Forgery of the Phoenix

by Michael Angel

  “No need to be shy,” McClatchy said, with a short bark of a laugh. “Introduce yourselves. And be polite. Remember, so far as I’m concerned, Dayna’s a very special person.”

  “You’re all heart, Bob,” I said, careful to keep my tone neutral.

  “Watch it, Chrissie,” he said, with a warning shake of the finger. “You don’t want to use up all your goodwill in a single meeting.”

  “Really, now, there’s no need to be so blunt,” the older of the two men said. His voice was smooth and smoky as old Scotch. “I know that I’ve been looking forward to meeting Ms. Chrissie, given everything you’ve told us about her.”

  The second man fixed his preternaturally light-colored eyes on me. If the first man’s voice was velvet, then this one’s was like a handful of gravel. “I’m afraid that I’m not impressed.”

  His companion chuckled. “Courtesy is never unrewarded, Damon. In fact, I’ve got a feeling that we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other, so we ought to at least trade information.”

  To my surprise, the two men each pulled out a business card. I took each in turn and gave them a careful once-over before putting them into my pocket. I looked at the younger man’s card first.

  Damon Riaga Harrison – Senior Security Consultant, Crossbow Consulting.

  The other man’s card was only slightly more illuminating.

  Grayson Archer – President and Chief Executive Officer, Crossbow Consulting.

  “I’m sorry that I don’t have any cards on me, Mister Archer,” I said, before shooting a quick glance at McClatchy. “As you know, I was called over rather urgently.”

  McClatchy snorted. “The only way to get your attention sometimes, Chrissie. You’re quite the busy little bee.”

  “It’s perfectly understandable,” Archer said smoothly. “Compared to other people in her department, her caseload is higher than average. Combine that with a one-third time status, and you’ll get someone who’s always on the run.”

  That was illuminating. Archer just showed me a whole bunch of his cards. He had access to my employment files and time status, for starters. He had also set himself up to play ‘Good Cop’ to McClatchy’s ‘Bad Cop’.

  “I wonder,” Harrison added ominously, as if talking to himself. “Where is she running? To something, from something? Or just running to ground like prey? Prey, hiding from the predator she fears most.”

  Just great. Now I had a Good Cop, a Bad Cop, and a ‘Psycho Cop’ to deal with.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I desperately tried to change the subject.

  “Wait, I think I know where I saw the two of you,” I said quickly. “During the shooting, you were in the back. You pulled people to safety. I guess we were lucky that Bob hired you back then.”

  “Actually, he hadn’t,” Archer explained. “That was pure luck. Harrison and I had just arrived that morning for a conference with both Mister McClatchy and Assistant Chief Sims.”

  “They were giving us their sales pitch,” McClatchy added. “Of course, Lucas Sims isn’t in a position to purchase anything now. But I am.”

  “We were offering our services both for private security as well as some of our new tracking equipment,” Archer clarified. “Crossbow Consulting does a little of everything. We provide bodyguard services, long-distance surveillance, we even develop security-related technology.”

  “Yes, yes, very impressive. But I doubt Dayna could afford more than an hour or two of your services.”

  Grayson Archer flashed a disarming smile at me. “Depends on how high the lady’s credit limit is. Or how much debt she’s in.”

  Yeah, if he only knew. In this world my credit was fine, if unexceptional. In the other, I’d taken on more debt than anyone had in more than seven centuries. And I hadn’t even gotten to spend a cent of it.

  McClatchy made a dismissive snort. “Never mind that. Is your report on the Cielo case complete?”

  “Not yet, we’re waiting for some lab results.” I handed McClatchy my folder. “This is all we’ve got for the moment.”

  Bob skimmed the report, what little there was of it, and a scowl built like a thunderhead on his heavyset face. “That’s it? That’s all you have for me?”

  “As I said, we’re awaiting lab results.”

