They passed the elevator alcove, and she pointed toward an open door, down on the left. “In there. The brain center of the convention.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a detective, Turpin, remember? I detect.”
She motioned to him to say nothing when they reached the room, and he leaned against the jamb, hands in his pockets, trying to look as official as he could.
It was a similar set-up to his, except the bedroom was to the left. On the couch opposite the door sat a middle-aged stocky man with black hair in an incongruous Caesar cut. White shirt. Trousers. The table in front of him littered with pizza boxes and clipboards. A blank look on his rounded face when Joanne stepped in, held up her ID, and said, “Chattanooga police. You in charge here?”
He nodded mutely.
“You got a name?”
“Attco,” he said, and pushed himself hurriedly to his feet. “Holburton Attco.” He shrugged sheepishly. “What can I say? My mother’s a nut. They call me Holly.”
“Well, Holly,” Joanne said, “I need you to answer a few questions, all right?”
He blinked. His face paled, then reddened, and he glared at the ceiling. “Godammit! Underage drinkers, right? Some asshole made a complaint, right?” He stomped around the coffee table and took a swipe at a blank computer terminal. “No. It’s some asshole walking around with a sword out or something, right? Jesus!” He looked at Richard for the first time and spread his arms. “I got a zillion people working security around here, you know? But they can’t be everywhere. I mean, Jesus, why the hell would anyone call the police, for Christ’s sake? It’s not like we’re tearing the place apart.” He stomped back to the couch and dropped onto it. “God.” He glanced at his watch. “Aw, Jesus, the masquerade’s begun and I’m not down there. I’m supposed to be down there, you know.” He snapped his fingers. “Shit, one of them’s naked, right? Oh God, please tell me one of them isn’t naked.”
Joanne sniffed, and rubbed the side of her nose. “You finished?”
“I … yeah. I guess.”
“Leon Hendean. You know him?”
Attco frowned his puzzlement. “Well, sure. He’s part of the committee.” Another frown, this time thinking. “He’s a liaison this year.”
Joanne waggled a hand in silent question.
“He works with the guests,” the man explained “Runs errands for them, keeps them happy, gets them where they’re supposed to be … on time, with any luck.”
“And where would he be now?”
Attco shrugged. “How the hell should I know? With Spiro, I suppose.”
“Spiro?”
“The main speaker,” Richard said. When Joanne looked at him, he nodded down the hall. “I’ve run into him a couple of times. That’s his room, by—” He caught himself, jerked a thumb. “The one with the double doors.”
“Right,” said Attco. “You find him, you’ll find Leon. But why?”
“Those pictures in the lobby, Mr. Attco,” she said with a polite smile.
“The pictures?” Attco scratched his paunch, confused by her change of subject. “Oh. Yeah. Costume winners from past years. We put them up this year because a couple of the publishers put up some serious bucks for the winner this time. Incentive, see?”
“How serious?” Richard asked.
“Fifteen hundred for the Best in the Show. A couple of five hundreds for the others.”
“Not bad.”
“Hey,” he said. “It’s not my money, and it brought in the experts.”
“And their money.”
Attco grinned. “That, too.”
“The one of the werewolf,” Joanne said, giving Richard a look to keep him quiet. “Has a Gypsy at his feet?”
Attco nodded eagerly. “Oh, man, yeah. That was two years ago, I think. Most amazing thing I ever saw.” His hands shaped the air in front of him. “You couldn’t see anything, man, it was incredible. No seams, no Velcro, no zippers, no nothing. Had the most unbelievable contact lenses. Big. I mean, huge guy. The woman was someone he’d picked up for the weekend. She had to lead him around, I don’t think he could see hardly anything with all that makeup.” His enthusiasm faded for a moment, his expression abruptly somber. “No competition that time, believe it. He walked off with everything.”
“You said ‘was,’“ Richard said, ignoring Joanne’s warning glance. “About the lady.”
“Yeah.” Attco fussed with some papers on the table. “She died two weeks later. Committed suicide.”
“How?”
The man looked at him almost angrily. “Fucking jumped off Lookout Mountain, that’s how. There wasn’t much left of her when they found her, okay?”
Richard backed off, hands up in apology.
“Hendean,” Joanne said into the silence.
Attco blinked. “What?”
“The werewolf guy. There was no name on the picture, like on the others. But it was Hendean, right?”
“Leon?”
Joanne nodded.
“Leon?” He rubbed his forehead. “Son of a bitch, you know, you might be right?” He laughed. “Son of a bitch.”
The elevator doors opened, and Death stepped out, his scythe tipped in red.
Blanchard tossed the last of his gear into the rental car, cursing the weather, and cursing himself for playing the role of the gentleman assassin. Taking his time. Revealing himself to his victim. Toying. Playing. Making it a game.
Vanity, it was. Foolish, foolhardy vanity that might actually have worked if the weather had given him time to play the game. Now he had to hurry. Now he had to believe his decision was the right one.
He had already made one sweep around the lobby, had seen the elaborate outfits, the cameras, the audience, and realized that Crimmins’ order to rend the Veil was a joke. Any Garou could walk in there now and not be noticed; any death would be seen as part of the show, an act, a skit, and no one would care.
