Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves (16 page)

"Do you have a specialty I don't know about, Dr. Spae?" She looked confused, so he added, "I mean, just why did LRP put you on this particular job?"

"Armianco's request. They want to know if there was a connection between this and what happened aboard the
Wisteria."

Charley considered popping another antacid tab. "Aboard the
Wisteria?

"The ship with no crew. Surely you heard about it? It got a lot of media coverage. Armianco is a major investor in the shipping firm that ran the
Wisteria."

Yeah, Charley had heard about the
Wisteria;
he'd heard more about the crewless ship than he'd wanted to. For one thing, Caspar had opened the Modus 273 file with the incident, the same file Caspar had logged this crime to. Clearly ('aspar wasn't the only one thinking along those lines.

The
Wisteria
incident had been bad enough as an isolated occurrence. The public story had been that the ship came in crewless. Another mystery of the sea. Only the
Wisteria
hadn't come in crewless. When the ship's autopilot started asking the San Francisco Port Authority for docking instructions, there had been a crew aboard. A dead crew. Fearing some unknown plague, Port Authority had gotten the lid on fast and, for a miracle, the lid had stayed on, and the real story hadn't gotten to the media. If this incident was connected to the
Wisteria,
the odds of the lid staying on had just dropped dramatically.

"I can appreciate Armianco's interest," he said. "
Have
you found a connection between what happened here and what happened on the
Wisteria?"

"God, I hope not." She sounded like she meant it.

"Which suggests that you
have
seen some sort of connection."

"Pray I'm wrong. I could be, you know. The feel isn't quite the same."

"You're not making me happy, Dr. Spae. I'd like more substantive answers."

"I'd really rather do some more work before I say anything."

"What sort of work?"

She started to say something, then caught herself. After a moment of consideration, she said, "Tests."

"Since Armianco has called us in, we get priority on all forensics."

"That won't be a problem, Detective."

What the hell kind of tests was she talking about? Had to be some kind of mumbo-jumbo. If there was one thing he hated more than dealing with the bad ones, it was dealing with people who thought they had an inside line on wherever the hell the weirdness came from. She was losing points with him. He remembered her hints that she knew something. Thinking about the evidence she might have destroyed or compromised, he asked, "Have you started any of these tests yet?"

She shook her head and waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the john. "I had a little problem."

Have a problem, make a problem. "You should have checked in with the department before you came in here."

"Armianco cleared us."

"But not with the department."

"You lose, Gordon," said another voice. Beryle's voice. "News from the Edge" Beryle, the damned tabloid chronicler who just loved to make Charley's stomach do its tricks. Face half obscured by a recording rig, Beryle was entering the bedroom from an adjoining room.
Shit! What's
he
doing here? This was a crime scene!

"Notice is on file," Beryle said cheerily. He didn't even look at the bodies as he passed them; he must have already recorded his fill of them. "All nice and legal."

Brazen as ever, Beryle walked right up to Charley. The red "recording" light gleamed evilly from his rig. Charley counted it a grace that the "broadcast" light was dark. Beryle smiled a false friendly smile. "I have exclusive media rights to Dr. Spae's discoveries, and since she's authorized by Armianco to be here, so am I. Finding that the Special Investigations top cop is involved in this is a plus. A real validator. Want to make a statement for the audience?"

"Shut that damned thing off."

"So, you're saying that the police want to cover up the supernatural aspects of this crime."

Beryle's grin invited smashing, but not while he was recording. "This matter is under investigation. There are no conclusions as yet."

"But lots of suspicions, eh? Tell me, Detective Gordon, is it true that the federal government has ordered you to shut down any exposure of this crime?"

"The feds have got nothing to do with this."

"So you're denying that the government was involved in the summoning of whatever did this?"

"Why do I bother? You'll twist whatever I say. Try this! You're nothing more than sensation-seeking pond scum. Is that quotable enough? Shut the damned rig off!"

"If I don't?"

"I'll have you jammed."

"That's suppression of the press," Beryle said jauntily.

"The man said shut it off," Manny said by way of announcing his arrival. He ripped the rig off Beryle's head, none too gently. Beryle's style of sensational journalism hadn't made him any friends in SIU.

"That's very expensive private property you're holding, ape," Beryle said, rubbing his ear.

"You'll get it back when we're through." Manny stuffed the rig into his coat pocket.

"Now we're really talking suppression. You're going to see a suit on this."

"I got insurance."

"It ain't gonna be enough. Detective Salazar, isn't it? I want to make sure the name is correct on the writ."

Manny was spelling his name for Beryle as Charley went back into the bedroom. Nothing had changed. Mr. Marino and his party girls were still as dead as they had been ten minutes ago. Charley punched in a call to the crime scene unit and told them to bring their SI kit. It was official now. SIU business. He had started to make his next call when Dr. Spae joined him. She avoided looking at the bodies.

"Detective Gordon?" Her expression was earnest. "I'd like to cooperate on this."

"That Armianco's position?" "I don't know about them. It's my position."

Interesting. "I'd be very happy to have you cooperate, Dr. Spae. I like cooperation a lot. You willing to sink Beryle's tapes?"

She sighed. "David can be difficult to deal with."

Charley had experience with that.

"I'll do what I can," she said.

"And Beryle's suppression suit?"

"There won't be any suit if I have anything to say about it. I think you would like to see whatever did this put down as quickly and quietly as I would."

That so? Very interesting.
"You're talking like you've got a lead."

