by John Meaney
“Yeah.” Viktor pressed the return button, and the target's remnants came whirring toward him. “Those deep-wraiths are kind of ambiguous, or something.”
“I wanted to ask you something. About Xalia.”
“Fuck.” Viktor leaned his head back, staring at the ceiling, then puffed out a breath. “I should've realized she wasn't recovered.”
“None us appreciated how badly she'd been hurt before. She should have told Bowman.”
“I guess.”
“So you were doing something for Bowman.”
“Huh.” Viktor rubbed his beard stubble. “You're a smart cookie, Sergeant Hammersen. Bowman briefed us, but I'd say we were doing it for the commissioner.”
“The same commissioner we thought might be a dark mage, just a few weeks ago?”
“Yeah, that's the one. Nuts. We were investigating sightings of white wolves.”
Harald's eyes rarely looked anything other than gentle. Now, when he blinked, they were liquid and soft.
“White wolves.”
“I don't know the significance. But we were investigating every sighting. Dispatch are routing calls to us at any hour, from any precinct.”
“Us? Meaning you and Xalia?”
“And Bowman. Just the three of us, as far as I know. Oh, and there's one other thing. If I tell anyone, I'm supposed to kill 'em.”
“Quickly or slowly?”
“Not specified.”
“Well, you've been killing me slowly for, what, a couple of years now?” Harald smiled. “My assignment is, I've been talking to customers with new telephones. Me and Kresham.”
“Huh?”
“Some new kind of phone. Colored indigo, not black. Might be ensorcelling their customers.”
“To do what? Make longer calls? Run up their bills?”
Harald almost laughed. “Not specified, my friend.”
Viktor unclipped the remains of his target, looked at the fresh target sheets, then turned back to Harald.
“You've got something in mind, haven't you?”
“Not really. I just wondered if Xalia got zapped or something.”
“In what way?”
“What was she up to? I mean, when she had her … whatever. Breakdown.”
“Just another sighting, but none of the others have turned up anything.”
“And this one?”
“It was outside the Janaval Hotel, I know that much.”
“All right.” Harald knew the place. “The street there will be busy. Bound to look normal.”
“Bound to. If we had anything better to do, there'd be no point in checking.”
“Exactly.”
“So, Harald. You got anything better to do?”
“No.”
“Me neither. Let's see if Sam'll give us an unmarked. Hopefully better than the last pile of shit.”
“I'll take the motorcycle.”
“Good enough.”
There were ten unused target sheets remaining.
“What are you going to do with those?” asked Harald.
“Just toss 'em,” said Viktor, taking hold of the sheets.
He threw them into the air.
“Fuck.” Harald was already backing off, grinning. “You're nuts.”
Viktor launched himself into a shoulder roll, and came up spinning, Grausers in his hands, and with twin blasts tore apart the airborne targets, until the air was thick with cordite and shreds of paper floating down like snow.
“I've no idea what you're talking about,” he told Harald. “I'm perfectly normal.”
Ten minutes later, they were on the garage level, standing in the midst of a busy crowd of cops. Some were working the scene; others had come to take a look.
“An officer down,” muttered someone, “in HQ.”
“That's just not… right,” a female sergeant said. “Hasn't happened for, what, ten, maybe fifteen years? Longer?”
Then someone moved, and Harald caught a glimpse of Sam's corpse.
“Shit.”
Viktor was tall enough to see over most people's heads. He gestured with his unshaven chin.
“The deathwolves are over there. Talking to truthsayers.”
A uniform that Harald didn't recognize said: “The deathwolves saw the killer, is what I heard.”
“Have they got the bastard?” asked Viktor.
“Naw. And it's one of our own. A cop. She did Sam, got out of the building, left the deathwolves chewing their nuts.”
“Say what? A cop did this?”
“Someone named Ceerling. Alexa Ceerling? You ever heard of—?”
