An Asian man who looked no older than thirteen cut tiny samples from several of the tattoos and carried them to a lab station against the wall. Matt couldn't place the meandering tune the technician hummed, but the cheery melody struck him as out of place. Matt wished he'd stop.
"Do you think he did those himself?" Matt asked.
Jeff grunted. "What makes you think that?"
Matt rolled the corpse on its side to expose Conor's back, ignoring the coroner's disapproving cluck. "Look. The letters on his back are much sloppier than the letters on his front. If a tattoo artist did them, they'd be more consistent. Cleaner."
The coroner grunted. "Why would a man tattoo himself with gibberish?"
Matt shrugged. "Why would a man let someone else tattoo him with gibberish? It doesn't make sense either way."
"True," Jeff said. "But we're shopping these pictures around the local parlors and police stations just in case. I think maybe you're right, but that's no reason not to check other options."
"Well," the coroner said, "preliminary analysis says there's nothing overly strange, nothing physically abnormal beyond standard ICAP Augmentations. Cranial abnormalities are of course impossible to assess, though we might get some brain chemistry from some of the larger pieces, drugs or whatnot. Bath salts, maybe."
"Nah," Matt said. "Drugs pass through my system so fast there's no point, and Conor's regenerates were even more effective than mine. He'd have to take bath salts every minute to sustain a high, and it wouldn't do any long-term damage."
"Well, we'll check anyway." Without preamble the doctor picked up a rotary saw and cut through Conor's sternum—it took twice as long as with a regular man, and the scent of burning bone reminded Matt of the dentist's office. The chest spreader split Conor's rib cage to expose glistening internal organs. Matt's biology education stopped at his freshman year in college, but everything looked normal to him.
Jeff pulled him aside. "Maybe it was PCP or something, something his regenerates didn't respond to. We've never seen brain abnormalities in a bonk anyway, and this behavior wasn't exactly textbook." He handed Matt a manila folder labeled "Flynn, Conor."
Opening it, Matt leafed through Conor's psychological profiles over the previous five years. There were no significant changes from one to the next, except for a spate of mild depression three years earlier when his eighteen-year-old dog passed away.
"I told you," Jeff said. "He was as sane as you or me this time last week."
The humming technician looked up from his lab station. "Mister Hannes?" They turned to him. "These tattoos are blood."
Jeff raised an eyebrow. "How do you know?"
"Chromatography indicated that it was possible, so I ran a Takayama test. Pyridine forms pink crystals when it reacts with hemoglobin." He gestured toward the microscope, and Jeff took a look.
His eyes buried in the lenses, Jeff asked, "Is it human?"
The man shrugged. "That takes a lot longer to figure out. The lab should have results in a week or two."
While Matt looked, Jeff spoke to the tech. "Well, tell them to step on it. And if it's human, I want DNA."
As promised, pink crystals impregnated the whitish background of the microscope slide.
"Will do," the tech replied.
A pleasant female voice broke over the PA. "Mr. Hannes, I have linguistics on line three."
"That was fast," Matt said, stepping away from the microscope.
Jeff picked up the phone, identified himself, and jotted notes in a small notepad. Matt spent a few minutes avoiding the autopsy table, while the coroner harvested and weighed organs, speaking for the benefit of the microphone. Jeff hung up the phone. "Well, that's fucked up."
"Gibberish?" Matt said.
Jeff shook his head. "On the contrary, there are sixty-seven unique tattoos, and every single one says a variation on the same thing: 'Be ready. The master is coming.' The most interesting one is on his left ribs. Cindy called it, 'Uruk proto-cuneiform.' It's early Bronze Age, like six thousand years ago."
Matt flipped to Conor's résumé in the front of the file. "Conor knew, what, nine languages?"
Jeff shrugged. "But not Uruk proto-cuneiform. He was a polyglot, not a linguist. He never studied any dead languages."
"That we know of."
Jeff shrugged. "That we know of."
Matt tapped the coroner on the shoulder. "Hey, we know how old these tattoos are?"
