Skin of the Wolf

by Sam Cabot

  “It is terrible. It’s hard to believe. You only read about these things, you know? They happen in other people’s lives.”

  “I guess, not always.” An uncharacteristic pause; then, “So, is this it? For the damaged wood pieces, I mean?”

  “Of course, Morse. If there were other pieces, you think Estelle would have sent them to anyone but you?”

  “That’s lucky, I guess.”

  “Ah. You’re wondering about the Ohtahyohnee.”

  “Well, no one’s talking about anything else.”

  “It’s just fine. Have you seen it?”

  “No. I was going to come up when it’s on display. Now, if these kachinas have any chance of being ready for the auction I really do need to get to work.”

  “If you think you’ll have them tomorrow midday, I’ll come pick them up.”

  “They’ll be done by then, but I can have them delivered. You must be up to your ears this week.”

  “No, I’ll come. Estelle would feel better, I think. And there’s something else I want to talk to you about.”

  28

  Detective Matthew Framingham threw his pen down and rubbed his face. Nearly 5:00 a.m. He’d stayed in the squad room hoping for forensics on the Sotheby’s vic but so far, nothing. The ME was digging bullets out of a gangbanger when Brittany Williams was delivered, and though the rich-and-powerful thing bumped her to the head of the line, they weren’t about to push aside an open corpse. She’d be next, instead of next week, but it would still be hours.

  Framingham’s partner, Charlotte Hamilton, had gone home to sleep. “Jesus, Matt. A shift and a half already, not even our rotation, I’m dying here. We hit the heights, it’s enough for now.” Hitting the heights had involved rousting three of Brittany’s ex-boyfriends out of bed. All three turned out to have alibis, though, two of whom they’d also rousted out of the suspects’ beds. Whether the alibis were solid would require checking, but that was slow work. “Let Ostrander and Sun chase their tails for a while,” Hamilton said. “I’ll meet you back here at eight.”

  In retrospect, it had been a good idea. Hamilton, nine years his senior on the Job and three in Homicide, had a lot of good ideas. She was sharp-eyed, quick, and relentless as a headache. Framingham didn’t mind admitting she’d taught him a lot in the two months since his transfer. Any cop paying attention could learn from her, but the attitude in the squad room about being her partner was pretty much better you than me. That was because she had a short fuse and when it was lit she got up in your face. Framingham understood, though. All the Pocahontas shit. Long black hair, long legs, high cheekbones—she was one headband short of a corny image of an Indian princess. Which she’d told him Indians didn’t even really have. Growing up in New York, she’d learned to fight that battle in schoolyards. Framingham, a skinny, studious kid with, until he’d trained himself out of it, his expat parents’ Brit accent, frankly admired her for it.

  Her refusal to be put into that Indian box, though, explained what he considered her major flaw: her absolute denial, her positive mockery, of the idea that powers beyond the obvious might be at work sometimes, in some places. Indian stuff, shamans and medicine men and the Great Spirit, she wouldn’t even talk about. Okay, fine; that was her business and all that conjured up was Johnny Depp with that thing on his head. But Roswell, the grassy knoll, spy satellites? Different category entirely. Last year the NSA admitted to collecting citizens’ phone data, something Framingham had been warning people about for years. Hamilton gave him that one, but it didn’t do anything to bring her around. She wouldn’t concede the slightest possibility of any theory you couldn’t outright prove, wouldn’t consider ETs, a sixth sense, any paranormal phenomena whatsoever. Or conspiracies, even, and really, who had suffered more from lying, treacherous governments than her people?

  Hamilton’s disdain for the paranormal wasn’t affected by her own flashes of intuition. Framingham could tell when they happened, and they were another reason other detectives avoided partnering with her. On some cases, not all but some, she’d get bitten by an idea and want to head off in a direction the evidence couldn’t justify. It made the captain grit his teeth and it had gotten her into hot water more than once, but it also cleared cases that had the whole squad room sitting around with their thumbs up their butts. Framingham had tried to get her to explain why she made the leaps she did, but she just snapped at him to get back to work.

