And yet," Pender noted, "you never finished school."

  I shrugged, putting my hands in my lap. "My sister was always better at applying herself."

  "Chelsea married an investment banker from Barcelona, didn't she?" The question was rhetorical; I knew he had the specifics on the page. "Migel Guastera. She hasn't been back to the States since your father's funeral in '02."

  "That seems about right."

  "You don't talk much?"

  "Differences of opinion make casual talk sort of pointless."

  "You don't like her husband?"

  "I've never met him."

  "Does your sister work?"

  "She does art restoration. Local galleries in Barcelona, mainly."

  He raised an eyebrow. "With your line of work, there's no overlap? No reason for regular contact?"

  "There's a lot of people doing art restoration out there; and I don't have a lot of reasons to visit Barcelona."

  "And your business on the peninsula last night had nothing to do with art or antiques?"

  I shook my head. "Visiting an old friend."

  "He'll confirm this?"

  "Why wouldn't he?"

  Pender gave me a toothsome smile that didn't extend to his eyes. The dart and feint of our conversation was entertaining him. It was a game he thought he could win. I was starting to tire of it. What would he do if I slapped him with the fact that I knew he was a Watcher? Testis sum. I am a Witness. It was a passphrase used in the Witnessing rituals of the Journeymen. It would definitely abort our little conversation, but would it get me out of this room without creating further complications?

  He's going to call Paris anyway; you're running out of time.

  "Douglas Rassmussen," I said, opting for a different distraction. Stay away from Paris.

  "Pardon?" He closed the file.

  "That's his name. The traveler. That's the guy you should be talking to." I leaned toward him. "He left the boat in another body, which means there's another charred corpse waiting for you to find. Not to mention how he gets back into his original body."

  "Back to his body? What do you mean?"

  "He wasn't acting alone." The flickering colors, the sensory impressions stolen from Doug, danced in my head. "It was some sort of ritual. He wasn't bodiless by accident. He had help transcending his natural state."

  "I thought you said there was only one spirit?"

  I sighed and looked away. Was he being intentionally dense, or did he just not have any idea what psychoanimism was?

  Be sure.

  "He and his friends are doing rituals of separation. They've learned how to split the light from the meat. Completely. This isn't astral projection; they are separating soul from body. I think he was trying to get back to his body; I think that was the whole point of their ritual."

  "Why? What was the point?"

  "To prove his worthiness, to prove that he was ready to join their inner circle." To prove he could survive the experience.

  Some of the sly amusement dropped away from Pender's face. "They're organized?"

  "It didn't happen spontaneously."

  "You seem to know a lot about this sort of ritual."

  "He possessed the old man, bent him to his Will."

  Violet dots swam in his irises as he waited for me to give him more information. "And?"

  "It's an abomination. It kills the body and the spirit. Our journey to enlightenment isn't a path that requires innocents to suffer. That's not knowledge." He was Watching me now, gauging my unconscious reaction. I gave him little to read, just verbal propaganda drawn from a few thousand years of Roman Catholic history and an expression full of shock and horror.

  A corner of his mouth twitched. "Is that part of your religious upbringing, Mr. Markha
m, or are you trying to impress upon me the depth of your compassion?"

  "My compassion."

  "Ah," he nodded, and I managed to keep a straight face. "Yes, of course." He touched the corner of his mouth as if to stop the twitch. "And, when you had your talk with this transgressor, were you going to ask him to vacate the old man's body?"

  "It was too late for Mr. Summers. I was trying to stop him from possessing another body. The woman in the Acura. Your detective. The driver of the car that. ."

  Pender's gaze fell toward the closed folder. One of the pages inside had to be the field report from the police on the scene. His fingers moved idly on the cover, tracing some mental pattern in his head. "A Cadillac," he offered. "The car that hit you was a Cadillac SRX. He was controlling the driver's body?"

  "Yes."

  "And you think his possession has killed this person as well?" His interest seemed piqued, as if I had finally offered enough information that he couldn't dismiss the possibility that I was the smaller problem here. Now there was something larger to deal with than just an adept performing an Act of Will in public.

