by L. A. Graf
Sikes snorted. “Ross Vegas, for one.”
George gave his partner an exasperated look. “I was aware of that, Matthew, thank you. Who else is gone?”
“Ann Arbor is outside on the balcony, signing autographs.” Cathy pointed through the guarded door at the crowd of human children and adults clustered around the tall decathlon winner. “Detective Protzberg went out to keep an eye on her.”
“And Sandi Free went up to her hotel room an hour ago,” added Susan. “She said her feet hurt from all the noise, and she was going to lie down. Lydia Vegas went up to give her some herbal tea for the pain, but I think she’s back now.”
“Yes, I see Lydia in front of us.” George frowned and reached into his briefcase for the schedule of talks. He scanned the page closely until he found the name he was looking for. “That’s what I thought. Scott and Sandi Free’s talk is coming up right after this one.” He gave his wife a concerned glance. “Surely Sandi would come down for that, even if she was still in pain.”
Susan’s smoothly spotted forehead creased into worried lines. “Well, I would.”
George looked around the darkened ballroom until he spotted a slender young Tenctonese gannaum craning his head beside the speaker’s platform. “There’s Scott Free. He seems to be looking for her, too.” He looked over at his partner, now fully awake and scowling. “That means he expected her to be down here.”
“I don’t have a very good feeling about this.” Sikes stood, squeezing past Cathy in the narrow row of seats and tapping George on the shoulder as he went. “Come on. Let’s ask Protzberg if she sent an escort up with Sandi.”
George nodded and followed him out of the room. They found the Pittsburgh police detective standing near the front stairs that led down from the ballroom balcony to the elegant main lobby below. A velvet cord discreetly closed off access at the bottom of the marble steps, with a security guard beside it to admit official visitors. Outside the facing wall of windows, George could see the flashing lights of two on-duty police cars stationed on either side of the hotel’s freestanding portico. Given the bomb threat last night, he approved of the precaution.
“Protzberg.” Sikes hailed her with the casual abruptness of a colleague, and the short, wiry woman nodded back at him in acknowledgment. “Did you send someone up with Mrs. Free to her hotel room?”
“Damn straight,” she said without rancor. “I told him to go in and check the room before she entered, too. Why? Is something wrong?”
“She’s about to miss her presentation,” George explained. “We expected her to be here. She could simply be sleeping through it, but I’d rather not take the chance.”
“Neither would I.” Protzberg motioned another policeman from across the balcony to take her place, then led them toward the hidden bank of elevators. “Let’s go give her a wake-up call.”
The silently efficient elevator delivered them to the third floor in seconds, and George stepped out first into the deserted hall. His nostrils flared with the faintest hint of a familiar musky smell, and he jerked to a stop.
“Trouble?” demanded Sikes, pausing beside him.
“I smell blood. Tenctonese blood.” George swung his head slowly and located the hall with the strongest scent. He strode down it, pausing by each oak hotel door to see if it was the source of the odor. Protzberg followed, watching him with mingled amazement and respect.
“I didn’t know these guys could follow scents,” she muttered at Sikes, respectfully quiet but not so quiet that George mistook it for a slur.
“Yeah, and they hear better than we do, too.” Sikes nearly ran into George when he froze beside a hotel room door. “Christ, George, could you give us a little warning?”
George took a deep breath, tasting the reek of fresh Tenctonese blood strong in his throat. “This is it.”
Sikes rapped on the door and got only silence in return. “Sandi Free’s room?” he asked Protzberg.
She nodded, fishing in her oversize linen jacket for a hotel passkey. Her fingers shook, just a little, as she fitted it into the lock. “Dammit, I told her not to open the door to anyone but her husband! I don’t know why—” The door opened, letting out a wave of mixed blood and torn-gut smell so strong that even the humans must have been able to detect it. George blinked rapidly in response, while Protzberg and Sikes cursed in unison. “Oh, shit.”