  “And these ‘lab results’ are going to magically produce the suspect, I guess,” he scoffed, handing the folder over to Archer. “You’re the one who prides themselves on their work, Chrissie. And yet, you never identified the John Doe we found at the downtown construction site. Nor did you solve the break-in at the Natural History Museum. Maybe you can shed some light on another mystery. Why do we keep paying you?”

  Okay, that stung. McClatchy knew how to hit me below the belt. Whatever else, I was damned good at my job, and in both of the cases Bob cited, the irony was that I had solved them. Only there was no way anyone would ever know, because the trails led deep into Andeluvia and the Reykajar griffin aerie.

  Grayson Archer rubbed his chin with his fingers, the way Galen sometimes did when he was thinking about things. He cleared his throat and spoke up next.

  “I for one would like to hear what theories Dayna has come up with.”

  So, that was the next step to win me over to Grayson’s Good Cop role. Build rapport with me by using my first name. Soon he’d start pretending to side with me against McClatchy so that I’d trust him even more. It was insidious. To make matters worse, I actually appreciated him giving me an ‘out’ to talk about the case instead of listening to McClatchy’s sniping.

  “In the first place, I need to establish beyond a reasonable doubt whether the shooter was this Cielo character,” I began. “Alternatively, I need to know if it was someone else, or someone else working in conjunction with Cielo. You’ll notice in my section of the report that I did find some shed hair in the room. If it belongs to anyone else besides that gang enforcer, we’ll know about it.”

  “Someone working in conjunction with Cielo?” Bob asked skeptically. “No one seems to have figured out how one person could have vanished so quickly. Let alone two.”

  “One person did vanish that quickly,” Archer pointed out. “Cielo took the quickest way down from that apartment window. Maybe he set up the weapon, the hypothetical second person killed him, and then proceeded with the shooting.”

  “That’s ridiculous, and something I’d expect from Chrissie, not you,” McClatchy shot back. “But fine. Say you’re right. How did this second person vanish into thin air?”

  Harrison let out the grunt of an amused Brahma bull. “Maybe it was magic.”

  That got a laugh out of Archer. “Maybe it was! Dayna, did you find any pointy wizard caps to close this case to my client’s satisfaction? Maybe an enchanted mirror and a cauldron as well?”

  “No,” I said, resisting the urge to grit my teeth. “I didn’t find anything like that. But even if wizardry doesn’t exist in this world, there is such a thing as stage magic. That’s what I think is going on here.”

  I was theorizing on the fly here, but I figured this was as good a shot as any. Plus, it would make me proof against anything that Detective Vega might claim that Esteban and I were talking about. My reputation might come out muddied, but at least Alanzo wouldn’t get splattered in the process.

  “Go on,” Archer urged. “Let’s hear your magic theory. Sometimes we get surprises from the most unlikely of places, you know.”

  “I’ve seen stage magicians perform actions that look impossible,” I said. “Say, pulling colored handkerchiefs out of a hat that’s sitting across a room. It’s usually done with a piece of fishing line, or a material called ‘magician’s thread’. Someone could have stationed themselves outside the room, tugged on a line attached to the trigger, and then pulled it free right as the LAPD arrived.”

  “They’d still have to get out of the building,” McClatchy pointed out.

  “Yes, but they’d have at least a minute or two head start on the police. Detective Esteban s
ent his partner, Detective Vega, up to the roof. But the roof access was at the far end of the hall, and Vega had to break the fire door down because it had rusted shut. Someone could have exited the roof in that time frame, jumped to the next building over, and gone to ground. We didn’t secure the neighboring buildings for at least a half-hour. Plenty of time to mingle with the civilians coming out of there and slip past any street barrier we put up.”

  Archer threw McClatchy a look. “She’s not half as incompetent as you make out.”

  Harrison’s voice was like ice. “Still leaves the other half, though.”

  Archer let out a sigh. “Doesn’t the client need your services elsewhere?”

  With that, Harrison drew himself up. He traded a nod with McClatchy. Then he gave me one last measure of stink-eye and left the room. The door thudded closed behind him.