  "Even if he just possessed her long enough to return to his real body-wherever it had been taken-she'll be severely touched. And she'll know who they are." I nodded. "Yeah, if Doug doesn't burn her out, they'll kill her."

  "Do you know who they are?"

  "No, just the one guy. Douglas Rassmussen. Son of Frederick and Amber." I spelled the last name for him. "I don't know who his friends are."

  Something passed through his eyes, something he hid almost as instantly as it flared. I was left with a momentary spasm in my gut as if the ground had unexpectedly rippled beneath me. The name meant something to him.

  "Well," he said, standing up. "I'll look into it." He held up the folder. "I'll check the databases."

  "What about me?"

  "I haven't decided, Mr. Markham. You're a wild card and I'm not sure I should let you run free in this city."

  "My business is almost finished," I said. "There would be no reason for me to stay here after I was done."

  "You never did tell me what your business here was."

  "Looking for an old friend," I said. "A woman."

  His tongue touched the edge of his lip, almost mocking me. "She break your heart?"

  "Sort of."

  "Financial dispute?"

  "No."

  "Pity. Financial disagreements rarely end in bloodshed. Just lawyers." He shook his head as he walked to the door. "Matters involving heartbreak. .?" He punched in a code on the door's security lock. As he opened the door, he left me with a parting observation. "They always seem to produce collateral damage."

  V

  It was hard to say what Pender believed and what he already knew. A Watcher trait: you could never really be sure they didn't know more than you, even when they seemed to be clueless. Some of the lieutenant's reactions seemed too forced, too naive, to be true; while at other times he appeared genuinely puzzled.

  I couldn't decide which was better.

  After he left, I considered my dearth of options. Regardless of what Pender did with the information about Doug, he knew who I was and, eventually, a report containing my name would be filed with the head office in Paris. After that, it was just a matter of time before the wrong person realized the record of my death was a premature one.

  He'll come. It wasn't like Antoine to leave matters unresolved. He'd want to finish our business. The wound had long been healed but, for a second, the skin on my stomach tightened. The invasive memory of cold steel. He'll need to finish it, and not just for Watcher honor.

  Was there enough time to find Kat? Doug's trail was about to become a clusterfuck of police interest. I wouldn't be able to get anywhere near him without Pender's knowledge. I needed another approach.

  I was still rolling that conundrum over in my mind when the door clicked. A pair of uniforms looked in. "Mr. Markham," one of them said. "Please come with us."

  I did so dutifully-up two elevators, and through a number of long windowless hallways. A pair of thick doors disgorged me into a receiving area, and I discovered we were above ground. At a caged window, I signed for my personal effects; then, plastic bag and coat in hand, I was led through a security station, and found myself in the lobby of Seattle Police Headquarters. My uniformed guide nodded at my uncertainty, and pointed toward the door. "Have a nice day," he said.

  Through the tall windows fronting the building, I saw Pender waiting on the front steps, wearing a full-length wool coat against the wind and Seattle damp. Hands clasped behind his back, head tilted up as if he had just stepped outside to check the weather.

  I sorted through the plastic bag for my belt and shoelaces. After threading them through their respective places, I slipped on my coat and dumped the remaining items into my jacket pockets. The wind teased at me as I exited the building, like a coy lover blowing through the hole in my shirt. I tugged at the lapels-the coat fell awkwardly across my shoulders and back. It had seen better days. I had seen better days.

  "Patientia beneficium qui exspecto," Pender said to me by way of greeting.

  I hesitated, and then inclined my head a fraction. "So I've heard." It was an old society saying: those who watch reap the rewards of patience.

  "I should leave you in custody, Mr. Markham." His eyes tracked the cars on the road, registering and cataloguing. "Drop you in a hole; forget about you for a few days." The echo in his voice said it all. A few days. He finally looked at me. A grim smile flattened his lips. "But what would I learn from watching you in a small box?"

  "My sleeping habits," I said.

