by Lee Killough
Which reassurance did not keep him from watching everyone around him as he made his way along the north terrace outside to the ME’s entrance.
After bracing himself against the assault of odors, he smiled at the clerk inside, a thirty-something woman with country western singer hair and Elizabeth Taylor eyeliner. “I was here the other day talking with Dr. Thurlow.”
She nodded. “You came in with that writer.”
“And I understand another of his Martians came in last night, a murder victim from the Castro. I’d like to see her if Dr. Thurlow is willing.”
“Willing?” The clerk laughed. “No problem. But if you want to see it, you’d better hurry; Thurlow’s posting her now.”
At the door of the autopsy room Garreth braced himself and plunged into the assault of smells. One plus, though...they masked the scents of living blood.
He hailed Thurlow at a table down the room. “I hear you have another Martian.”
The ME’s head came up, eyes gleaming behind his face shield. “News travels fast. Dr. Cho’s only just recognized what we had and turn the post over to me. Come and see!” Sounding happy as a kid with a new toy.
As he passed Dr. Cho at another table, she rolled her eyes. “Turned it over. Right. I said, ‘Oh my god, another of those freaks,’ and he practically vaulted this table to shoulder me aside and have me switch to this case.” She raised her voice. “And it was twenty minutes ago, Doctor!”
Garreth’s grin froze moments later in a reek that stopped him cold, fighting for breath. Garlic!
Thurlow frowned. “Are you all right?”
Garreth thought fast and choked out, “Flashback.”
“Ah.” The ME nodded. “Not surprising, considering the circumstances of your last visit in here.”
Was this the suffocation Ayesha had seen? Fighting the urge to bolt from the room, he made himself ease back just enough from the reek to work air into his lungs again. He pretended to sniff, then managed a wheezy: “Do I smell garlic?”
Thurlow smiled. “Yes indeed. From Miss Achebe’s lungs.” He pointed to a tray with the spongy organs sliced like loaves of bread. “Very fascinating. She must have had a violent allergy to it. It appears that shortly before death she breathed in some fumes, instantly constricting her bronchi and trapping the fumes until we started sectioning her lungs.”
Garreth stared at the lungs in horror. So that was how the killer got her, with a spray of garlic! And maybe used it on Knight, the hooker, and hustler, too. A perfect weapon against vampires...easy to come by and carry. And so effective. But nothing a vampire would handle, meaning the killer had to be human.
Human. The thought brought images of Holle and Ms. Kriss with hands in their pockets clutching something. Maybe a small squirt bottle of garlic juice. Girimonte could easily tuck one in her shoulder bag as well.
He had the answer he came for. No need to ask about evidence of a dart stick or a bruise indicating a stunning blow. After supposedly coming down to see the Martian, though, he needed to stick around a while. And try not to wince as Thurlow lifted out and lovingly examined guts that looked more like old rope than stomach and intestines...keenly aware his own must look the same.
He welcomed the tech who tapped his shoulder. “Lieutenant Serruto wants you back upstairs.”
The relief faded as he headed back into the main building and skipped waiting for the elevator in favor of jogging up the stairwell. Had they found someone claiming to be last night’s witness as Fowler suggested might happen?
Standing in front of Serruto’s desk he tried reading that in the lieutenant’s face...but saw only irritation and suspicion.
“What were you doing downstairs? You’ve never liked attending autopsies.”
Better stick as close to the truth as possible. “I wanted to see what external wounds she might have, something indicating a strike from a distance. A psychic isn’t going to let anyone close she senses is a threat.”
“Assuming she was psychic.” Serruto sighed. “But I guess you tend to believe in that stuff. So...does the autopsy show anything like you thought?”
Garreth shook his head.
“Then I guess she wasn’t psychic.”
Garreth said nothing.
“You appear to be right, though, about where Achebe was attacked. Takananda and Girimonte are at the house now, waiting for the crime lab. They say the doors from her kitchen to her rear deck show forcible entry, and there are muddy tracks on the floor — too smeared to be useful — and her reading room has signs of a struggle...tarot cards scattered on the table and a chair tipped over.”
