Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman

by Duncan Eagleson

  Looking over the files on the victims, I could see why Auden and Gage were considering the religious angle. But although many of the victims had been active in one religious cult or another, they all followed different religions.

  The first kill had been a fisherman, Arnold Hawthorne. His professional life had been pretty innocuous—he ran a small fishing boat that he’d inherited from his father, had four employees whom he apparently treated well, no complaints registered. Spent his weekends surfing. He was also the priest, or “Core Charger,” of a small circle of worshipers of Huey Otiz, God of the Sea. According to the notes, his congregation, or Brasse, had all been quite happy with him, and were grief stricken at his demise.

  The second victim had been an archaeology teacher named Juan Castro. He was well liked by students and other teachers, although thought of as a little weird and eccentric. In his youth, Castro had headed up the Bay City College’s Campus Crusade for Cthulu, and was apparently still sometimes seen at their events. There was some debate amongst historians and mythologists as to whether Cthulu had been an actual ancient god or a product of a pre-Crash novelist’s imagination. The guard investigators seemed to have taken the impression that Castro was quite serious about Cthulu, but I had my doubts. Castro was also a big Roth supporter, had volunteered in Roth’s last campaign. Considering Roth stood for order and democracy, and Cthulu was generally taken to stand for chaos and apocalyptic disaster, it seemed to me Castro probably had his tongue in his cheek about the CCC. Of course, you could never tell for sure.

  Guardsman James Fitch had come third. Fitch was a Soul-Areist. To the Railwalkers, Soul-Are is not a god, but a principle, the animating energy of the multiverse. We don’t invest Soul-Are with personality; it’s more like the Tao or the Force. Soul-Areists worship and pray to Soul-Are as a personal deity. Originally they approached the Railwalkers to act as their priesthood, but the order had refused. We couldn’t prevent them from disseminating a wrong-headed interpretation of our philosophy, but we didn’t have to support it.

  The harlot, Suzi Mascarpone, had recently joined the Marilynists. That was a new one on me, but according to the information in the guard file it was a growing cult among the harlots, based on the idea of the Sacred Prostitute.

  The last two victims seemed to break the pattern. Chief Adams had been a Christian, but not an ardent one. Attended his Church irregularly, mainly at the high holy days. Czernoff had been an atheist, although his friend Tyburn had called him a spiritual man.

  I didn’t see that the religious angle was really holding much water. But then my own idea, that the Beast had some score against Roth, didn’t appear to be holding up well, either. Chief Adams and Treasurer Czernoff fit that pattern, and maybe Guardsman Fitch; and then the teacher, Castro, had worked on Roth’s campaign staff. But the others had no obvious connection.

  All the victims had been mutilated in various ways. In most cases, pieces of them were missing, and never recovered.

  Morgan looked up from her comp unit and pulled out one of her earbuds. “I think that’s it,” she said. “Not much beyond the shade’s answers. A few of those random vocal fragments you always get in recordings like this, but that’s pretty much it.”

  She hit the playback.

  “George Frederic Adams?” my voice asked.

  “I was once, but I can’t talk long.” Morgan’s filters had cleaned it up some, but the voice from the speakerphone was still scratchy. “Move on, Mamma.”

  “We need your help,”

  “It’s duty, to serve and protect.”

  “Can you tell us about your killer?”

  “Ch-ch-ch-ch.... Turn and face the strange. It’s changes; it’s the training, y’know. Don’t make any bull moves.”

  Rok held up a finger, and Morgan paused the recording. “That was the point where the DV came on,” she said.

  Rok nodded. “The image was from an old black and white movie, The Wolf Man. It’s about a shapeshifter.”

  “And the color image?” I asked, “where the suitcase turned into a guy?”

  “Not sure.”

  “TV show,” said Morgan. “I think it was one of the Trek franchise programs had a shapeshifter in it.”

  “So it’s pretty clear what Adams means,” I said. “Our killer’s a skinwalker.”

  Morgan started the recording again.

  “Who killed you?” I heard myself ask.