Smears of blood and darker clots of ripped intestine patterned the tasteful beige carpet, coalescing into a frantic gray and pink swirl where something had been dragged in a bloody semicircle between the beds. George closed his throat firmly against a stab of sickness, hearing Sikes choke and turn away behind him. For once, he didn’t blame his partner for his queasiness.
Dismembered parts of Sandi Free’s corpse lay everywhere in the room, scattered from dresser to bed to floor as if she had been torn apart by demons.
C H A P T E R 7
THE FORENSICS GUYS had brought out all the towels from the bathroom to cover what they could of the body, and that helped a little. Sikes had also vomited in the hallway two doors down from the scene, and that helped a little, too. At least now when his stomach heaved, there was nothing left of breakfast to bring up, so a fit of halfhearted coughing usually drove the feeling away. The inside of his sinuses still burned, though. He clung to a tattered wad of bathroom tissue so he could continually clear his nose without having to leave the crime scene. It was bad enough that he had forensics teams on both coasts sneering at his uneven stomach, he didn’t need them talking behind his back about how he wasn’t man enough to stick it out until the work was done.
“Jesus,” Jordan kept saying from beside Sikes in the doorway. “Jesus, I never expected anything like this!”
Who could have? It seemed kind of pointless to comment on that, though.
Jordan kept wiping his handkerchief across his mouth, although he hadn’t succumbed to sickness quite yet. Sikes was tempted to tell him to give it a try. Jordan’s face was as gray as his suit, and his eyes were very red-rimmed, as though holding back tears. “Have your Purists ever done anything like this before?”
Sikes almost laughed at the suggestion. “Oh, no.”
“Then why now? And how?” Jordan waved unsteadily at the room in general. “Christ, I can’t even tell you how to dismember a human like this, much less a Tenctonese. What could you use to do something like this?”
Sikes’s eyes made a critical sweep of the room while his brain droned unconvincingly, It’s not blood, it is not blood, it’s stomach medicine, that’s all, not blood. “A knife, maybe,” he heard himself say. “A cleaver, that sort of thing. The guy probably whacked her over the head, then had at her while she was still too stunned to stop him.” He blew his nose again, a good excuse for turning away from the room. “Guys on jack, they can do this kind of thing.”
“No one used a cleaver on this woman.”
The narrow little man with the coroner’s badge lifted his head from behind one of the soiled beds. His tie had been twisted around to tuck down the back of his suit, and rubber gloves made his hands look yellow-white and hairless. He had a face like an earnest chihuahua’s, with thinning gray hair and an accent thick enough to taste. “I can’t go on record until I’ve run some tests, but I can tell you that I see no signs of edged weapon use on this cadaver.”
Sikes was glad when the coroner stepped around the bed to come to them, instead of insisting they leave the doorway and join him. “You’ve got to be kidding. Nobody takes somebody apart like this without, you know, tools or something to help them. Like a chain saw.”
The coroner shrugged, apparently not as confounded by the situation as Sikes. He wondered what sort of things went on in Pittsburgh that the guy could take this so calmly. “I haven’t had a chance to examine all the body parts yet. Those I’ve seen exhibit clear evidence of rending damage, as opposed to cutting.” At Sikes’s questioning frown, he clarified, “The tissues are misshapen and ragged, the ligaments stretched and retreated into the
musculature in a manner consistent with limbs that have been forcibly torn from the body. And the bones are generally intact, which also negates use of a cutting device.” He angled a look up at Sikes. “Chain saw or otherwise.”
Sikes heard Jordan unsteadily clear his throat from behind him. “What you’re saying,” the federal agent said carefully, “is that someone actually pulled Mrs. Free limb from limb?”
“Essentially, yes.”
Suddenly overwhelmed with nausea again, Sikes transferred his gaze from the coroner’s dispassionate face to the open window across the room. He was glad for the trickle of fresh air but wished he could better feel the icy breeze from the door. Cold air always helped his sickness go away. “What about cause of death?” he asked when he felt safe in talking again. “Any guesses as to what exactly killed her?”