  “What else makes you think your stage magic theory works?” McClatchy asked. “Did you find any traces of this ‘magic thread’?”

  I shook my head. “But I did find a scrap of glass or plastic in the room. Maybe the test results will tell us something new.”

  “Her theory might be possible,” Archer added, as he handed the folder back. “After all, someone could have stretched a line from the trigger to the outside window. It’s not that far from where the gun was placed to the front edge of the roof. Without broken glass and a polished brass underside to the window frame, there wouldn’t be any sharp edges to cut the line.”

  I blinked. Something there surprised me. I tucked that away for later examination as McClatchy began to bluster again.

  “Theory or not,” he insisted, “Someone is out to get me, Chrissie. That’s why I hired Crossbow’s people. That someone must be someone who stands against the Monseigneur’s organization.”

  It was all I could do not to let my jaw drop. From the corner of my eye, I saw Grayson Archer roll his eyes. The classic sign of a person all but shouting, ‘there he goes again’. Obviously, McClatchy had remembered something of Destry’s mind-meddling, and he wasn’t hiding it like he was before.

  That alone shook me to my core.

  “You didn’t think I would forget, did you?” McClatchy went on. “The Monseigneur revealed the truth to me, that I was destined for this position, this power.”

  I decided to take a gamble in front of Archer. Maybe I could pretend that I was playing along with tolerating this delusion. “If you remember your...ah, Monseigneur, then you must remember that you were supposed to leave me alone.”

  A barely-sane chuckle. “I had to leave you alone...because the Monseigneur hadn’t prepared me to deal with you yet. You didn’t want me in this position because you’re aligned against me. And now I can deal with you at my leisure.”

  My mind flashed on what Bob had said a few months ago: Once I get what I want, I’ll pick my own time to burn all that you love to ashes.

  And that finally ticked me off. The kettle that held my anger in check finally boiled over. In fact, it had boiled over and vaporized in the full blast of a phoenix’s flame.

  “You really think you’ve got me now, don’t you?” I said, and my voice fairly dripped with acid. “You think I only have two choices ahead of me. Either to take the shovelfuls of crap you’re dishing out passively, or fight you and get crushed.”

  McClatchy actually sat back and glowered at me. His expression remained completely unreadable as I went on. I felt reckless, and the words I’d long suppressed inside forced themselves out one after another in a rush.

  “As far as I’m concerned, you’re a maniac with an overblown sense of his own importance in the universe. And you forgot one little thing. I’m a private contractor. I don’t have a pension, a promised promotion, or anything else tying me here.”

  I slammed the folder I’d brought down on the coffee table with a slap.

  “You’ve gone off your rocker,” I finished, as I stood, shaking with anger and relief. “And you know what? I don’t care. You can’t do anything to me, Bob. You know why? Because I QUIT!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  My declaration hung in the air between us like an echo.

  Right then, McClatchy did something I didn’t expect.

  He started laughing.

  “I’m amazed,” he said, chortling. “You never told me that you had a talent for standup comedy, Chrissie.”

  I unclenched my jaw to say, “I wasn’t joking.”

  “Oh, you were.” He shook a finger good-naturedly at me. “You see, you’re not leaving work anytime soon. Not until you’ve played my game for a little while longer.”

  Now Archer started chuckling along with McClatchy. The kindly light he’d put into his eyes had vanished like the moon behind dark clouds. The sound of the two men laughing rattled me. I turned to leave.

  “I’ll expect a full report from you,” McClatchy called. “As soon as you get those all-important lab results back, of course!”

  I pushed through the doors and stalked my way through the reception area without looking back. I repeated jabbed the button of the elevator with my finger. What I really wanted to do was smash it with my fist, but I rode herd on my emotions well enough to keep from doing something extra-stupid.

  But I’m sure not going to play whatever game he has in mind, I thought, as I rode the elevator car down. Let Bob go crazy on his own. He can pay Archer to babysit whoever he gets to replace me!