  “The sun is set, set on it. A boy has never wept, nor dashed a thousand kin.”

  “Did you know your killer?”

  “There is no self to know. Mother knows best. Memory is gone, on a work release.”

  “How did he get into the wardroom?”

  “Andy wasn’t there. The clothes are in a rucksack. Kindly take my shoes off.” This time I was the one held up a hand, and Morgan paused it again.

  “Gage said Andy’s the janitor,” said Rok.

  “And he wasn’t there, he was out sick or something,” said Morgan.

  “‘The clothes are in a rucksack,’” I quoted. “Want to bet our shapeshifter got in masquerading as Janitor Andy?” No one did. I nodded, and Morgan hit “play” again.

  “Can you tell us anything about the Beast?”

  “She told him father would be proud. The evil one is not for you, not yet.”

  “George? George Adams, can you hear me?”

  “I’m dust in the wind. French Canadian bean soup. It’s all I know.”

  And that was all we had. Some of what we’d heard we recognized as random, nonsense phrases we’d heard before from other shades, like the one about the boy who dashed a thousand kin, or the French Canadian bean soup. Why certain phrases like that should keep cropping up over and over in dialogues with shades is beyond me, but they do.

  Eliminating the nonsense, what we were pretty sure of from this one was that the shade of George Adams was doing his best to cooperate (“It’s duty, to serve and protect”), and that the killer was a shapeshifter (“It’s changes, it’s the training, y’know”). “There is no self to know” probably indicated some form of psychic training. He’d likely come into the wardroom in a disguise of some sort (“The clothes are in a rucksack”), possibly shapeshifted to the form of a janitor named Andrew Foreman (“Andy wasn’t there”). Foreman, it later turned out, had spent the evening in question in an emergency room, victim of a hit-and-run accident.

  The jury would be out for a while on some of the other remarks. References to Mother or Momma were quite common in shade contacts, but it was hard to know in any given case whether they were nonsense babbling or had some actual relevance. Comments about fathers were more rare, and I wondered about “She told him father would be proud. The evil one is not for you, not yet.” Was Adams telling us that we couldn’t stop the Beast yet, or was the “evil one” someone else? Could this have been addressed to the Beast himself, by the “she” who told him Father would be proud? It seemed to me that the victims were getting a little closer to Roth with each subsequent killing, and I wondered if the Beast was maybe working his way up the food chain to the City Boss. Was Roth the “evil one” in the Beast’s mind? “Father would be proud...”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Run the recording back a bit.” Morgan backed it up, playing bits and pieces until I heard my own voice ask, “Who killed you?”

  “Right there,” I said.

  “The sun is set,” Adams’s scratchy voice told us. “Set on it.”

  Maybe Adams hadn’t meant “sun,” but “son.” Suddenly, something clicked in my brain. The son was set on it... Father would be proud...

  I grabbed the phone and called Roth. When he picked up, there was no “Hello,” only, “It’s nearly three A.M. This better be damned important.”

  “Did Wendell Crichton have a son?” I asked.

  “Railwalker Wolf? What? No, no children.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely sure. It was one of the real tragedies of the Takeover. Crichton and his wife ha
d problems having children. She’d finally gotten pregnant, but she was killed in the fighting, and the baby died with her. Why is this important?”

  “I guess it’s not. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “Oh, no problem. I had to wake up to answer the phone anyway.”

  I hung up on Roth’s sarcasm.

  “You were thinking the Beast might be Crichton’s son?” Morgan asked.

  “Or connected to him somehow, working for him or something. But Roth says Crichton had no kids. His wife was pregnant at the time of the Takeover, but she and the baby both died in the fighting.”

  “Figures,” said Morgan. “That would have been too easy.”

  8. WOLF

  Morning sun streamed in the large windows to paint gold across the ranked desks of the investigators’ bullpen. There weren’t many people there at this time of morning, three or four of the investigators drinking coffee at their desks and doing paperwork, Sergeant Robles talking to one of them. We crossed the room through the bands of sunlight to where Rainer Auden’s desk sat.