  She played down her intuition, he figured, because she was an Indian and a woman: she had to be Spock, steer clear of anything that smacked of what she called “woo-woo” so she’d be taken seriously. Okay. But Framingham didn’t. Most of the cases they caught were straight-up homicides. A woman popped her husband’s hottie, a dealer caught it from a turf-war rival, why would Framingham try to make those out to be anything they weren’t? But a corporate whistle-blower found with a suicide note, a pistol in his hand, and two gunshots in his head? Sixteen people in a Brooklyn neighborhood passing out after a “fiery streak” in the sky, and one of them dying of a “heart attack” while unconscious? Hamilton wouldn’t admit the slimmest chance that all might not be as it seemed in those kinds of situations.

  This Sotheby’s case, it was another one. Stalker? Enraged lover? Yeah, maybe. But even the ME was unsettled by the size and shape of the wounds, their obvious ferocity and their ragged edges. He’d suggested they might have been made by an artifact the killer grabbed in the holding room, a serrated bone knife or something. They hadn’t come up with anything, though, and the Sotheby’s Specialist said nothing was missing and nothing like that was in this auction, anyway. Of course, you couldn’t discount the possibility that she might have been involved herself, and taken away whatever it was.

  The other thing they hadn’t found, which Framingham thought was interesting but Hamilton shrugged off, was any record of anyone carding himself in at the door after working hours, any reports from Security of unusual sounds or unexpected lights anywhere in the building. The one thing they had found was what Framingham could swear were skid marks on the slate of the roof terrace, the kinds of streaks you’d make if you landed there after a leap. A long leap, across Seventy-first Street. He’d gone up to the roof of the medical building opposite to take a look; that roof was asphalt, not easy to read by flashlight, but damned if he hadn’t seen what looked to him like a matching set of marks, the kind of digging-in ones you’d make when you were pushing off. Hamilton laughed. She might have bought a zip line if they’d found signs of grappling hooks to catch the cable—stranger things had happened in New York—but Framingham wasn’t thinking that was it.

  He was thinking, someone had made that leap, for the purpose of killing Brittany Williams. He had no idea what the motive was, but he suspected it had little to do with love. And he did have this idea: the someone wasn’t human.

  29

  Thomas Kelly’s footsteps made no sound as he walked through the dark, gigantic room. A library of some kind, but not the one he’d meant to come to. There was information he desperately needed. Could he find it here, though he didn’t know how this place worked, what the system was? He looked for a member of the staff but saw only indistinct figures moving through the stacks or hunched in carrels. When he tried to speak he found he had no voice. He tried again, to no effect. His panic mounted; then a bell rang and someone spoke to him.

  “Hello? Thomas? It’s Livia. Hello? Are you there or is this voice mail?”

  “What? Hello. Hello. No, it’s me. Where am I?”

  “Don’t you mean, ‘Where are you?’ Meaning me? I don’t know where you are. You said you were going home to bed.”

  Thomas, slowly waking, looked around. The murky library faded, replaced by his small, plain room in the Jesuit residence in Chelsea. A winter dawn leaked in around the window shade and the clock read 7:30. His hand held his cell phone. “Yes, you’re right, it’s me and I’m here. Where are you?”

>   “In the Bronx, in a tree.”

  “What?”

  “I went back to my hotel, changed, and came up here to keep an eye on Mr. Lane.”

  “From a tree?”

  “I told you, I was what you’d call a tomboy. He lives in a large house with grounds. I wanted to be able to see if anyone came near.”

  “Did anyone?”

  “No. Michael was probably right about his brother needing to rest before he goes out again.”

  It occurred to Thomas that anyone eavesdropping on this conversation would assume it was in code.

  “Did you sleep?” Livia asked. “Can you come up here?”

  “Into the tree?”

  “Don’t be silly. I want to talk to Mr. Lane as early as possible and if I were with a priest I think I’d have a better shot at not getting thrown out.”

  “Ah. You want my calm, clerical presence.”

  “Correct.” She gave him the address. “We’ll call him when you get here. The hour should be decent by then. But Thomas? Not too calm. Before you come up, have some coffee.”

  30

  Spencer was rested, showered, dressed, and scrambling eggs when Michael came into the kitchen. “Well.” Spencer turned. “You look much better, I must say.”

