Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves (26 page)

He sensed a hook in that offer. "I have my life to rebuild. I know it's not as nice as yours, but it's what I have."

She wasn't ready to give up. "I could get you put on retainer. Money would help your search."

Sure, money would help, but the firm would want to record it ail, and that would mean that John would be back in the datanet where he could be spotted by cruising cyber cowboys. Covered by an alias or not, he would be making trails that could lead someone to him. He doubted that Dr. Spae's firm had the resources, or the desire, to mask everything that belonged to him. Certainly they couldn't cover him against a megacorp like Mitsutomo. While everything indicated that Mitsutomo's interest in him had faded, he wanted to be sure before he crawled out of the woodwork.

"I appreciate the offer, but I don't think I can accept." So she wouldn't be too put off, he added, "Just yet."

"Think about the future, John. You could make a difference."

"There are a few more things I'd like to get settled before I look to the future."

She sighed, shook her head in resignation. "You've got the Romer now. The communications package has a direct line to my system. Use it if you wise up."

He was impressed that she didn't try any of the levers she might have used on him, knowing what she did. "I'll be in touch, Doctor."

"Try not to get burned," she said as she left.

He would do his best. He'd already been burned enough.

Holger left the city not by leaving the city, but by leaving himself. The solution, once he thought of it, was so simple,
so
elegant, that he had seized upon it at once. Holger Kun, agent of Department M, put down all those things that marked him. Everything he had so carefully scavenged from
(he
Department's car, everything he had carried with him to that fateful rendezvous with a certain specialist, he dumped in an abandoned warehouse on the West Side. He shed even l
he
clothes he wore, replacing them with items bought in a secondhand store on Wickenden Street. Everything but what they had put inside him. He couldn't leave those things behind—not that he wouldn't have if he could have, but some things were beyond his power.

Evolve or die,
Mannheim had said. It wasn't the sort of thing Mannheim usually said. Holger had always thought it must be a quote. It fit now.

His world had changed. Again. Changed so that he wasn't a part of it anymore, not in any way that he understood. All because of a specialist, a person who could touch the magic. He hated magic. The magic leaking into the world was at the heart of the problems. Again. Magic had killed the old world and left chaotic nonsense in its place. As long as magic remained, the world would be nonsense. Magic trapped him in this city and it would kill him if he let it.

Evolve. Or die.

He'd never much cared for the thought of dying.

He would sacrifice himself if needed.

Once, yes. Now, he didn't think so. Who, after all, defined what was
needed?

He knew for certain something that he needed. He needed to stop hearing the voices. They didn't belong in his head, but they were there nonetheless, a part of him, apart from him. An accommodation was necessary.

He was learning ways to deal with them. Already he knew better than to go near the place where
she
worked. Just like he knew better than to think of
her
name. The voices were quieter when he didn't think in certain ways. By not thinking of
her
name, he didn't have to listen to their lectures, didn't have to reach their conclusions.

But avoidance had its limits.

"Wake up! We cannot avoid responsibility forever," the poster said as he passed.

He kept walking, getting out of its sensor range. He'd listened to the whole message the first time he'd triggered it, intrigued by the deep, compelling voice. He liked the message too. The green, growing world in the visual was beautiful. He agreed that the world needed to be looked after. Humankind had been given the world in trust and had betrayed that trust. Humankind had to face its responsibility, to step up to the challenge of saving the world, to do something, though the poster voice was vague on actual details. A stirring message. The Pend Foundation had chosen their spokesman well. The speaker's voice made Holger want to listen, but in the end he knew that the message wasn't for him. How could he save the world if he couldn't save himself?

Time was passing and that was good. Each day was a new day, a day in which no one found him. Not the hunters from the Department that he knew were out there, not the things from the otherworld that lurked about hunting whatever they could, not the police, not even
her.
They were looking, he knew, looking for the old Holger. The new Holger was camouflaged, invisible, a part of the city, not apart from it. A day in which he called no attention to his presence was the best of days.

Evolution, one day at a time.

His memories were jumbled and it seemed that the more he searched them, sifting for truth, the more he became contused as to what was truth and what was not. When he couldn't stand it anymore, he got out and walked around the East Side. He'd made the Hill his home turf because he liked its liveliness, and because he couldn't imagine the craziness taking hold anywhere near the great university that dominated the East Side.

He favored a neighborhood just north of the old courthouse, near the design school. It was a neighborhood that didn't know if it was on its way up or down, and it had two lives, one for the day and another for the night. That fit him, since he had two parts to his new life. By day he wandered on the streets, anonymous among those with whom he walked. Sometimes he panhandled—-to keep the image up; he wasn't yet reduced to relying on it for his simple needs— but mostly he just watched the people and the locale, relishing his nearness to the ordinary, everyday lives around him. By night things were different. A different sort of life emerged after dark, a rougher, less friendly, but no less ordinary life. Sometimes, though, he caught hints of the extraordinary—and when that happened he retreated. At those times, impelled by some atavistic instinct, he climbed up into the bones of the great structure growing on the edge of his chosen ground.

That building was going to be enormous when it was finished. Its girders already touched the sky and its foundation sprawled over several city blocks. It was not a well-liked place by some. On most days defeated preservationists still protested its construction, skirmishing against it with placards and with stickers slapped against the construction fence. That fence surrounded the construction site like the curtain wall of a castle. He liked that. By night, the unfinished building was his haven, his castle keep, the only good place.