  “Morning, Investigator Auden,” I said.

  Auden eyed us from behind his desk. “Roth called you guys in,” he said without preamble, “and the Chief says we all gotta cooperate with you. I’m a paid employee of the city, and orders are orders. I’ll do what I’m told, but I don’t have to like it. The guard can look after its own.”

  “Well,” said Morgan, “two of you killed, the Chief right here in your own wardroom. I’d say you’ve done a bang-up job so far.”

  Auden sat forward in his chair, fists balled, and for a moment I thought he was going to stand up and take a shot at her. Then I saw something shift in his eyes. He knew that however much he hated the truth, Morgan was right.

  “Look, man,” I said, “we’re only interested in finding this guy. We don’t have any agenda about making the collar. If we can find him for you, you’re welcome to bring him in or take him down.”

  Auden raised a skeptical eyebrow. He didn’t say anything, though, so I continued. “You need our help to find him. We’ve got ways and means you don’t, but to use those skills, we also need all the information we can get. For us to be able to help you, you’ve got to help us.”

  “You’ve got copies of my reports.”

  “Reports are nothing but facts. We need more than that. You saw this Beast face to face. You can tell us things the written report can’t. As an investigator, you’ve gotta know that. Reading a written report is different from hearing a witness’s story firsthand. And a professional investigator is the best witness we could hope for.”

  Auden stood. “You’ve got my reports. Read ’em.” He shouldered past me and left the bullpen. The door didn’t exactly slam behind him on the way out, but nobody in the room had any doubt that it had closed.

  Morgan opened the file with Auden’s reports. “Six-four or so, maybe two-thirty, two-fifty pounds,” she read. “Dark skin, but not like a black or either kind of Indian, more grayish. And fast... He was, and I quote, ‘hellish fast. A couple of times, I could barely see him move, he was just a blur, like.’ When Auden ordered him to freeze, he smiled.”

  “With that speed, and being bulletproof,” said Rok, “I’d smile, too.”

  We all thought about this for a moment.

  “We need to get to his motive,” said Morgan. “Why does he kill the people he kills? How does he pick them? When we find out how he finds them, we’ll find him.”

  “Don’t sound like Chief Adams was real big on religion, and the treasurer was an atheist,” said Rok. “Looks like the religious angle isn’t holding up.”

  “I dunno about that.” The sergeant who’d led our welcoming committee had crossed the office to join us. Her name tag said Robles. “Excuse me for intruding, but Investigator Auden had me looking into that a little this morning. Seems Treasurer Czernoff had been particularly hard-nosed about tax exemptions for churches and temples. Turned down a bunch of recent applications. Several groups were pretty pissed off about that. There were even a few demonstrations, and calls for his resignation.”

  “Any chance of that happening?” I asked.

  Robles chuckled. I liked the sound. “Well, he’s permanently resigned now, isn’t he? But, no, Czernoff laughed in their faces. He wasn’t about to resign.”

  “What about Roth?” asked Morgan. “Would he have asked for Czernoff’s resignation, if the political pressure was stiff enough?”

  “No chance. Roth and Czernoff went back; he was one of Roth’s main men during the Takeover. Maybe if the council voted for it, Roth would consider it. But the churches involved didn’t have enough clout to take it that far.”

  “Any of ’em might be angry enough to hire a killer?” Rok asked.

  Morgan looked at him. “You thinking this guy might be for hire?”

  “I’m just saying,” Rok said.

  “Professionals don’t usually leave a calling card, do they?” asked Robles. “And that’s an awful lot of jobs in a short time.”

  “Calling card might be good for business. Maybe some were random, just to add to the rep.” Rok was trying, but I could see he didn’t believe it either. “Okay, so it ain’t likely, but it ain’t impossible, either.”

  “On the religion angle, the other thing is,” Robles continued, “I was looking into the former chief’s finances...” She shook her head. “Seems shitty, like spying on your own chief, but you gotta cover all the bases. Anyway, I find out he’d been making large contributions to a couple of charities—the Rock Soup kitchen, and the Graceland Rehab Center.”

