by L. A. Graf
“And will we be safer living among kleezantsun?” George snapped at her, his patience gone at last.
“I will be,” Lydia said simply.
Sikes cursed behind her, his voice tight with rage. “And for that, you’ve murdered two innocent Newcomers.”
“I haven’t murdered anyone!”
“The hell you haven’t.” The human detective swung her metal chair around and glared at her, ignoring her startled click. “If it hadn’t been for the things you stole from the hotel, your levpa kid couldn’t have killed anyone. You’re an accessory to murder, lady.”
“But I told you, I didn’t know they would be killed!”
“You might not have known when you took the Frees’ manuscript,” Sikes admitted grudgingly. “But the Frees were both dead by the time you stole Ann Arbor’s medals. No jury in the world is going to believe that you didn’t know she might be killed because of what you did.” He gave her a relentless look. “In the eyes of the law, you’re as guilty as your husband.”
George leaned forward as Lydia choked down another, almost soundless sob. “You don’t have to go to prison with him. If you cooperate, and tell us where he is—”
“Na nteeka wask!” The sudden break into Tenctonese seemed almost unconscious and convinced George she was telling the truth. “Ross never told me where he was going. He just gave me a phone number to call, to let him know when they canceled the symposium. He was going to come back then.”
Sikes scowled at her. “But you must have had some other way to contact him, somewhere you could go to meet him.”
“I didn’t go anywhere,” Lydia said, “How could I? We’ve been trapped inside this hotel the entire time we’ve been here.”
“Then how did you give him the things you stole?”
Her smile tugged bitterly at her radiation-scarred cheek. “I send them out in the hotel’s dry cleaning bags.”
C H A P T E R 1 9
SIKES JAMMED HIS hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and reminded himself for the fifth or sixth time that he couldn’t pace while he was supposed to be hiding in the bushes. Instead, he fingered the plastic trigger of the water pistol in his pocket and jiggled one knee like a grade-schooler waiting for his turn at the bathroom. The pine needles under his feet felt slick and spongy from the accumulated evening fog.
“Matthew.” George angled a look of pale annoyance at his partner through the twilight. “Hush.”
Sikes scowled at him, feeling his cheeks sting with slight warmth. “What? I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to,” George sighed, turning his attention to the hotel entrance across the street from them. His words rolled out on breathy clouds of steam above the collar of his camel hair coat. “Your frittering is loud enough to make up for it.”
“Jittering, George.”
The Newcomer twitched a nervous little shrug. “Whatever. If Ross Vegas comes with the dry cleaner to pick up the package from Lydia, he’ll hear you for certain. Stand still.”
Sikes grunted an unamused almost laugh but made an effort to quell his fidgeting. At least for the moment. “He ain’t coming with them, George. The whole point of not telling Lydia where he’s at is so nobody runs the risk of bumping into him.” He shook his head and squinted down the street at an unmarked van three blocks away. Its white sides stood out brightly beneath the first blossoming streetlights. “No, he’s got some yo-yo to pick up for him. You’ll see.”
George didn’t answer right away. Sikes kept his own attention on the distant van, letting himself be distracted by George’s insistent elbow only when the vehicle turned down a street headed away from them and disappeared over a rise. Turning, he followed a jerk of the Newcomer’s chin to where a dark red step van paused with two wheels rolled up onto the hotel’s sidewalk. The side proclaimed Chuck’s Cleaners in tall yellow type. And beneath that, Chez Royale.
Sikes watched the driver clamber from behind the wheel and jog inside. “Son of a bitch . . .” He kicked a spray of pine needles toward the street. “Son of a bitch, I should have known.”
George glanced at him, frowning. “Known what?”
“That’s the place Darren Pickett’s working,” Sikes said, stabbing a finger toward the van. “Chez Royale. It’s a hotel a little ways outside of town, and I thought he was working in the gym. Son of a bitch!”
George fell silent, his eyes darkening with the distraction of inner thought.