The coroner hesitated, making Sikes shift attention back to him. “What do you mean?” the little man asked. “Either shock or blood loss from the trauma, but I can’t tell you exactly which yet.”
“What?” The thought alone made Sikes’s head spin. “You’re telling me somebody pulled her apart like this while she was still alive?”
The coroner blinked. “Judging from both the tissue damage and the extent of blood loss—”
He didn’t wait for the disclaimer to finish. “Do you have any idea how strong a Newcomer is? Hell, we have to carry special handcuffs just to book them in L.A., and you expect me to believe that somebody came in here, overpowered her, tied her to some kind of winch or something—”
“Oh, no, there’s no evidence she was ever restrained or—”
“Whatever!” He ran both hands through his hair, feeling uncomfortably close to rude laughter. “This is nuts! Nobody tears up anybody with their bare hands, much less a Newcomer anybody.”
“Could another Tenctonese do it?”
Jordan’s calm question sliced through Sikes like the cold air outside. He turned to face the fed, wanting very much to seem unconcerned despite his sudden chill. “No.” Then, feeling guilty about what he suspected was a lie, “To a human, maybe. But not to another Tenctonese.”
Jordan nodded, but something about the guarded look on his face told Sikes the fed didn’t believe a word of it.
“Matthew, Agent Jordan . . .”
Sikes and Jordan turned, bumping shoulders in the narrow doorway and unintentionally blocking both entrance and view into the bloodied room. Seeing George waiting in the hallway behind them, Sikes was glad for that accidental service—with a wife to worry about protecting from Purists, George didn’t need any more reminders of what failure could mean.
“Mr. Free says he’s ready to speak with you now,” George told Jordan, half avoiding Sikes’s eyes as though reading his partner’s thoughts. “He is with my wife and Agent Golitko in Room 301.”
“Go with him,” Sikes urged George while Jordan moved into the hall. “It might be handy to have a translator around during the questioning.”
“Susan is there—” George began, but Sikes caught his arm and pushed him away from the doorway when he tried to join Sikes there.
“Then go be with Susan,” he said in a very low voice. “She’s not used to this stuff like we are, and I don’t want you hanging around here watching me get sick.”
George’s hand tightened on his partner’s arm, and Sikes found himself caught in one of those inexplicable moments when George seemed to lay bare his soul with a single look. Just as always, the Newcomer broke the contact an instant before Sikes’s own discomfort would force him to squirm away and said only, “Thank you,” for all that the words seemed to carry a hundred more meanings than Sikes was willing to understand. He just nodded shortly and pushed George off down the hall. “Go on.”
Being a cop had been a whole lot easier when the only differences he’d had to worry about in a partner were religion and the color of his skin.
Left alone with half a dozen forensics specialists and at least a dozen body parts, Sikes found it increasingly harder to think about things not related to the mess spread out before him. “Look, do you guys really need me?” he asked at last.
One of the forensics guys looked up from dropping something too small to identify into a paper bag. “You the alien expert from L.A.?”
Sikes thought about disputing that, then decided it didn’t really matter. As far as Pittsburgh was concerned, he was the closest thing to an expert they were going to get. “Yeah, I guess so.”
The guy brightened as if this were the best news he’d heard all day. “It would be a big help if you could verify that we’ve got an entire body here.” He passed the paper bag to an associate, then reached for another. “You know, just to make sure the perp didn’t run off with any parts we’re not aware of.”
“Everything looks swell from here.”
The forensics guy made a face at him. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.” Sikes did his damnedest to look cool instead of horrified. “They’ve got two arms, two legs, and a really big head. Other than that, you guys know as much as I do.”
“Do they have fingerprints?” one of the other guys asked from just below the open window.
Sikes wondered if he was dusting. And, if so, what in all this blood he hoped to find. “No. We file their rap sheets with DNA prints instead.” He hoped they wouldn’t want a huge explanation of that, since he only understood enough to check the typing and verify a match.