The man’s jowls shook as he nodded. "Regenerates make it impossible to tell based on healing rate or anything of the sort, but knowing that he used blood for ink allows us to narrow it down quite a bit." He leaned in for a closer look, hemmed and hawed for a minute, then stood to his full height. "Based on the limited photobleaching and strong pigmentation, let's call the oldest ones no more than two years or so, but no newer than a year."
Jeff asked, "When's the most recent?"
He chuckled. "It's not that accurate. As far as I know it could have been this morning."
"Can you tell the time between them?"
He shrugged. "I can't. But I'd be confident testifying that they spread out over at least a year."
Matt handed the folder of psychological profiles back to Jeff. "So much for these."
Jeff set the folder on the table and threw up his hands. "You can't just ignore the evidence. This incident shouldn't have happened."
"Right, he didn't bonk," Matt said. "It wasn't like that at all. It wasn't mindless rage." He laughed, a soulless, lost bark. "It wasn't even rage. He acted like he wanted more cream in his coffee or had decided to clean the garage. Only he decided to slaughter eighteen people instead." Matt ran his hands through his hair. "And 'The master is coming'? I can't be the only person thinking this is related to our winged friend back in New Mexico."
Jeff shrugged. "That was 'The Servant,' buddy. Maybe they work in the same office."
"Not funny."
Jeff turned to look at Conor's headless, now empty torso. "No. No, it's not."
* * *
By the time Matt flew back to Tennessee and drove to the hospital, Monica had woken up and taken a cab home, against medical advice. They handed him an envelope containing her cross and wedding ring, which they'd removed during her examination, and gave him more than his share of admonishing looks.
"She promised that she'd take it easy," the doctor told him.
He lead-footed it home, then pulled in the driveway at a crawl. He eased the door shut after he got out. He tiptoed to the deck so as to not disturb her rest.
He crept up the steps, skipping the third, and swore under his breath when the screen door creaked. The latch on the door to the deck clicked as he stepped inside. Oh, good, he thought. She's not asleep. He stepped around the corner to the kitchen, just as she backed out of the pantry. "Baby, you really shouldn't have—"
She turned to him with guilty eyes, always a terrible liar even before she'd said anything. I was just getting some lunch—
"I was just getting some lunch—"
He stepped forward and interrupted her with a kiss, ashy and unpleasant. Nudging her to the side, he opened the pantry and scanned the shelves. She burst into tears as he picked up the can of Folgers and tore off the lid. Upending the grounds into the sink, he picked out the half-full pack of Marlboros and crushed them in his fist. He closed his eyes without turning around.
She sobbed. "I'm sorry, baby, I just—" She yelped as his fist shattered the countertop.
Blood dripped from his knuckles onto the broken stone. He flexed as the skin healed over the exposed bone, then took a better look at the counter. The marble slab had broken into four large chunks, the drawer underneath cracked in two. Better it than her.
His temper in check, he took a deep breath and turned around. "You were saying?"
She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his chest. He held her, patting her hair as she cried. One minute. Two. Five. When she'd cried herself out, he scooped her off her feet and carried her to the couch. By the time he
sat, she'd already fallen asleep.
He picked up the remote and turned on the TV. With Sharktopus vs. Mansquito the most compelling option, he pulled up the previous week's Titan's game on DVR. Ted made it onto the couch on his third try, and lay down half on Monica, his head on Matt's thigh. His tail thumped the cushion as Matt scratched his head, and he snored his way through the fourth play. Monica woke up in the third quarter, curled around Ted to use him as a body pillow, and they watched the rest of the game in silence. When it ended—28-17 over the Texans—he turned off the TV.
"The whole time?" he asked.
She shook her head without lifting it. "No. Just this past week. Only one a day. Sometimes two. Never more than that."
He sighed. "Just cigarettes?"
Her head jiggled by way of reply, but he couldn't make out a "yes" or a "no."
"Weed?" He didn't want to say it. "Meth?"
"Just cigs. I ain't done anything in three years, you know that."
"Drink?"
Ted gave a happy whine as she squeezed him, and licked her arm. "I'm still on that wagon. There's nothing in the house, and Momma makes sure there's nothing there, neither." Matt sighed again, this time in relief. They sat in silence for a while. He knew she wanted something else, or she'd have gotten up to do something. He didn't know what it could be, so he waited.