  Rok shook his head. “Contributions to charities? That don’t seem very suspicious... Or are they bogus charities? Were they unusually big contributions or something?”

  “They’re legitimate, and no, the sums weren’t that big. No real stress on the chief’s wallet. The weird thing is, the chief was Episcopal, and both these places are run by the Church of the King.”

  That wasn’t totally outrageous, but it was a bit odd. The Church of the King accepted Christians well enough, but the good feelings didn’t tend to go the other way. CoKs saw their god, Elvis, as just another incarnation of the same dying king they saw in Osiris, Dionysus, Jesus, or JFK, but the Christians tended to see theirs as the one and only, and regarded such syncretic sentiments as blasphemy.

  “What about the other victims’ friends, family?” I asked Robles. “Your people interviewed most of them, any of ’em seemed like there was more there, worth following up on?”

  “Maybe.” She consulted her notebook again. “I sorta thought it might be worth taking a closer look at the harlot, Mascarpone. She only joined the Marilynists recently, but she’d held several elected posts in the Guild. A real activist, and it sounds like she was kind of a spitfire. Probably pissed off any number of people along the way.”

  “Activists usually do.”

  “Could be a real rat’s nest there. I wonder about the teacher, too.”

  “Juan Castro?”

  “Too clean. Everybody we asked thought the sun shone out of his ass. Sounds too good to be true to me. Not a soul walking the earth hasn’t pissed somebody off, got some kinda dirt in their closet. Either some of these witnesses were lying, or we didn’t dig deep enough, talk to enough people.”

  “Unless it really was random,” said Morgan.

  “You want to assume it was random, Ma’am, you tell me, where do we start with an investigation?”

  The “Ma’am” might have been respectful, or it might have been sarcastic; it was hard to tell. I could feel Morgan bristling. This could quickly get ugly again, so I held up a hand.

  “She’s right, Morgan,” I said. “If it’s really random, we’ve got no place to go with this. For the moment, we have to assume there’s some kind of method to the Beast’s madness.” Morgan scowled at me, but didn’t push the issue further. “Anything else?”

  “Don Whitehouse, second mate of the Bay Queen—that’s Hawthorne’s boat. He seemed like he
was holding back on something. I’m thinking maybe they were doing a little private import-export on the side.”

  “Smuggling what?” asked Rok. “I thought everything was legal here.”

  “Legal, yeah, but taxed. Booze, tobacco, pot, you name it, if there’s a tax on it, there’s a profit in smuggling. Could go either way, too—tax-free coming in, or might be going out, to one of the ports where they’re not legal at all. Small-time fisherman like Hawthorne, even just a small shipment now and then could make a big difference to his bottom line.”

  “Might be worth a follow-up. What about Guardsman Fitch?”

  Robles shot me a look that told me she wasn’t happy I’d brought that one up. “He was a right guy, a straight shooter. Everybody liked him.”

  “They all thought the sun shone out of his ass?” asked Morgan. “Sounds too good to be true.”

  Robles looked at Morgan with a laser gaze. After a beat, she said, “I’ll thank you to remember you’re a guest in my city, Railwalker, and these are my people you’re talking about.”

  Morgan came away from the wall and stepped toward the desk. “If it’s your city, then they’re all your people, aren’t they? Including the fucking Beast.”

  “Enough!” I put a Force into my voice as I spoke up and stepped between them. Morgan stepped back and Robles sat down again before either of them realized what I’d done. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rok trying not to smirk. “You,” I said to Robles, “don’t need your City Boss on your case because you picked a fight with a Railwalker. And you,” I turned to Morgan, “know better than to antagonize a city guardswoman when she’s cooperating.”

  Both were breathing a little heavy and glowering, though they were each now studiously looking anywhere but at the other.

  “My associate’s rude way of expressing herself aside,” I said to Robles, “she’s right. Guardsmen make enemies. It comes with the territory.”