Garreth doubted the attack happened in the reading room. Ayesha would have sensed the intruder before he, or she, got that far. More likely she heard the doors being forced and ran to the kitchen, thinking she could handle the situation. Only to be sprayed in the face with garlic juice. Sprayed by a human. He needed to let Irina know.
A foot itched to slide toward the door. “So now we’ve established she didn’t interrupt the burglary. Is that all?”
“Not quite. Take off your glasses so I can talk to a face.”
Suddenly daylight felt even heavier. He shoved the glasses up on his head and forced his voice to remain even. “They found the witness?”
“Not yet. Fowler was right about Delbert Black not cleaning up at Amigos.” Serruto paused several long seconds, then said, “Do you know Ayesha Achebe?”
Garreth made himself focus on the bridge of Serruto’s nose while telling the lie. Wondering if he might regret not using persuasion. “No.”
“You sure?”
The flat tone of the two words knotted Garreth’s gut. What had they found tying him to Ayesha? Maybe something Girimonte “discovered.” “I don’t know the woman. What is it that says different?”
“Your name is written by that tarot card layout.”
Shit! Not planted evidence, then; bad luck. What Ayesha saw looking at him last night disturbed her enough to try learning more...just in time for the killer to come back and interrupt her. But he pumped every possible ounce of incredulousness into his stare and voice. “My name? That can’t be right.”
Serruto shrugged. “Yours...even though Takananda says she wrote down your last name M-C-A-L-I-E-N.”
The spinning wheels of Garreth’s mind screeched to a halt at an escape hatch. “That sounds like she just heard someone say it and wrote down what it sounded like. I’d have spelled it for her.”
“Unless she really was psychic but got fuzzy reception on the ID of someone she foresaw planning to break into Philos.”
Garreth eyed Serruto. Did he mean that? But the lieutenant stared back poker-faced, revealing nothing. Garreth took a breath. “She didn’t see me...in the flesh or a vision. I was never near the place. I did not leave Harry’s last night.”
“Then how do you explain her having your name?”
“I can’t. Do we know for sure it’s her handwriting?”
“We’ll check of course. You think it’s more of the plot to frame you?”
He shrugged. “I can only repeat that I don’t know the woman. If I wanted to know the future, I’d ask my grandmother.”
Serruto nodded...perhaps unconsciously.
“Well, unless there’s more bad news...” He gestured toward the door, anxious to contact Irina.
Serruto shook his head. “But don’t go wandering off again.”
Garreth put on his glasses and headed back for Harry’s desk to look up the number for Holle House.
Ms. Kriss answered. Should he ask for Steffie or assume Irina told her about their encounter last night?
Assuming that, he gave her his name and said, “I need to speak to...Irina.”
The housekeeper’s voice remained crisp. “She’s unavailable.”
Sleeping, she meant. He wished he had a dragon at the door to let him sleep undisturbed. “I’m sorry but this is important. In case the police haven’t told you, the Philos offices were burglarized last nigh
t and the neighbor Ayesha murdered.”
Five minutes later Irina came on the line. She listened to his low-voiced report without comment, then grunted. “So...human killer you think.”
“Considering the garlic, it has to be.”
“Probably you are right,” she said after several seconds.
The pause bothered him. “Probably? No va—”
“No!” she broke in. “Don’t say on phone.”
He scrambled for different words. “No one so allergic could handle it.”
“I have.”
He remembered her saying she had bluffed her way through trials testing her humanity. Including one with garlic? “How?”
“Will.”
Will power? “How is that enough?”
He thought he heard her sigh. “Your brain controls your body. You command your body to do what you must to survive. Now.” Her tone turned brisk. “Back to business. What we do now. And, before you ask, we wait for killer’s next move.”
Garreth frowned. “That could be another murder. Maybe mine. My grandmother says an enemy is closing in on me.”