Sikes started to pace, just short little steps, two or three to a direction, more to vent his frustration than because he thought it would help to move around. “I knew Pickett had something to do with this—I just knew it! When Protzberg said they didn’t find him at the gym, I figured he split town.”
“Matthew?”
“It never occurred to me he was working at the goddammed cleaner’s!”
“Matthew?”
Sikes slammed to a stop. “What?”
George didn’t look at him, attention still focused on some unknown distance. “I smell blood.”
“You smell . . . ?” Sikes’s stomach clenched around a stab of primitive terror. “Your blood?” he asked hoarsely. “Or mine?”
“Newcomer blood.”
Right. “Let’s get out of here.” He caught George by the elbow and started across toward the abandoned van at a run. He tried not to think about where the levpa might be waiting or how quickly it could take him down if it decided to come at him right now.
“Where are we going?” George asked when Sikes stopped him by the side of the van and caught the big door handle in both hands.
Half on the lookout for Pickett, Sikes heaved the door open and shoved George inside. “Pickett knows where Vegas is. We’re gonna let him take us there.”
He hopped in after George, then squatted to pull the door shut and snug it gently into its latch. The inside of the van was hung with blankets, suits, and overcoats, some of them sheened with the glossy clear of plastic bagging, others looking stiff and grimy as they started on their way to be cleaned. George ducked between a row of bridesmaid dresses and crouched on the wheel housing. Sikes sat with his back to the driver’s seat and the water pistol resting beneath his hand on one knee.
The van shuddered when someone jerked wide the driver’s door, letting in a chill rush of outside air. Sikes fought off a shiver, then held his breath until the door slammed, the van lurched into gear, and the wheels bumped gently off the curb. Even then, he waited for Pickett to switch on the radio and start to sing before he rose up to his knees and pressed the pistol against the back of Pickett’s neck. “Hello, Darren.”
Pickett screamed.
Sikes reached over Pickett’s shoulder to knock the Purist’s hands back onto the steering wheel. “You wreck this thing,” he growled, “and I’m gonna shave your head and tattoo spots clear down to your ass.”
Pickett clutched the steering wheel, but Sikes caught hold of his oily rattail to keep him from hunching away from the touch of the water gun. “You’re gonna kill me, Sikes!” Pickett whined, struggling to steer the van back into line with the road. His cheeks were starting to flood with color after his fright. “One of these days, I swear, I’m just gonna pack up and die because you hassled me to death or gave me a heart attack or made me slit my own wrists or something!”
Sikes smiled. “Aw, Darren, I’ll bet you say that to all the cops.”
“Let go of my hair, man!”
“Uh uh.” Sikes settled himself more comfortably behind Pickett’s seat, ignoring the other man’s whimpers of protest as he shifted his grip on Pickett’s hair. “Why don’t you just keep driving, and we’ll talk for a while.” It was surprisingly soothing to see the speedometer at a steady forty miles per hour while he thought about the levpa sniffing up his trail somewhere back at the hotel. “Where’s he staying, Darren?”
Pickett slid his eyes as far as he could to peek nervously over one shoulder when the sound of George crawling out from under the bridesmaid gowns distr
acted him. Sikes gave his hair a warning tug, and he quickly flicked his eyes back to the road. “Man, this is kidnapping.”
“Is not.”
“Is so! You got a gun to my head, and you’re making me go someplace I don’t wanna.”
Sikes held the gun away from Pickett’s cheek, letting its bulging green-and-orange outline register in the Purist’s peripheral vision. “This gun?” he asked. He squeezed the trigger and sprayed a rosette of water all over the dash. “What? You thought I’d blow your brains out with a squirt gun?”
“Oh, man, this bites . . .”
George frowned as he settled behind the empty passenger seat. “Matthew, what on earth is that for?”
Sikes tossed the gun like the cowboys always did in the movies. But the water weighted it differently than bullets, and he ended up catching the barrel instead of the grip, getting a handful of water for his efforts. “I bought it in the gift shop while you were taking care of Cathy,” he said, stuffing the pistol back into his jacket and wiping his hand dry on his blue jeans. “I filled it up with salt water, and I’m saving it to use on Vegas.”