But Harald was already heading for the walkway, and after a half-second delay, Viktor followed. Grim-faced, they strode through to the garage where cops parked their private vehicles.
“Where would she go?” asked Viktor, walking fast to keep up.
“I've no idea where she'd go to ground.”
“Shit. How do we find out what she's into? Her desk? Her locker?”
“Someone else will be going through her stuff already.” Harald increased the pace. “But I do know her home address, from the time I gave her a lift to—shit.”
Harald stopped in front of bay 317.
An empty bay.
“What is it?” said Viktor. “Wait. Isn't this … ?”
“Yeah. Where I park the Phantasm.”
They looked at each other. Both of them knew that the motorcycle was capable of defending itself with lethal force. It wouldn't allow any person to ride it, unless it knew them.
“It can ride by itself, right?” said Viktor.
“Yeah, and I told it to go home by itself, if I hadn't come back, but not until twenty o'clock. It wouldn't go earlier, unless there was an emergency.”
“So either it's following Alexa, or—”
“Or she's riding it.”
Again, they looked at each other.
“Surveillance,” they said simultaneously.
They headed back toward the walkway.
There were no deathwolves around the steps of Police HQ. Donal thought about this, came to no conclusion, then held up his detective's shield and recited his badge number. The big doors ground open.
FenSeven was inside, with massive reinforcements. There must be thirty or more deathwolves staring at him. Beyond stood troopers in hexlar vests.
“Come in, Lieutenant,” Eduardo called from the reception desk. “I'll fill you in.”
“All right.”
The deathwolves parted to allow passage, and Donal walked up to the granite block from which Eduardo's torso rose.
“What's going on?”
“Alexa Ceerling killed two people, looks like. Right here in the building.”
“No.”
“Yes. Troy Gamarlov, he's a medic. She had an appointment with him, some kind of checkup, and now Gamarlov's body is in a dozen pieces. Is what I hear, anyhow.”
“Hades, Eduardo.”
Donal knew that whatever Eduardo reported as rumor was usually true.
“Yeah. And the other stiff is Sam.”
“Sam?”
“In the garage.”
“No. Not Sam. Why would Alexa kill … ?”
Donal's voice trailed off.
Because she was ensorcelled.
“You thought of something, Lieutenant?”
Ensorcelled by those fucking telephones.
“I don't know.” Donal's tone was grim. “Talk to you later.”
“Yeah. Later.”
Donal headed for the elevator wraiths.
Gertie's shaft was out of use, which was a minor mystery amid the confusion all around him. It was awful: Alexa committing murder inside HQ, the commissioner and Mayor Dancy killed in City Hall. Donal took the next shaft along.
“Minus twenty-seven. Please.”
The wraith took him down without communicating, then pushed him into the lobby area. He stopped there, looking into the task force room, where eight large plainclothes guys, most in shir
tsleeves, were tearing the desks apart. A couple were from Homicide, the rest from Internal Security, which was never a good sign.
Donal had been with Homicide for five years, before the diva debacle and his reassignment to Laura's task force. Most of the Homicide guys were people he knew well; but these two had joined shortly before he left.
Not a coincidence.
Inside the glass-walled cube that had been Laura's office, a mustachioed man was scowling. Donal knew him, all right: Commander Seiyatch, whose refusal to work with wraiths or other nonhuman officers was a long-established fact, whatever regulations said.
This should be fun.
“Riordan.” Seiyatch came into the open office area as Donal entered. “They cut you loose from City Hall?”
“Took my statement, as a witness.”
“And look what you've come back to.”
Donal watched the IS investigators pulling apart drawers and filing cabinets. One of the investigators glanced at Donal, raised eyebrows and shoulders in what looked like apology, then returned to his task.
“The paperwork's a mess,” added Seiyatch. “Which I always consider a reflection on leadership.”
Anger started to blossom inside Donal. He stared at it in his mind's eye, deconstructing the emotion as being less than useful in the current context, and forced it aside.