“Not to kill you. Not yet. I believe killer first needs you.”
Needed him? “For what?”
“I cannot discuss on phone.”
He remembered the careful language of her note to Lane. “Okay. I’ll head your way.” Despite Serruto’s orders and Grandma Doyle’s warning. This was more important than possible danger out there.
“No! Is unwise in daylight. Give me your number and I will call this evening where to meet.”
Seeing her logic did nothing prevent impatience flaring in him. With a clock ticking away, something dark closing in, he hated just sitting here with nothing happening.
Too late he remembered he ought to be careful what he wished for.
Girimonte stalked into the office after a stone-faced Harry...“gotcha” in her eyes.
Garreth moved out of Harry’s chair, bracing himself. Had she told Harry about vampires and closed doors?
Harry draped his coat — looking almost dry — over the back of his chair and sat down heavily, motioning Garreth into the visitor chair. “I need you to be dead straight with me.”
“For once,” Girimonte said.
Harry frowned but kept his focus on Garreth.
Gazing back steadily, Garreth read no disbelief or horror on his old partner’s face. So maybe Girimonte had not “outed” him? It might still be wise to dodge being directly asked whether or not he left the house last night. He pushed his glasses up on his head. “I expect you want to ask if I can explain how my name ended up in that psychic’s house. Which I know about not through personal presence,” he said as he caught a razor smile on Girimonte’s face in his peripheral vision, “but because Serruto questioned me. And as I told him, I have no idea why the woman had my name. I don’t know her. She misspelled it, you notice. I have never been in her house. I certainly wasn’t there last night.” When Girimonte sniffed he flicked her a glance. “I think the burden is on you proving how I could leave Harry’s when any movement of that wedge under the door would show on the carpet.”
She dropped into her desk chair, lips tightening. At first Garreth took her expression to indicate an inner debate between telling or not. Then it struck him that rather than a debate, he saw frustration. If that came from gut certainty of a trick with the door but no idea how it worked...maybe she had not discovered about vampires and doors after all. Maybe.
To shift attention elsewhere, just in case, he looked back at Harry. “I take it you haven’t found that witness.”
“Not yet.” Harry grimaced. “I’m beginning to wonder if Fowler’s idea about Barber trying to set you up isn’t as fanciful as it seems.”
Girimonte snorted. “Schemes like that only happen in movies and books. Besides, Mikaelian supposedly doesn’t believe Barber’s involved in any of this and who else would have it in for him.”
Who else indeed. Garreth eyed her. Remembering Irina’s comment about the killer needing him, though...was he more a means to an end? Ultimately intended to be a fall guy probably, except so far all the suspicion cast on him lacked hard evidence with it. The consistency of that suddenly made him consider it might be deliberate. But if so, what the hell was the killer trying to accomplish?
A sigh from Girimonte broke into the whirl of thought. “Oh, joy...he’s back.”
“He” being Fowler, coming into the office. Waltzing, rather. Light on his feet, trench coat slung over his shoulder, he seemed to be imitating Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly. Reaching Harry and Girimonte’s desks, he laid his coat and a camera bag Garreth did not remember on Cory Yonning’s visitor’s chair, went into a pirouette, and came to a halt with arms spread. “Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy.”
Girimonte arched a skeptical brow.
Harry said, “And those would be...?”
“That the sun has come out and...” Fowler’s eyes gleamed. “...you are a step closer to bringing a killer to justice. I believe I’ve found Lane Barber.”
Chapter Thirty
Garreth’s gut lurched. Found Lane! Impossible!
Then he took a breath. Of course it was impossible. If she were alive he could not have entered her apartment. Fowler had merely come across someone resembling Lane.
Harry and Girimonte, too, wore skeptical expressions.
Fowler nodded. “Of course you have doubts. I anticipated that...which is why I have come also bearing evidence.”