George’s eyes dilated with shock. “Matthew!”
“Oh, don’t ‘Matthew’ me,” Sikes shot back at him. “He’s got a two-hundred-pound Newcomer pitbull chasing me all over this city, and I don’t even have a gun! What did you expect me to do?” He shifted uneasily, looking out the windshield over Pickett’s bony shoulder. “Besides, I’m hoping it works on the levpa, too.”
“Just be careful where you point it.”
Sikes made a little sound of amusement. “Don’t worry, George. I won’t forget it’s loaded.”
“Uh, look . . .” Pickett half turned to look at Sikes, then winced when the movement pulled on his hair, and looked back at the road. “If you guys wanna talk about this, why don’t you let me take you somewhere—”
Sikes enjoyed the way a clap on the shoulder made Pickett squeak. “What a smart idea. We even know where we want you to take us.”
The Purist started to nod, then seemed to remember Sikes’s grip on his hair and thought better of it. “Name it.”
“We want to meet the man who sent you to pick up this bag,” George said. He reached around the passenger seat to heft the gray paper parcel Pickett had thrown there upon climbing in.
Pickett glanced sidelong at the package, then sighed. “You guys are makin’ me nuts.”
“You don’t even want to know what you’re making me,” Sikes replied.
“I’m doing this for my job, and there’s nothing illegal—” Pickett launched into his explanation in that strident, overloud voice that seemed to come part and parcel with most preprepared lies. It was all Sikes could do to not bounce the Purist’s forehead off the steering column.
George ended up saving Pickett from both Sikes and himself by interrupting, calmly but firmly, “You were called to the hotel to pick up dry cleaning for the woman in Room 1603. This is the fourth time you’ve picked up goods from her since the symposium began—one on Wednesday, one on Thursday, one on Friday, one today. You never bring anything back to her, and she never pays you for the service. Instead, you’re paid by someone anonymous several hours after you deliver each package.”
Pickett sat very quietly, staring past the windshield at a stoplight. Sikes could see the reflection of it in the glass as it turned from emerald to amber to red. “Where are you dropping the stuff off?” Sikes asked.
“He told me it wasn’t nothing illegal.”
Sikes exchanged a glance with George and even took the Newcomer’s hint when George held up a finger telling him to wait.
“I mean, the lady just gave me the stuff,” Pickett went on. The light turned green, but he made no move to start forward. “It’s not like I stole it or anything.”
“Your employer has been using those items to locate Newcomers and murder them,” George told him plainly.
“No.” Pickett shook his head, his mouth pulled down into a frown. “I’m not messed up with anybody’s murder—I don’t do shit like that.”
“You may not,” Sikes said, “but the slag who hired you does.” He was pleased at the shocked frown Pickett shot at him via the rearview mirror. “You’ve been getting used by an Overseer, Darren. He thinks you’re just some dumb tert, and you’ve been proving him right at every turn by running back and forth with his packages like a carrier pigeon.”
“I’m not working for a slag.”
“Prove it,” Sikes countered. “Take us to your drop-off point.”
Pickett didn’t answer right away but pressed down the gas and started the van moving even though the light was red again. “I’ll take you there, but it ain’t gonna tell you much.” He swung onto a wide thoroughfare, pulling a narrow frown. “I mean, what the hell would a slag be doing at the zoo?”
“The zoo?”
Pickett nodded, and Sikes was too busy squinting across the darkness at the entrance to worry about yanking on his rattail. “I leave the packages right here by the gate, then drive off. I guess after that he comes to get them.”
George seemed to be having a lot more luck scanning the gloom. “So you’ve never actually seen him?”
Pickett shook his head, and Sikes added, “We’ve been over all this before.”
“So you don’t know for certain that your employer isn’t Tenctonese?”
