Speak of the Devil - 05

by Tony Richards

  “Hooligans!” he said abruptly.

  Everybody in the room looked at him.

  “Thugs! Vandals! Wastrels! Bolsheviks! And … what’s that British expression? Yobbos!”

  “How’s that, Woods?” I asked, as mildly as I could.

  He paused and put an index finger to his chin.

  “I was simply trying to figure out the motivation behind this assault. And the only ones I can come up with are jealousy and spite. I think we are agreed that they were all young men?”

  From what I’d seen, that sounded reasonable, so I nodded.

  “They’ve nothing genuine to gain by killing me, or Levin, or the McGinley sisters. What possible good could it do them? And so they have to be doing all this out of green-eyed envy. They resent our social standing and our reputations.”

  Which was a theory, I guessed, but not a particularly good one. I got the feeling there was rather more to it than that.

  What, though, I had no idea. Woody was right to that extent. It was impossible to see the sense in any of the things that had been happening.

  But something else occurred to me, right then. Just before the cloaked figures had vanished, Lauren had made one of them drop his knife. And maybe that would give us our first lead.

  But we searched every inch of the ballroom, and the corridor outside as well.

  The knife was gone, the same way as the people who’d attacked us.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was fully day by the time that me and Lauren emerged from Raine Manor. But not any especially pleasing kind of day. I’ve never seen gruel, but I imagined it to be the same kind of color that the sky had turned right now, a bleary and unappetizing, mushy gray. The sun had to be up there somewhere, but you couldn’t make it out, only a vague patch of brightness where it ought to be. The air was mild around us, but a constant fine drizzle was coming down and making everything look lacquered.

  We went back along Raine Manor’s overgrown driveway, the waterlogged gravel sucking at our shoes.

  Half an hour later, we were in the P.D.’s central station house, poring over mug shots while Saul Hobart watched. He’d left four officers at Levin’s house, since he reckoned that he needed to be here, in charge of operations.

  “Well?”

  My shoulders heaved uncomfortably. “Half these guys I recognize, from my own time on the force. Our knife-wielding ‘dude’ is not among them.”

  So Saul got in a sketch artist he uses. And some twenty minutes after that, we had a pretty decent penciled-in impression of the intruder whose face we’d seen. The fleshiness around his cheeks and the vacancy in his pale eyes was perfectly captured.

  “I’ll get these Xeroxed,” Saul said.

  He returned with a big stack of copies.

  “So where do we go from here?” Lauren asked.

  “I’m sure you know the drill,” Saul nodded, handing her some papers from the wad. Then he turned to me. “Remember how to canvas a district, Ross?”

  I think I sighed before I told him, “It was always my favorite part of the job.”

  We split up individually and hit the high schools, showing the Xeroxes to principals, teachers, and students alike. And I don’t know about any of the rest, but I got a few false starts.

  “Hey, I think that’s … oh, no. Is his hair supposed to be blond? No, then.” Big shrug. “Sorry.”

  I just love canvassing, and can’t imagine why I ever stopped.

  Around midday, I wound up on Sycamore Hill, outside the black-enameled, wrought iron gates of a private high school called Luce Hall. As the name suggests, the place was founded by Erin Luce, one of this town’s most prominent witches from the Victorian era. The building was not too large but lived up to its origins. It was fancy in a Gothic way. There was ivy on the walls, and even a gazebo.

  The place was on its lunch break by this time of day. And in better conditions, the big grassy area out front would have been full of teenagers, relaxing or letting off some pent-up steam. But given the fact that half the grass had gotten ploughed into a soggy swamp, there weren’t too many kids out there today. They were hanging round the doorways instead, gazing out forlornly. And a few off underneath the gables on the right-hand side were sharing a furtive smoke, which brought back memories of my own schooldays.

  But then my gaze went to a spreading oak tree off in the opposite direction. There was a bench beneath it, with a young man in his late teens seated on it. This definitely was not the guy that I was after. Tall – oh yes – but very skinny. Obviously, he’d been growing up fast recently, because the cuffs of his pants were hanging several inches above his scuffed black shoes. He had a thick, unruly mop of curly dark-brown hair, and his nose was buried in a book.

  He looked up unconcernedly when I approached him.

  “Scholarship student, huh?” I asked.

  “Whuh?” And he squinted at me. “How can you tell that?”

  “The pants. Richer parents would’ve already bought you some new ones.”

  The boy stared down at them and then grinned awkwardly.

  “Okay then, well spotted. And who are you?”

  I didn’t want to spook him, so I changed the subject.

  “Interesting book?”

  He held up the cover. It was Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal.

  “Never read it,” I said. “Any good?”

  “Amazing.”

  Then I fished into my pocket and unfolded the drawing I’d been carrying all morning.

  “Recognize this guy?”

  The boy’s grin grew less awkward and considerably wider.