“If you're interested in Alexa Ceerling's recent movements, she was working for the commissioner.”
“You mean Craigsen? Oh, no, he's not officially the commissioner yet.”
“Craigsen. You think he's got seniority enough for that?”
“I always thought being a commissioner is about politics.” Seiyatch smiled as one of the Homicide guys tipped reports onto the floor. “And Mayor Van Linder is going to want strong-willed leadership.”
That bastard. Maybe he had something to do with it.
It occurred to Donal that Assistant Mayor Van Linder had been standing far away from Mayor Dancy when the shooting started. Still, wouldn't Van Linder have been outside the main hall altogether, if he'd been complicit in the assassination?
But the shooter's timetable had been brought forward by Gilarney's discovery of the bodies in the display case. When she shouted “Officers down,” the shooter had to fire or lose his chance in the panicked evacuation.
“Alexa Ceerling,” said Donal. “You want to know what happened to her.”
“To her? I know what happened to her victims. She's a cop-killer, and being a cop herself just makes that worse, wouldn't you say? It's time we cleaned up this department.”
Donal stood reptile-still, not even breathing. After half a minute, Seiyatch broke eye contact and stepped back.
“I agree with you, Seiyatch.”
“Uh, what?”
“It's time Tristopolis PD got rid of bad cops.”
Then he turned and left, peripherally noticing several smiles from the investigators, which disappeared as they resumed their work.
None of which was likely to help.
Donal stepped out onto the one-hundredth floor, and paused at the entrance to Surveillance. At the far end, close to the entrance to the commissioner's office—still Vilnar's office, as far as Donal was concerned—Viktor and Harald were talking to an officer in shirtsleeves. The guy was maybe fifty and fit-looking, and he'd introduced himself when Donal was here before.
The memory surfaced: Rob Helborne, Alexa's friend.
Donal wondered if Viktor and Harald—especially Harald, with his instinct for making contacts—had already known this was a friend of Alexa's. With the rows of monitors amid the transparent fibers hanging from the ceiling, it was surprising the surveillance officers hadn't tracked her down already.
If everyone felt like Seiyatch, they were likely to gun her down first, and let the Bone Listeners ask the questions on the autopsy table.
Not Viktor. Not Harald.
They were Alexa's friends, and would listen while Donal explained what must have happened. Already—he could tell from the way they'd taken Rob Helborne aside—they were trying to track her down by themselves.
“Hey.” Donal walked up. “I know what's going on. Listen, um, Rob, you know there's still a visitor in there?”
He pointed toward the heavy portal of the commissioner's office.
“Thanatos. I forgot.”
“I need to see him. And you two,” he said to Viktor and Harald. “Let's talk.”
“Yes.” Harald nodded to Helborne. “All right? See you later.”
“Okay. And I'll signal the office to open, Lieutenant.”
But the doors were already pulling apart.
“That's … odd,” said Helborne.
Donal was already entering, with Viktor and Harald behind him. They hurried through the short tunnel, and the inner door opened. The surrounding fringe of ciliaserpents thrashed and whipped.
“Careful,” said Donal. “They're not trying to harm us, but they're disturbed.”
He jumped through, then quickly moved farther into the office, making room for Harald to follow, then Viktor.
“Oh.” From behind the desk, Kyushen looked up. “Um, hi.”
He blinked. The manual was open to somewhere near the middle, and loose-leaf notes were scattered across the desktop. A pen was in Kyushen's hand, poised above a half-drawn diagram on his notepad.
“Dr. Kyushen Jyu,” said Donal, “these are my colleagues Harald Hammersen and Viktor Harman.”
“Nice to, um, meet you.”
Kyushen's gaze was already drifting back to the open manual.
“I've got bad news, everyone.” Donal swallowed as he looked around, not at the people but at the furnishings: the black iron chair, the stone credenza, a convoluted light fitting that dangled from the ceiling, several other chairs and cabinets. And a tiny footstool, almost overlooked. “I'm sorry.”