He pulled two Polaroids from the camera bag and handed one each to Harry and Girimonte. Garreth stood to peer over Harry’s shoulder. And caught his breath. Fowler had taken the photo at a distance that framed the tall woman in it from head to the hem of a tweed walking cape. Even so, he had to admit that the face framed by a short helmet of red-gold hair did indeed look like Lane.
Girimonte glanced toward Garreth. “So much for Barber being nowhere around.”
Harry frowned. “If it’s really her. What do you think, Mik-san?”
To avoid commitment, Garreth gave him a shrug.“It’s possible...but I need a closer look to be sure.”
“I apologize for not providing it,” Fowler said, “but I could hardly snap a portrait without arousing suspicion. I had to pretend to be interested in the walking cape to show to my wife back at the hotel.”
“Where is this?” Girimonte asked.
“A shop in the Cannery called Shamrock Tweeds. She works there, calling herself Heather MacLean.”
“A day job?” The words came out before Garreth caught them. He scrambled to cover the slip. “She’s a night owl.” Though since he was living by daylight, however reluctantly, she could, too. Irina’s words echo in his head: Command your body to do what you must to survive.
“A night owl?” Fowler grinned. “Then how brilliant, completely changing job and habits. If what I’ve read about fugitives is true...that most are caught because they cling to the familiar. Yet, judging by customers I saw in that shop, I daresay she still has opportunities enough to meet the nob tourists your files indicate she preys on.”
Harry pushed out of his chair. “So let’s go see her for ourselves. You too, Mik-san, since you’ll know better than anyone if it’s her.”
In the corridor, making their way around toward the elevators after Harry up-dated Serruto, Garreth adopted a casual tone to ask: “How did you happen to find her?”
Fowler’s mouth quirked. “Pure chance...much as I could wish to claim some brilliant insight. It did occur to me that North Beach does not hold the monopoly on clubs and I visited other areas to show Miss Barber’s picture in any clubs there, then walking through the Cannery — a fascinating piece of architecture, so like Florentine palaces I’ve seen in Italy — I spotted her in the doorway of a shop, in flirtatious conversation with a gentleman whom it became obvious was a departing customer, and when he left, I followed her back inside.” In the elevator, he punched the button for the main floor. “I need to drive myself as I hav
e an appointment this afternoon to set up a book signing at City Lights later this week. I’ll rendezvous with you there.”
In fact, Fowler beat them, and stood waiting in the shadow of the arcade outside the shop, pretending to read a guide book. “She’s in there...off to the left by the display of driving caps.”
Harry peered in through the open door, then straightened his shoulders. “Okay...it’s show time.”
Garreth braced himself, too. Despite his certainty this Heather could not be Lane, the whole drive here and threading their way through the red brick complex with its shopping crowd and tides of blood odors, he worried if there were any way to have entered her apartment while she still lived. Was it possible that if she abandoned the apartment and no longer considered it her dwelling, the barrier disappeared? Even when her possessions remained?
So as he followed Harry into the shop, his heart slammed against his ribs.
A male clerk came to meet them. “May I help you?”
With eyes for only the tall redhead standing at the hat display, her back to them, and his mouth too dry to answer anyway, Garreth barely registered the man.
“Just looking right now,” Harry said.
The long, slim back pulled at Garreth. He had to know...and walked straight to her. “Excuse me.”
She turned. “May I help you?”
Presenting a face that for one panicked moment seemed to be Lane’s...until Garreth saw human warmth in eyes sky blue, not green, and heard an accent as Irish as his grandmother’s. Not Lane. Just enough alike to fool someone unfamiliar with Lane.
Relief flushed away tension with a force that left him feeling boneless.
Something in his reaction showed. Her forehead furrowed in concern. “Are you all right?”
He felt Harry behind him, watching, as he forced a smile, thinking fast. “Just startled. You’re the spitting image of my Grandma Doyle when she came to this country...only a little taller.”
She blinked, then laughed. “Probably more than a little, I’m thinking. Where did she come from?”