He was not supposed to be there, of course, but he didn't let that bother him. The guards that CaranelliCo hired to watch their project were not the best—easy for Holger to avoid. The adjunct security systems were almost as easy to spoof. He'd found the places where neither live nor electronic eyes watched, and there he took his refuge.

From his unwatched sanctuaries hidden among the great structure's bones, he could keep watch. The building would one day dominate the skyline of the East Side, rising as it did against the side of the Hill and stretching taller than the land form from which it thrust. From its heights he could see most of the city. Everything was all laid out before him like a situation map. And he studied that map, looking for the clue that would reveal his way to escape. And he watched the city because, while he watched, he wasn't sleeping.

Eventually, inevitably, he would sleep, and sleeping, dream. He didn't much care for his dreams. They were ram- / bling torments wherein reality changed as he watched, helpless to affect anything. A normal enough situation in dreams, but these changes were different, deeper, more real and profound. He hated being helpless.

He tried not to sleep much.

There was one of the Pend Foundation's talking posters on the hoarding around the construction site. Sometimes, late at night, while he was watching, someone or something would trigger the poster. He would hear its message drifting in the quiet air and filling him with memories of better times, better lives.

But how much was memory and how much was dream?

That was the essential problem that faced him. He had to sort the one from the other, and both of them from the lies. Yet each day the distinctions seemed less clear. He had no benchmarks, no checks, nothing to hold on to. He envied the conviction he heard in Mr. Pend Foundation's voice. He'd had conviction once, in the old days when memories were not traitors.

The poster was talking again. The air was clear and carried the sound perfectly—directly to him, it seemed.
Mistrust coincidence,
Mannheim had said. Hadn't he? If he hadn't, he should have. Was this his clue? Holger listened, taking in the message. The message was no different than before, but tonight it touched him. He found himself hoping that when he finally slept, he would dream of a green and pleasant land, hut it was a hope without faith. So he sat and he cried, listening to that sincere voice, until finally he slept.

"You wanted to see us, Captain," Manny said.

"Sit down," Captain Hancock told them.

Charley Gordon closed the door behind him as he entered the captain's office. Sitting down was the cue that something unpleasant was going to happen. With the door cutting off the continual clamor of the squad room, the office was as quiet as a funeral parlor. Hancock barely let him get seated.

"I've got a new case for you. Tabloids are calling it the Holyoke Haunting. Falerio and Vuong did the prelim, but they're overloaded, so it's going to you two."

"Like we ain't overloaded, too," Manny complained.

Hancock ignored him. "I want you to get out there this morning and do a face-to-face with the eyewitnesses, especially this Thomas Rudge. He's got a history of hoaxes. I think we can get this one buried if you two dig deep enough."

This wasn't quiet room stuff. What was going on? "Come on, Captain, we've got real work to do. We don't need to be cleaning up Falerio and Vuong's messes. I just got a lead on the Sandowski homicide that—"

"That you can pass on," Hancock finished for him. "The Sandowski homicide is out of your hands."

What? A slow roller churned Charley's stomach acid. "What about the Marino case?"

"Not yours anymore."

Shit! He had only told Hancock about the connection between the killings last week. "It's all of them, isn't it?"

"List of reassigned cases is already in your boxes," Hancock told them. "Why?" Manny sounded offended. "You can't do this," Charley said, wishing it were true. Hancock sat back and glowered. "I don't need any shit from either of you. You've got other cases assigned to you. You'll work on them. You'll work on this Holyoke thing. You'll work on whatever I goddamn tell you to work on. Insubordinate cops get suspended."

Who was going to suspend the monster? The thing that had come off the
Wisteria
was somewhere in New England. Wherever it had come from, it was
here,
and that made it Special Investigations's problem. SIU had made it Charley's problem; a problem Charley hadn't yet solved, and a problem that was still loose and still killing.

"You can't do this," Charley said again. "Captain, we've got a killer out there."

"And there are competent people to chase him down," Hancock retorted. "You can't save the world by yourself, Gordon."

Hell, he wasn't trying to save the
world.
"They haven't got the history on this case." "They will when you turn over your files. Which you
will

do."

Charley didn't like it, didn't like it at all. Something wasn't kosher. "This isn't your idea. Why are you doing

this?"

"Orders from upstairs," Hancock said, stony-faced. "That's it?" Manny asked with appropriate scorn. Hancock nodded. "That's all I've got to say. Close your investigations down and log all the data."

"And what's going to happen to that data?" Charley wanted to know. Some of it came from proprietary sources. He'd be burning bridges to those sources if he let the stuff go blindly.

"That's not your concern."

"It's the feds," Manny said, leaving Charley to add, "It's Fletcher horning in, isn't it?"

"The case isn't yours anymore. So stop worrying about it. In fact, you'd both be smart to forget about it altogether."

"I can't forget we've got a killer sitting in our backyard, « looking for somebody to suck dry," Charley said.

"You think I like this?" Hancock didn't look happy, but he didn't look like he was going to back down either. "Listen, | Gordon. You put a lot of backs up last year with that verrie 1 stunt over Providence. Buzzing the damn city with a flight of corporate Mambas! We don't need you pulling any more crazy tricks like that, got it? A lot of people are still unhappy with you. You understand? You make waves now, you're history. You'll take Salazar down with you. That what you want? It's one frigging case! And not your only one either! Forget your killer. It's good advice, Gordon. Good for your health. Take it."