"Matt?"
"I'm here, Mon."
"Aren't you going to ask?"
He rolled his eyes, thankful she couldn't see his face, and shifted his weight to disguise the gesture. "I'm precognitive, baby, not telepathic. What am I supposed to ask?"
She sat up, dumping Ted on the floor. He shook off the sleep, trotted three steps, and collapsed under the coffee table. Monica's face crumbled into tears as she looked Matt in the eyes. "You're supposed to ask why."
Matt had assumed the near-miscarriage had triggered the relapse, but in retrospect the timing didn't fit. He realized then that he didn't care why. He loved his wife and would do anything for her, but when it came to this . . . junkies lie. That's what they'd always said on the force. She couldn't produce an excuse good enough, nothing that would justify smoking while pregnant with their son . . . and yet she needed something, something she didn't have and he wasn't sure how to give. Hell, he didn't even know what to give, much less how. So he asked.
"Why?"
"I don't know." She sobbed and hugged him again and rambled into his chest. He caught something about distance and being lonely and worried and afraid, so he held her and uttered reassurances he felt but didn't mean until she fell asleep again. She didn't wake up when he moved her from the couch to the bed.
He lay there, restless, listening to a loon's mournful cry in the distance. He knew it wasn't sad, but it sure sounded like it. The clock on the wall read one o'clock. He sat up, shifted Ted off his feet, and got dressed.
Eight minutes later he pulled into Tony's, a former garage, the only place in White Spruce open this late. Ten years back, Tony's sandwiches had started selling better than his maintenance, so Matt's high school buddy had stopped working on cars and converted the garage to a BBQ Bar and Grill. Matt walked through the Old West-style swinging doors to the sound of Brooks & Dunn's Neon Moon.
Two gray-bearded men sat at the bar, local handyman Jedd Callaway and thirty-year-mayor-turned-layabout, defeated in the last two elections two-to-one, Sawyer Wilkinson. Both looked worse for the wear, nursing a Coors Light and some kind of brown liquor on the rocks, respectively. Neither looked at him as he bellied up to the bar in front of Tony.
Matt suppressed a surprised grunt. Sawyer had never forgiven him for escaping White Spruce even for a few years, and had always blamed him for stealing Monica. That she'd shown Sawyer not the slightest interest did nothing to dispel his delusions. As pleasant as being ignored could be, Matt didn't expect it to last.
Bald, obese, and always smiling, Tony Palermo stood all of five-one in thick shoes, and to Matt's knowledge he'd never skipped a meal or a beer his whole life. "Hey, Matt. What brings you down here this time of night?"
"Same old same old, I guess." He opened his mouth to order a beer but Sawyer cut him off with a snort.
"Your kind don't even drink, Rowley."
Tony raised an eyebrow.
Matt gave him the barest hint of a shrug and swiveled on the stool to face his accuser. "My kind?"
Sawyer stirred his drink with his finger so that the ice clinked against the side. "Yeah. You left-wing, one-world government, too-good-for-your-own traitor bonks. Your kind."
A dozen replies flashed through his mind, from pointing out the stupidity of that statement, to defending his decisions, to smashing Sawyer's head to a pulp between his palms. He turned to Tony and pointed at the taps. "I'll take a Bosco Rye."
"I'M TALKING TO YOU," Sawyer said, glaring daggers at Matt.
"I know," Matt said, as Tony poured him a pint. "But I ain't listening."
Sawyer stumbled back from the bar, steadied himself on a table, and put his hand at his waist—on the holster of a Colt .380 Mustang Pocketlite. Matt just succeeded in not rolling his eyes. A drunk normal with a pea shooter constituted not the slightest threat to him at twenty feet, much less five.
Jedd stood and backed toward the other end of the bar, sliding his beer across the polished wood the whole way. Tony froze, eyes wide.
Matt reached out, grabbed his beer, and pulled it over. Eyes on Tony, he lifted it to his mouth and took a long pull. He savored the mingled sweet and bitter flavor even as his regenerates attacked the ethanol. He set it down, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and dropped a ten-dollar bill on the counter.
"Thanks, Tony." He got up and walked toward the door.