Crimmins, for the first time in their long association, was wrong.
And he had been wrong for thinking it would work.
For the fifth or sixth or dozenth time he made sure he had his passports, the bank books, all the identification all his personalities needed to leave the country a millionaire several times over. Then he checked the chamber of his gun, smiling at the silver, slipped it into his topcoat pocket, and headed for the hotel.
The hell with the Garou.
Richard Turpin was the prey.
The elevator doors opened.
A werewolf stepped out.
Richard paced the empty hall outside Attco’s room. Prowling. Nervous. He could feel the storm surround the hotel; he could feel the energy out there, and in here; he could feel a subtle shift in the balance of the way things were, a shift that meant the hunt.
As he paused at the door, puzzling over a whiff of something familiar, he was distracted when he heard Joanne demand, “What do you mean, might be? Don’t you know?”
Attco shrugged. “Nope.”
“How the hell could you not know? You’re supposed to be in charge, right?”
“Yeah, but you haven’t any idea what these—” The telephone rang, and Attco stumbled around the coffee table to grab the receiver. “Yeah?”
Richard couldn’t catch all that was said; he was too busy watching the anger and disappointment on Joanne’s face.
“Hey.” Attco slammed the receiver back onto its cradle. “Gotta go, sorry. They need me downstairs. Some TV people have shown up.”
Joanne grabbed his arm as he headed out. “So who would know?”
“Know what?”
“Who the werewolf was?”
“Jesus, lady, I don’t know. Look, meet me downstairs after I take care of the TV thing, I’ll show you who’s in charge this year, okay? Come on, I gotta go.”
Richard stepped aside as Attco hurried down the hall, but shook his head when Joanne beckoned him to join her.
“What?” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“J
ust go. I’ll catch up.”
She started to argue, then scowled and ran when Attco called out that he had an elevator waiting.
When she was gone, he went straight to the stairwell and let himself out on the gallery floor. As quickly as he could, he pushed through the crowd, excusing himself, smiling, nodding, making his way around to the other side where luck gave him a place beside one of the pillars. From here he could see the elevator doors, and nearly laughed aloud when the werewolf made its entrance.
Just like one of the pictures he had noted earlier: Lon Chaney, Jr., right out of any one of a half-dozen Universal pictures. Hairy face and black clothes, hairy feet and hands. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t real.
A few seconds later, the other door opened, and he watched Joanne follow Attco through the audience and contestants, Joanne tugging angrily at the man’s arm, the man glaring at her while, at the same time, trying to smile at a man with a microphone standing beside another man with a TV camera on his shoulder.
Richard searched the lobby intently, watching as the contestants seemed to be forming a line out of the chaos, a line that wound past a table below him and into, and out of, the Green Room to his left. Behind him, he heard someone complaining about the guest of honor not showing up for the judging, heard someone else laugh and say he was probably hiding in the bar, looking to get laid.
Another sweep of the costumes, and he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed.
No Garou. No one who matched Hendean’s description.
He eased back from the railing, his place instantly taken by two giggling youngsters in capes, and made his way back the way he had come, struggling not to snarl when elbows stabbed his ribs and back, when boots trod on his feet.
The noise level rose.
The lights dimmed, and were made dimmer by vivid spotlights fixed to the pillars that skated slow-moving circles across the lobby floor.
The glare caused everything else to fall into false shadow.
On the gallery the crowd grew more raucous in the near twilight, and twice Richard had to push people out of his way. No longer polite. Frustration had weakened the hold on his temper. What he wanted was to get away from all these bodies, the smell of their sweat, the smell of beer and liquor and cheap makeup and damp clothes; what he wanted to shift and send them all screaming to the comfort of their nightmares.
A burly man in a T-shirt grabbed his arm. “Hey, mac, watch it, okay?”
Richard glared up at him. “What?”
The man nodded to a woman beside him, sucking on the heel of her hand. “Made her cut herself, you asshole.”
Richard froze.
“You gonna apologize or what?”
He looked at the man without blinking.
… green …
“Hey.”
… fire…
The hand gripping his arm fell away, and Richard shoved his way clear, sprinted to the fire stairs and took them up, two at a time. He slammed through the door and swung around the corner, stopped at his room and waited.
There it was.
The scent he had noticed earlier.
Slowly he approached the double doors of the suite at the end of the short hall.
In there.
It was in there.
He tried the knob, but the door was locked, and the lock was too strong for him to force.
It was in there.
The blood.
Joanne gave up.
Attco wasn’t about to talk to her, not when he was too busy sucking up to the newsman and the camera.
She supposed she could have reminded him who she was, but that would attract the newsman’s attention, and she didn’t think the lieutenant would appreciate it, not when she wouldn’t be able to give him a good reason why she was still here.
She let the crowd ease her away, forcing her slowly toward the back. What she would do is find Richard, find out why he had left her, and then—
A hand cupped her shoulder, and something hard pressed into her back.
She didn’t move.