  “Better than what? I feel like hell.” Michael dropped into a chair and looked Spencer over. “You, on the other hand, are completely healed, aren’t you?”

  Spencer shrugged modestly. “I’m pleased to say I’m suffering few ill effects, it’s true.” As he met Michael’s eyes Spencer found himself hesitating. By nature both men were reserved, even in private; still, Michael had been through a lot last night, and a show of affection—a kiss, a brief embrace—would not be out of place. Spencer’s situation, though, was new to him. Spencer believed the Noantri Law forbidding the revelation of one’s true nature, although enacted for the protection of the Community, was a wise safeguard to one’s personal relations, also. Few indeed were the Unchanged who could accept the truth. What Michael had learned last night could not help but alter his view of Spencer. Perhaps Spencer’s touch was no longer welcome. He berated himself for his cowardice as he turned back to the stove, not yet ready to find out.

  “I assume you’re hungry?” He poured Michael coffee and carried it to the table.

  “Starving.” Michael tried to lift the mug with his left hand, tentatively, testing his arm. He got it an inch off the table, drew a sharp breath, and changed hands.

  “How is it?” Spencer asked.

  “The coffee? Delicious.”

  “The arm.”

  “Not even capable of handling a cup of coffee.”

  “I’m sorry. Is there something I can do?”

  “You can answer this: last night. I wasn’t hallucinating, right? Drunk? Delirious? Edward, your friends, what you told me—I didn’t dream that?”

  Spencer placed a platter of eggs and bacon on the table and pulled out a chair. “I might ask you the same thing. Now, we could be coy all through breakfast, neither saying what he thought the other told him, but each trying to maneuver the other into revealing what he thought he was told. It seems a lot of bother, though. Let me just say that you and I had an extraordinary encounter in the park, Livia Pietro and Father Thomas Kelly were indeed here, a young woman was reported killed at Sotheby’s auction house, and I accompanied you to an intriguing tavern in Washington Heights. Also, I’m fairly certain you told me you and your brother are shapeshifters, and I know I told you I’m Noantri, which in your language—or at least, in English—makes me a vampire.”

  “Ah.” Michael nodded slowly, as though considering a scientific theorem advanced by a colleague. “Yes, that’s pretty much what I remember. And the fact that we’re sitting here in sunlight? That I can swear from experience you can be seen in a mirror?”

  Spencer smiled, remembering the evening with the mirror. “Myths. The more outlandish, the more useful to us. We don’t make any attempt to correct misapprehensions about our nature.”

  “I see.” Michael raised his coffee and Spencer did the same. They clinked mugs and drank. Michael put his coffee down and loaded his plate with bacon and eggs.

  Spencer let Michael eat in peace. He even had a strip of bacon and a portion of scrambled eggs himself. In Rome, of course, he wouldn’t have taken any breakfast beyond a cappuccino and a cornetto or some other small, sweet pastry, but that had only been the fashion for a hundred years or so. In China he’d breakfasted on the rice porridge called congee, a tasty dish if one added pickled vegetables or salt fish. He’d had morning meals of flatbread with white cheese in Syria, herring in Scandinavia, and on his estate in Sussex he’d been partial to smoked pheasant.

  “Michael? What do your people eat for breakfast?”

  “Berries. Pancakes. Cornmeal pudding with maple syrup. It’s good. If I could cook I’d make you some.”

  “Give me a recipe and I’ll make you some.”

  Michael laughed. “That’s one of the reasons I can’t cook. We don’t use recipes. Kids stand and watch and chop. I went to boarding school when I was eleven, so after that I wasn’t around to watch.”

  “You went, but your brother did not. Why?”

  “Edward hated school. He felt confined, choked.”

  “You didn’t share that feeling?”

  “I was a science whiz. Give me a rock and a microscope, or a beaker of something that stank and turned blue, and I was happy. It got so the reservation schools couldn’t keep up with me.”

  “Was it difficult, leaving home?”

  Looking into his coffee, Michael said, “We don’t like to leave the land we’re raised on. My father didn’t want to send me off the rez but Grandmother said it was important that I go and that I wouldn’t be any less of an Indian for going.”

  “Do you feel that was true?”

  Michael looked up. “Do I feel like an Indian? Yes.”

  “But your brother faults you.”