The chairs and cabinets swiveled to face him. Harald and Viktor took a step back, while Kyushen slowly put down his pen.
“Arrhennius Vilnar died this morning. A professional assassination.” Donal touched his jacket pocket. It still contained the dead commissioner's eye. “Some scapegoats were gunned down, and I'm having difficulty persuading people that someone else did the shooting.”
“The commissioner?” Kyushen looked at the chair he was sitting in. A dead man's chair. “Someone killed him?”
“Mayor Dancy was the prime target.”
Or maybe not.
That was something to consider.
“The mayor's dead too?” said Viktor.
“Yeah.” Donal reached out to touch the black chair. “I'm sorry.”
It shivered. Then the desk began to keen, and Kyushen stood up quickly.
“What—?”
The light fitting twisted, the cabinets shifted their weight, and the orrery began to move faster. Donal wondered, as he watched and listened, what the commissioner's widow was doing right now.
She was a tough bitch, but she loved him.
It was a strange thought to have.
I never met her, did I?
Then he rubbed his face, and tried to concentrate on what Harald was saying.
“—supposed to have killed a doctor, as well as Sam.”
“I know,” said Donal.
The furniture's moans grew louder.
“She was ensorcelled,” Donal added. “There are these phones in Customer Relations—”
“Telephones?” said Harald.
“Yeah, these indigo things that—”
“Here? In HQ?”
“Yes. Alexa spent a lot of time in the place, and she persuaded me to go down there to—”
“You've used the phones?”
Donal said: “Yes.”
Harald leaped forward, driving the heel of his palm toward Donal's chin, but Donal was already turning, slapping at the attack, circling away.
“It didn't affect me!”
Donal avoided a thrusting kick aimed at his knee.
“Stop!” Kyushen's voi
ce was piercing. “No undead mind can be affected by the command harmonics. Look, it says so right here.”
He pointed to a page full of dense equations.
“Okay.” Harald stopped. “Okay.”
Breathing heavily, he stepped back, getting himself under control.
“They didn't affect me,” said Donal. “The phones.”
“Hades.” Harald blew out a breath. “That's the second time I've been wrong about you, Donal.”
“Maybe next time you're wrong”—Donal grinned—“you'll think I'm better than I really am. Deal?”
“I'll do my best.”
Harald reached out, and Donal shook his hand.
“All right,” said Donal. “So did you spend time in Customer Relations?”
“No, we checked on their customers in the city. Mostly older folk living alone who are suddenly filled with health and free of illness. Me and Kresham, we both worked on it.”
“Huh. The Old Man had you investigating, did he? Reporting directly to him?”
“To Bowman.”
“Close enough. The commissioner told me that he set up Alexa, but she was going to undergo detailed analysis—that was the reason for sending her into Customer Relations—sorry, the Customer Relationship Bureau. Some expert was going to map the neural changes, and reverse the effect.”
“Didn't work out that way,” growled Viktor.
The furniture had grown silent.
“So it was the analysis session, with this Dr. Gamarlov,” said Harald, “that triggered Alexa's killing spree?”
“You know as much as I do now,” Donal told him. “We need to figure out a way to help Alexa, right? Before some bunch of troopers gun her down.”
He hadn't told them everything. There was still the matter of the eyeball in his pocket, now wrapped in preserving wormskin.
“She's got the Phantasm.” Harald nodded toward Viktor. “We just asked Surveillance to find it for us.”
“Good. So that's one possibility,” said Donal. “What else can we do?”
“Go down to Customer Relations.” Viktor moved his huge shoulders beneath his leather coat. “Bounce some heads off the walls.”
“They're victims,” said Harald. “Just like Alexa.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Look, I've calmed down, and I'm thinking this through. I did want to strike out—good thing it was you, Donal.”
“Thanks. I guess.”