A voice in her left ear: “Officer,” it said, “you take one breath without my permission, and you won’t breathe again.”
Richard shifted.
Merged.
He pressed his hands against the wood, testing its strength, feeling its weakness, then took a step back and threw himself at the door.
It shuddered.
He did it again.
It bowed.
He snarled and did it a third time.
The crack of splintering wood was quick and sharp, like a gunshot.
The fourth time, the doors flew inward, and he leapt inside, great head swiveling as he tracked the scent of the blood.
A single lamp was lit by the bed.
He smelled the body first, then saw it curled in the shadows on the far side of the mattress.
Or what was left of it.
With the hand guiding her, and refusing to permit her to look around, she stepped slowly backward.
“Where is Turpin?”
She shook her head—I don’t know.
The pressure on her back increased sharply.
“Where is he?”
She shook her head again, wondering why the hell nobody could see what was happening.
“One more time, cop.” The pressure on her back increased sharply. “Where the fuck is he?”
There was a singular explosion of cheers and applause, and without thinking she stopped, and looked through a momentary gap in the crowd.
“Oh my God,” she said.
And the voice answered, “You lose.
He stood in the ruined doorway, trembling with rage, green fire eyes dark enough to be black.
He hesitated only long enough to glance behind him once more, then raced down the hall.
Without changing.
Punching the metal fire door open, leaving a dent in its pocked surface, swinging over the railing and landing lightly on the floor below, again to reach the ground floor, grabbing the bar and shoving, shoving the door open and striding out, shifting into the open, into the shadowy dim light.
He heard the applause and the cheers, saw to his right a score or more people pushing forward to get a closer look at whatever enthralled them.
He saw Joanne.
In the spotlight, its deep gray fur glittered as though it had been touched by dew, its eyes glowed crimson, its teeth not quite white.
The Garou acknowledged the adulation with upraised arms and, in the silence that ensued, it lifted its muzzle and howled.
The hand turned Joanne around.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” said Miles Blanchard. “A monster like that in clear view, and no one even knows.”
She didn’t look down; she knew the gun was in his pocket, too close to miss. Nor did she bother to tell him that shooting her now would be a huge mistake. Witnesses. A TV camera. None of it mattered, because they were all fixed on the creature in the spotlight. They may hear the shot, but Blanchard would be gone before anything could be done.
His smile was empty, his voice hollow and quiet. “No time for games, Detective. Tell me where he is and walk away, no catch, no tricks.” The smile died. You have no idea, my dear. No idea at all.”
She could feel her own weapon pressed against her spine, but they were two steps away from the crowd now, and he would spot any move.
There were giggles, then, and outright laughter. Speculation that the werewolf couldn’t stand on his feet, that he was probably drunk.
“Turpin.” Blanchard grabbed her shoulder again, and squeezed.
Use your knee, she told herself; just use your damn knee and get out of the way.
Instead, she said, “Look.”
He didn’t want to; she could see it, and she had to swallow a giggle when he glared an order at her.
And looked over his shoulder.
The Garou howled again. There were cheers.
All the main lights were doused, nothing left but the
spotlights in the lobby.
There were feigned screams of alarm, and nervous laughter.
Wanda didn’t move.
She kept her hands in her pockets and thanked all the gods she knew that she’d been given this front-row seat.
With just a bit more luck, all her work would be done for her.
Nonetheless, she pressed a button on the ivory shaft, and a silver blade snicked out. Just in case, she told herself, Just in case.
Blanchard moved carefully, putting Joanne between him and Richard, shifting them all until they stood beside the gift shop’s glass wall.
The applause was frantic now, the cheers boisterous.
“The thing is,” Blanchard said mildly, his voice barely heard over the noise, “if you make a move, no matter what it is, the cop will die. Are you going to sacrifice her just to get at me, Turpin?”
“Standoff,” Richard answered, just as evenly.
“No. I don’t think so. What I think is, we’ll move a little way down here, if you don’t mind. Around the corner back there, by the bar door.”
Then they’ll separate, Richard thought; he’ll keep us far enough away from him so that one shot will be all he needs.
He had no doubt what kind of bullets the gun had.
He had no doubt who would be first.
“And if you don’t move, I’ll kill her anyway,” Blanchard added.
“Then you’ll die.”
“But she’ll be dead.”
He couldn’t see her face, but he could feel her trembling, not all of it from fear. His left hand gently brushed across her shoulders, her back, fingers brushing over the bulge of her holster.
Blanchard looked and sounded calm, but he knew it was as much a mask as those the contestants wore. It was more than simple fear; it was a sense of urgency. That might cause him to make a mistake, but it was just as likely to prompt him into acting without thinking. Whatever timetable he had, if Richard tried to stall, the trigger would be pulled anyway.
“Shall we?” Blanchard gestured with his chin. “Now, please?”
Richard didn’t insult the man by faking resignation, but when he turned, taking Joanne’s arm, he took only a few paces before he saw the woman leaning against the wall, one hand in her trench-coat pocket, the other tucked against her side.
Watcher: Based on the Apocalypse (World of Darkness : Werewolf) Page 19