"It's more that I see a possibility. We need to talk."

"I'll be glad to."
It had better not be smoke.
"Soon as I make a call."

Her brow furrowed. "To whom?"

"New federal ruling," he told her. "Everything we log in about cases like this goes upstairs."

She didn't look happy about that. Well enough, he wasn't happy about it either.

CHAPTER

13

John knelt on the verge by the magic pool, the disk Shahotain had given him lying before him. Try as he might, he could conjure no image from the pool. All he saw there was his own reflection, an elven face that had no connection to Marianne Reddy.

Was that his answer? After all, what connection could an elven prince have with a mainline straightline corporate pensioner? Only the bond of love, for a woman who had raised him as her son. Just the guilt of abandonment, for giving up so easily when he tried to discover what had happened to her. She believed John dead. He'd told himself that he had stayed away for her safety. At first that had made sense, what with Mitsutomo so interested in finding John so they could get at Bear; but Mitsutomo was out of the picture now, and what had John done? Sure, he'd visited their old apartment and nosed around a few databases, but he hadn't gotten anywhere and he'd let his efforts peter out. Before he'd left for the otherworld he'd spent more time chasing after Spillway Sue and studying magic with Dr. Space.

John felt like a shit.

Had Shahotain given him this disk just to torment him? No, Shahotain was hard, but he wasn't needlessly cruel. He must have had a purpose. He had often said that John wasn't committed to the Way, and that he was still too attached to the sunlit world. Maybe this was a test, a test to see if John could let go of his past that he might embrace his future.

Maybe Bennett's gift had something of the same purpose. It was another tie to Faery, and another way to connect John to him. Had he known what Shahotain was going to give John? John wouldn't put it past him. Here are your mothers, John, pick one. Pick a life. Your choice, no pressure. But you can't have both, because they come from different worlds.

Did it have to be that way? Two mothers, one mortal and gone from his life, and the other of whom he knew nothing. Well, he had two fathers, too, one an elven prince and the other gone from his life before he had a chance to know him. He hadn't realized before the odd symmetry of that: two mothers and two fathers and one of each unknown. His sets of parents made a strange reflection, almost as strange as the still barely familiar face he saw mirrored in the pool. That face was his, but it wasn't the one he'd grown up with.

Was that reflection an answer, a sign that the John Reddy tie thought he'd been was gone, dissolved away in magic? He picked up the encased disk. Even the case reflected his elven visage.

"Your spells won't work on that, don't you know?"

Yuri? John turned his head. It was Yuri, no more than three yards away and leaning on a staff. John had been too wrapped in his thoughts to notice the urisk's arrival.

Pointing with his stick at the disk, Yuri said, "Dead, isn't it? Dead to magic."

"Nothing's dead to magic." That's what Shahotain said.

"Not dead?" Yuri tilted his head to look sidelong at the disk. "Maybe to a great one's magic—a truly great one—but to lesser folk dead enough. A thing of the sunlit world, isn't it? It doesn't belong here."

The disk that offered him a chance to reconnect with Marianne Reddy didn't belong here in the otherworld. With his longing to see her again, maybe John didn't belong here either. His gaze drifted again to the pool and to his image. An elf, no doubt about it, not a mall rat, or a collegiate fencer, or even a runaway and ganger. In the pool the reflections of stars glittered about his head like a crown of fire. He'd been told that he was a royal prince of elfland. As a child he'd dreamed of such a life. Here, it could be his. Would be his. Some of it already was. Here, his dreams were coming true. Maybe he
did
belong here after all.

So why couldn't he bring himself to toss the disk into the pool and be done with it?

"A surprise to see you here, isn't it, Great Jack?"

"Oh? And why is that?"

"It is the changeling way of things. Your life among the other great ones grows familiar, does it not? The lights are brighter, the music sharper and more poignant, the company more suitable to your needs and station. Is that not the way of it?"

Life at the keep
had
been more comfortable than he'd expected.

"A surprise, too, that you are not happy."

"That a personal insight, or just another part of the way of things?"

Yuri didn't respond.

John shifted his gaze from his reflection to Yuri. The urisk was half man, half goat, like some kind of DNA-fluxed chimera, neither one nor the other, but frozen in between, a bunch of bits and pieces that didn't quite blend. Sort of like John. No, that was wrong, John saw as he studied him. Yuri
did
manage to blend it all together. There was a solemn, if forlorn, peace about him, the sort of comfort and acceptance of his lot that John wished
he
knew how to find.

"How do you do it, Yuri?"

"Do What?"

"Find peace."

"Know my place, don't I?"

They were silent for a while, John thinking about just what his own place might be. It was the sort of companionable silence John had once shared with Faye. He hadn't seen her for some time, had been woefully neglectful. He wondered where she was, and in wondering, felt her presence. Nearby.

Yuri reacted to his start. Nodding knowingly as John scanned the nearby trees. "Here she came, to look in the pool. Strange, isn't it, to see a sprite sad?"

"Hush, Yuri," Faye said as she emerged from the shadows under the trees from which Yuri had once watched. "John doesn't need to hear that."

No, he didn't, but he had. He'd never intended to hurt her. It was just—well—

"You are coming into your estate," she said. "Your aura is much stronger. I'm very glad for you."

Her smile was radiant, forgiving and loving, and a balm to John's spirit, but then her presence had always had a soothing, reassuring effect on him. For reasons that he didn't understand, she was treating him better than he deserved. "Why?"