“And you don’t know for certain that he is.” Pickett tugged the package out of George’s hands, prying open his door. “I’ll drop it off—you’ll see.”
As he hopped out into the night, Sikes strained to keep his eyes on Pickett’s lanky figure. It wasn’t easy, what with all the outbuildings, fences, and trees in the way. “This is a pretty weird place to be hiding,” Sikes admitted to his partner. “Maybe we’re wrong.”
George shook his head, expression grim with concentration. “We’re not wrong.” He glanced away from Pickett only after the Purist tossed the package into the grass beside the driveway and started back for the van. “Vegas and the levpa need raw meat and warm housing. Where else could they find both without attracting attention? This is really a very clever location for him.” George slipped his hand around the handle on the passenger side door.
Startled, Sikes lunged between the seats to catch at his coat sleeve. “What are you doing?”
“Getting out.” George’s eyes in the darkness seemed honestly confused. “Someone has to stay to see who comes to collect the package, and Pickett’s already told us he’s expected to drive away.”
Sikes grumbled, jerking a thumb toward their returning driver. “And what am I supposed to do with the lipless wonder meanwhile?”
“Drive around the block with him.” George opened his door even as Pickett climbed in the driver’s side. Sikes didn’t like the way the Purist glanced hopefully around the interior, as though expecting his passengers to both pile out and leave him. “When you get back, we’ll compare notes and decide what to do from there.”
Something about this division of labor made Sikes’s stomach itch with unhappiness, but he couldn’t think of anything to reasonably object to, so said nothing. He waited until George had crawled out into a copse of low-hanging greenery, then forced himself to turn away and thump a fist on the back of Pickett’s seat. “You heard him,” he grumbled. “Start driving.”
Pickett sniffed and put the car in gear. “You know, this is really beyond the call of duty in my role as a Purist—”
“Shut up.”
The road circumnavigating the zoo didn’t make a block like any Sikes had ever seen. It looped and banked, but never made an honest corner, and at least twice the stop signs they either ran or passed seemed uncertain which avenue they were supposed to service. There was little traffic, and even less light, with the thick, skeletal remains of trees hugging up close to the road on one side, the tall chain-link fence marking the boundary of the zoo on the other. Sikes found himself studying every wind-tossed tree limb, every flicker of shadow, wondering if he’d
truly be able to recognize the levpa’s outline against the makeup of earthly nature. The thought alone set his heart to pounding, and he slipped the plastic pistol out of his pocket like a cheap talisman, its tear-flavored water his only hope.
When they finally circled back to the service entrance where they’d begun, Sikes didn’t even realize it until Pickett slowed to a stop near the same NO PARKING sign with the same corner curled back by some careless driver long ago. Sikes squinted to try and see the package where Pickett had left it in the grass.
“Well, either way, I’m right.” The Purist sounded ridiculously smug. “Either the guy paying me is your normal slag-hating Purist or he’s a slag like you say, and I’m right that they all think and act just the same.”
Sikes twisted away from the window, scowling through the darkness into Pickett’s beady eyes. “What are you talking about?”
Yellowed teeth flashed palely as Pickett grinned and pointed toward the bushes by the side of the road. “Your annoying alien partner.” Sikes tried to find George’s pink face in the foliage, and it took him a moment to realize why he couldn’t, and what it meant.
Someone had come to fetch the package for Ross Vegas. And now, just like the package, George was gone.
C H A P T E R 2 0
SIKES WAS GOING to kill him.
Five minutes after Pickett’s van had driven away, George watched the stocky figure of Ross Vegas emerge from the zoo and knew he had to follow him back inside. It wasn’t instinctive anger that drove him, although he’d certainly been buffeted by it when he saw the kleezantsun. It wasn’t the knowledge that his partner, as infuriated as he might be, would almost certainly have done the same thing if he’d been here. It was the simple fact that if George didn’t move soon, he’d freeze to death inside this cold and dripping screen of evergreens. As long as he had to move, he might as well track the Overseer at the same time.