He made it halfway to the door before Sawyer screamed, "I SAID I WAS TALKING TO YOU, ROWLEY!"
He turned around and walked back, straight at the former mayor, shoulders squared for maximum intimidation. Sawyer's hand quivered over the gun as he came nearer, and he gripped it with white knuckles as Matt invaded the drunk's personal space. Three feet away, Matt flashed forward and put his hand on Sawyer's wrist even as the other man tried to clear the holster. It wasn't unlike trying to wrestle a teddy bear as he kept the weapon holstered and used his own fingers to block Sawyer from reaching the trigger.
He stared down into bloodshot eyes and felt more exasperation and heartache than rage. "You wanted to talk to me, mayor?"
Sawyer snarled and jerked upward, resulting in a tumble to his ass. Matt followed him to the ground, dropping to his knees and pinning the Colt to the floor.
"You clear that weapon I might have to get violent," Matt said. "And there's only one way that ends. I ain't trained to wound."
Bloodshot eyes wide with fear, Sawyer relaxed his grip. Matt snatched up the gun and tossed it to Tony without releasing his gaze.
"So you were talking to me. Talk."
Sawyer turned his head and spat. "I ain't got nothing to say to the likes of you."
Matt let go of the mayor's hand and leaned in nose-to-nose. "No. I didn't think so."
He got up and walked out into the chilly night air.
As he opened his truck door, Tony called out.
"Hey! Matt!"
Matt turned and, seeing Tony’s look of distress, gave the man his best disarming smile. "Sorry about that, Tony."
Tony's brief nod punctuated his next sentence. "I'm sorry about that." He looked back to the bar, then at Matt. "Maybe it's best you don't come around here no more."
An unaugmented man might have blushed with anger, might have yelled something inappropriate. With no adrenal flush at all, Matt returned the nod. "Reckon not, Tony. Have a good night."
He got in, slammed the door, and drove home, angry at his inability to feel proper anger.
Ted met him at the door, tail wagging, so he sat on the deck while the dog rustled around in the undergrowth. A few minutes later he peed and wandered up the deck to lick Matt's hand. Matt scratched his ears a minute, then let them both
inside.
Monica lay in the same position he'd left her. She slept through the night, and in the morning he left her again for D.C.
Chapter 7
Matt walked up the sidewalk of the blue-sided colonial, flanked by Garrett and Blossom, with Akash trailing behind. Garrett held an Irish flag, Blossom the UN flag. Matt held the letter notifying Jessica Flynn of the death of her husband, a useless faux-vellum lie about duty and service and honor. The haggard lawn needed a good mowing and raking, and there were no lights on inside. A silver Lexus SUV sat in the driveway, a garden hose coiled next to it.
Matt steeled himself and jammed the buzzer with his thumb. He heard the chime through the door, but saw no sign of movement. He tried again. Nothing.
"Nobody home, eh?" Akash said.
A screen door creaked on the house to the left. A middle-aged woman in a pink bathrobe surveyed them from her porch. "No one's been home for days. Jessie missed book club last night, too. Didn't call or anything."
"Okay, thanks," Matt said.
She went back inside without another word.
Next to him, Garrett mumbled, "Does anybody else feel that?"
Matt closed his eyes. His feet tingled. He touched the door with his fingertips, and they tingled, too. "Yeah. And what’s that smell?" Underneath the grass, wood stain, and goldenrod crept the faint, sweet smell of decay, mixed with a hint of sulfur. He opened his eyes. Garrett and Blossom nodded. Akash breathed in, then grimaced.
"Could be a raccoon, eh?" He didn't sound like he believed himself.
Garrett tried the doorknob. Locked.
"Rastogi," Matt said, "check the back door. Sakura, with him." As they circled around the house, Matt shielded his eyes from the afternoon sun and peered in the windows. Aside from mid-range wooden furniture and wall-to-wall carpeting, nothing struck him as out of the ordinary. "See anything?"
"Nope," Garrett said. "Real clean, though."
Not just clean—immaculate. Perhaps a trace of dust, but not the slightest bit of clutter. Nothing on the tables, the stand by the door, or the sideboard in the dining room. His desk notwithstanding, Matt's house had never been that neat.
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