  “He quit school as soon as he could, and when he did go he spent as little time and paid as little attention as possible. Since we were small he followed the traditional ways, learned from the traditional people. To him, every step I took into the white world twisted me, turned me away from our people. Because of . . . what we are, he feels doubly betrayed.”

  “It must be hard for you.”

  Michael didn’t answer.

  Spencer said, “When we find him, what will happen then?”

  A long pause. “I don’t know. I need to know why he’s here. Whether I’m right about the mask, and why he wants it. But if he really killed that woman—God, I think he did.”

  “Is it his first?”

  Michael stared. “His first what? Human kill? What are you talking about? He’s not a murderer, Spencer. What the hell—you think he’s on a crusade to single-handedly wipe out the white race?”

  Evenly, Spencer said, “I didn’t mean that.”

  “But it occurred to you. And now you’re wondering about me, too. Whether I’ve ever killed anyone.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “You would have.”

  Spencer nodded. “As you will eventually begin to wonder about me.” From the reluctant doubt behind the anger in Michael’s eyes, Spencer could tell that he already had. “Michael, we have a lot to learn about each other. I suggest we accept that fact, look forward to our mutual education, try not to lose sight of our mutual affection, and concentrate on the matter at hand. To relieve your mind: I have never, to my knowledge, killed a fellow human. Though in my Unchanged state I did have the opportunity twice, in duels.” He added, “Both opponents walked away, wounded but not mortally so. Under the right circumstances I’m quite the swordsman.”

  Michael stared, then laughed.

  Spencer gave an answering smile. Michael’s anger drained away, a process Spencer could
discern in his falling adrenaline level and slowing heartbeat.

  Michael finished his coffee and said, “I’m sorry. This is . . . Oh, shit, Spencer. You asked what happens next. I don’t know. I don’t know. This is my responsibility. It’s down to me. Grandmother, my grandfathers, the elders, they’re all gone.”

  “Surely,” Spencer said, “there are elders among the traditional people? Not your relatives, perhaps, but some to whom you might appeal?”

  “Elders, yes, but not Shifters. On our rez, no one who can do the ceremony, even. No one who knows about Edward and me. Or knows for sure that it’s even possible. That knowledge—the identity of a Shifter—that’s a tremendous weight for someone to carry. I can’t ask any of the elders to take this on.” He paused. “Or maybe, I’m supposed to. Spencer, Jesus, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  Spencer regarded him. “I’m afraid I have nothing to offer but sympathy. And whatever help I’m capable of providing, once your direction is clear.”

  “And coffee.”

  Spencer did have that, so he poured Michael another cup. Michael drank in brooding silence. He’d almost finished when he set the mug abruptly down and asked, “What would your people do?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “If a—Noantri—were dangerous. To others. Outsiders. What would you do?”

  “Ah, I see. I’m afraid we’re in a rather different position, though. There are, for one thing, a good many of us. We have laws and a ruling body. The laws are not many, but infractions are not well tolerated.”

  “How are they dealt with?”

  Spencer took a moment to ponder. The working of the Noantri Community was not something he’d ever considered explaining to an Unchanged. For one thing, it was against the Law. But the most critical Noantri Law—not betraying their existence—Spencer had already broken. And Michael had broken the same law about himself.

  He poured Michael more coffee and filled his own cup also. “It’s the case with us,” he began, “that the physical proximity of other Noantri is, it turns out, of immense importance. Emotionally, psychologically.” He smiled. “I say this as one who has spent decades on end as a recluse. But hear me out. Until, in historical terms, relatively recently, few individual Noantri knew of the existence of another. If one’s interactions with a mortal brought about that person’s Change, possibly the two might be aware of each other. But perhaps not. A Noantri’s life in those times was furtive and frightening. After satisfying what must have been an inexplicable, tormenting, but uncontrollable craving for human blood . . .” Spencer paused and regarded Michael, his calm exterior belying a pounding heart and a hope that felt to him absurd: that Michael would not blanch, shift his position to gain distance, or smile to hide disgust on hearing those words aloud. Last night they’d been said while Michael was in a whirlwind of exhaustion, shock, and physical pain; but now that they’d sunk in and here in the light of day, would his reaction alter?