Instead, the forensics guy closest to the window climbed to his feet and headed toward Sikes, his head bent over a sheet of white hotel stationery. “You got any way to match handprints at all, then?” he asked. “Besides just fitting a hand against an impression?” He grimaced and handed the paper to Sikes. “I really don’t want to have to haul this lady’s hand around seeing if it fits up with every print in the room.”
Frowning, Sikes took the sheet and stepped far enough into the room to catch the brighter light streaming out from the bathroom. Neatly printed in one corner, just below the burgundy red Hilton logo, was the upper third of a neat, long-fingered handprint. They probably couldn’t have lifted a better impression with an ink pad. Milky pink fluid had dried to a crusty peach, but it was easy enough to see that no lines or creases had crisscrossed the print even when it was fresh. “Where did you get this?”
The forensics guy nodded over his shoulder. “Just under the window. But they’re all over the room, even on the walls. I don’t know if this means somebody played finger paints with our D.B. after the fact or if this lady fought like hell before they killed her.” He shook his head sadly. “Not a footprint in the place, though, so I think it must have happened after, when the guy had time to be careful. Yuck.”
Yuck, indeed. Sikes handed him back the paper and stepped into the hall. His nose was too numbed by gut smell and vomiting to notice the change in venue. All he knew was that he wanted very much to wash his hands, and if he stayed here any longer he’d be throwing up again. “Look, you guys have got everything you need from me. Get somebody from Pittsburgh P.D. to stay here with you.”
“That’s okay—we’re mostly done.” The forensics guy didn’t seem to care much as he turned to the men behind him and called out, “All right, guys, bag her.”
The image of the Newcomer being shoveled into a black plastic bag, piece by piece, made Sikes think unwillingly about how these people had been born into a world of dark alcoves and sleeping holes no bigger than this stretcher. What a pisser to finally win your freedom on a planet so far from home just to end up locked in the dark against your will, the very same way you started.
“Don’t put her in a room with cut flowers,” he heard himself saying. “And if you have to do an autopsy, don’t cut her hearts loose from her chest. They don’t like that, and it matters to them.”
The forensics team all stared at him in a way Sikes couldn’t quite identify, so he turned away from them to retreat to his room and his own quiet darkness. The zipper on the body bag purred shut behind him.
GEORGE LEANED HIS forehead against the dark window of his hotel room, deliberately letting the chill of the glass burn against his skin. By day, the window framed a view of the long snowy lawns marking the point where Pittsburgh’s rivers met, but none of that was visible now. A thin winter fog had risen from the melting snow and drifted across the city, dimming its illuminated bridges to faint blurs. The mist restricted George’s view to the asphalt top of the hotel’s portico and the balefully spiraling glare of the police cars parked below it. He reached down and opened the small casement pane at the bottom of the window as far as its hinges allowed. A cold wet wind flowed through the handspan of space and nosed at him like a curious wild beast.
“George!” Susan poked her head around the bathroom door, one earring on and the other clutched in her hand. “What on earth are you doing? I can feel that draft all the way in here!”
“Sorry.” He pushed the window shut again. “Matthew is always talking about how cold air clears his head. I thought I’d try it.” He gave her a tight, rueful smile. “All it did was make my feet hurt.”
Susan clicked in wordless concern and came across the room to join him. Her dark green dinner dress shimmered in the misty light from outside. “You’re thinking about those Purists again.”
“Yes.” George ran a hand back and forth across the thick velvet of her sleeve, warming his fingers with the friction. “Yes, I’m thinking about them. For all the killings they did back in L.A., the Purists there were never quite this brutal. I just don’t see why they should be more fanatical in Pittsburgh than in Los Angeles.”
“George—”
He waved an impatient hand at the winter night outside. “I mean, look at this climate. What can Purists have to fear when it would be nearly impossible for a Tenctonese to live here?” He frowned at his dark reflection in the window. “Yet the way they killed Sandi Free implies an almost psychotic rage.”