  Still fuming, I stalked out into the garage. I didn’t care if the lab reports were sitting on my desk when I got back. Not even if they were tied up in a nice red bow. I was done with the OME, the LAPD, all of it. The only thing I was going to do was file the paperwork to resign, and so much for giving a two-week notice.

  I made my way around the last structural concrete pillar towards my car. Whoever had installed the lighting had done a rotten job. Either the power supply or the wiring must have been loose, as one of the banks of fluorescent bulbs flashed intermittently.

  My shoes made a squeak on the concrete as I froze in place.

  Damon Harrison sat on the hood of my car.

  He balanced a crowbar on the tip of his index finger.

  An amused look crossed his face as he looked up at the bar as it reflected the flickering light. In any other circumstances, witnessing someone’s skill at balance and control would be a pleasant discovery. Here, it filled me with dread.

  “I used to be able to balance things like this on my nose,” Harrison said, his voice a quiet rasp. “My mother didn’t approve.”

  “I’m surprised,” I said.

  “That I can do this?” He tossed the bar up and then caught it in his hand. “Or were you going to do the predictable thing and say that you were surprised I had a mother?”

  Dammit, I was actually going to say that. So I went with the next item that popped into my head.

  “Maybe I’m just surprised that someone with your skills would work for McClatchy. Isn’t it kind of a step down for you?”

  A mirthless chuckle. “Your judgement is suspect on many things, Dayna Chrissie. McClatchy might end up useful. For starters, he’s told me a lot more about you. Your background. Your history with him. You’ve pulled a lot of what he calls ‘fast ones’ on him. So he’s asked me to convey a pair of messages. Here’s number one: that if you give him a reason, he’ll hurt you. Bad.”

  My mouth went dry as my eyes flicked back to the crowbar. Harrison had begun tapping the chiseled point against the open palm of his free hand.

  “Is that what you’re here for?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “You’re worried that I’ll use this on you,” Harrison said, through a positively crocodilian smile. His teeth were long and white as piano keys. Then he slid off the hood and stood before me. My car’s shocks made a little sproink sound as the front end sprang back up.

  An errant thought crossed my mind. How much muscle did this guy have under that suit?

  All I knew was that I really didn’t like the way this was going. My s
houlder holster was still tucked safely away in the trunk. My best bet might be to avoid antagonizing the man for now.

  I swallowed hard. “Yes, I’m worried you’ll use it. You worry me, Harrison.”

  “Good. You’re smarter than you look.”

  He gave a curious look at the crowbar, as if surprised that it was still in his left hand. He continued to speak in a completely normal tone. One where he could have been trying to decide what to order for breakfast.

  “I could beat you bloody with this. Use the hooked end to pry an eyeball from a socket, say, or the chisel part to knock loose a few teeth. Yes, that would be very appealing to me.”

  “Probably not a good idea, though,” I said faintly. “Anyone could show up here to park, or to pick up their car.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not a good idea, true. But only because your Police Chief asked me to send a ‘measured’ message. There’s a difference between a client’s request and my...personal preferences. Oh, and I almost forgot the second item McClatchy wanted me to tell you. You’re going to need to take your car into the shop and get it fixed.”

  I blinked. “But...there’s nothing’s wrong–”

  Damon Harrison’s arm came down in a single, fluid motion.

  The CRUNCH of broken glass echoed across the garage as he shattered my driver’s side headlamp. He flipped the crowbar up, twirled it in the air, and caught it in his right hand. He brought the tool down a second time and destroyed my passenger side headlamp.

  Harrison hadn’t even looked down to where he’d swung. His eyes had been locked on my face, seeking something specific in my expression. My emotions swung from frigid blasts of fear to blazing anger. My fingers twitched, wanting ever so much to wrap around a weapon’s trigger. And for the first time in a long while, I wished that I’d set the car’s alarm.

  “He’s going insane, you know,” Harrison remarked.