  "Exactly, and I don't really care much about them. I'm more interested in what you do when you're awake, when you are on the prowl." He looked at the street again. "Besides, how far do you think you can run?"

  "Far enough," I said.

  He nodded at that. "Probably. But that wouldn't solve your local problem now, would it?"

  "No."

  His voice dropped to a feigned stage whisper. "So what's to be gained by running?"

  He had a point. One that had been nagging at me while I was in the room. If I bolted and went to ground, I could probably disappear. I had done it once before.

  But she's here, the Chorus reminded me, tugging at my groin, lighting up my lower vertebrae. I was close. Close enough that I could find her in a day or two. If I got lucky. If Pender watched, and didn't act. If he waited to call Paris. If. .

  A feral smile tugged at my lips, as the series of possibilities became untenably convoluted. Loops within loops, cycles cutting across each other. And, in that confusion, the simple clarity of all of our actions: I sought to seal the circle of my history; Antoine would come, seeking to do the same for his. We all want resolution, in the end.

  You two will always mirror each other.

  I pushed aside the memory of that voice from Paris, focusing instead on something the Old Man drilled into us. "Sapienta est aspicio ut sapiens." Wisdom has its way, but only for those who are wise enough to receive it.

  Pender smiled at the words. "Vidui."

  I'll be watching.

  "Wouldn't want it any other way." I walked down the steps to the street. My car was back on the peninsula, parked by the side of the road. It was a long walk, even with the ferry ride across the bay. I didn't need the car so much as I wanted to chase my trail. The ritual where Doug had been separated from his body had taken place across the bay, out in the woods somewhere. While Pender and his monkeys chewed up Doug's trail in Seattle, I could still find his friends.

  I only wanted one of them anyway.

  I paused at the sidewalk and looked back. Pender, true to his word, was still Watching. I glanced across the street before I turned toward downtown and the waterfront.

  Pender wasn't the only observer. The detective, the man whom Doug had invaded and used to shoot me, was watching too. He was sitting in the car parked across the street.

  Most of the rain had blown over th
e Puget Sound and the city during my incarceration. As I stood on the upper deck of the west-bound ferry, the wind pushing the storm east was a persistent pressure on my face. It smelled clean; the pollution in the air had been dampened down by the rain. I could smell wood smoke and pine trees-rural civilization on the edge of the wild.

  The ferry staterooms were too small for me right now, a claustrophobic reaction to the time spent in the tiny room at the police station. I needed to smell the forest and the fresh air; I needed to have my face scoured by the wind. Like soap and water, water and soap. While my father had wanted to cleanse the natural world from his skin, I sought its touch. I needed its blessing.

  I had only been in custody for six hours. A sign in itself of Pender's position within the SPD. The man could get things done. Of course, I didn't expect any less of a Watcher in the field.

  Eventually, the detective joined me on the upper deck. On my walk down to the ferry terminal, I had tried to make it easy for him to follow me. I didn't want to get all the way out to Bainbridge Island, and discover he hadn't been able to follow my trail.

  He was several inches taller than me and a good decade older, with a face permanently creased from exposure to the Seattle weather. His hair was short, and there were patches of gray at his temples, streaks that descended into his wide sideburns. While he still seemed like nothing more than an aged bull awkwardly stuffed into a suit, up close I could read a deep weariness-an infection that ran down into the marrow of his bones.

  His overcoat was thick and warm, clearly the one piece of clothing he had put some thought into. Underneath, his suit coat was too light for the season, and his tie was too garish to be anything but a designer knockoff. Solid shoes though. A working man who kept track of the days and weeks. Checkmarks on a calendar, months blacked out as they vanished into history. The steady march toward retirement.

  In complete disregard of the ban against smoking in public places, he slipped a cigarette into his mouth and cupped one large hand around the end. I looked at his knuckles as he worked the lighter-an angrier and more misshapen tale told in their knotted surfaces than the story pounded into my hands. Boxer, maybe; football, probably. Given his size, my guess was defensive lineman. Just during college and then he gave it up to chase felons and murderers.