  “Is he in trouble?” he asked. “Please tell me that he’s in trouble!”

  So he obviously knew him, and I asked him how.

  “If by ‘know’ you mean ‘he turned my life into a living hell the whole time he was here,’ then that’s a yes.”

  And my pulse quickened.

  “Does he have a name?”

  “Thad Armitage. An archetypal well-heeled asshole. Rich folks, trust fund, and the guy’s a jock, of course. The whole gold-plated, alpha dog nine yards. What kind of trouble is he in?” The kid was nearly bouncing around on his butt by this stage. “Please say ‘big.’”

  “He’s not here any more?”

  “He went to college in the fall. Their loss.”

  I thanked the boy and turned around, then started walking off, only to hear a shout from behind me.

  “When you arrest him, can you make sure that you snap the cuffs on far too tight?”

  “Sorry, kid,” I shouted back. “I’m not a cop.”

  He looked at me askance at first. But then delight lit up his features.

  “Even better! You’re not even obliged to read him his rights!”

  When I glanced at him again, from some distance off, he’d dropped his book and gotten up, and was jumping around on the spot, punching the air in some demented kind of war dance.

  So it was pretty obvious he hated this Thad Armitage to the core of his young soul. And maybe I would too.

  At least I had a name now.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Raine’s Landing only has one college. It’s northwest of the town center, almost bordering the leafy suburb of West Meadow. And it’s a bigger place than Luce Hall, but similar architecturally. Most of its windows are leaded, and there are stone unicorns on either side of the big, arched entranceway, a part of the Raine family crest.

  And – odd although it might seem for an establishment that can only take in local students – the place has a campus, taking up nearly a couple of square miles. The college’s founder – Woody’s great-grandfather, Regis Raine – had reckoned that the kids would grow up faster if they had to live away from home a while.

  Thad Armitage had certainly grown up in the physical sense. The young feller who’d squealed on him had described him as a jock, and my first guess was football. Big square shoulders. A thick neck. Arms that had pumped an awful lot of iron, and legs that probably d
id squat-thrusts in their sleep.

  The face above that was precisely the same one I had seen back at Raine Manor. No amount of exercise could smooth away its fleshiness. Thad’s eyes were still dull and warmthless, and there was a petulant twist to his mouth that I was willing to bet was almost always there.

  There was a gold band glittering around his throat, a golden Rolex on his wrist. And he was climbing into the driver’s seat of a perfectly remodeled ’67 Corvette Sting Ray when my and Saul’s cars both rolled up.

  Thad’s window was down, so Saul marched across and leant in through it. I simply hung back and watched.

  “Hands off the paintwork, chrome-dome!” were the first words I heard emerging from young Armitage.

  Now, Saul may not strike you as the touchy type, but I happen to know that he’s a little sensitive when it comes to remarks about his naked scalp. He yanked out his badge and showed it to the boy, reaching in and pulling the keys with his other hand.

  “Huh?” Thad’s face twitched, then eased into a parody of innocent blankness. “I’ve done nothing wrong, dude. Haven’t bothered anyone.”

  Which wasn’t the way that I’d have put it. And I still had the scars to prove that.

  A black-and-white rolled up, right then. It wasn’t so sexy a ride as the Corvette, but was considerably more practical.

  Plenty of room in the back, and a wire cage to enjoy the view through.

  Thad had made his phone call. He had called his father, naturally. And his dad had called the family lawyer, who was on his way here. So we didn’t have much time.

  “I didn’t do nothing,” the big lox was insisting.

  “Is that the way you always talk?” Saul came back at him sharply. “Strikes me you’ve been wasting an expensive education.”

  The three of us were in an interview room, with Lauren outside, watching through a two-way mirror. Thad’s arms were folded tightly over his chest, and his lower lip was sticking out.

  “Undo your shirt,” I told him.

  “What?”

  “Show me your throat and your left shoulder.”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

  Saul wasn’t sure what I was getting at, but nodded in agreement. “Do it.”

  I’d punched Thad at least once, not to mention twisting his arm up behind his back. But his skin was utterly unblemished, not the tiniest mark visible.

  “You happy now?” he asked me, buttoning back up. “Got your jollies?”

  “Not so much as you were. You were really enjoying yourself inside Raine Manor, weren’t you?”

  His face screwed up again, although his eyes retained their hollow blandness. This was somebody who showed emotion only on the outside, didn’t really feel it.

  “Never been near the place, dude,” he sneered. “That old crazy fart who lives there? I wouldn’t go near him if you paid me twenty million to do it.”

  Now, I’m no psychologist. But at a stab I’d say that Thad here wasn’t smart enough to be a convincing actor. And he looked like he was telling us the truth. Which meant that something seriously odd was going on, and Saul latched onto that as well.

  “Who are your friends, Thad?” he asked.

  “What’s that gotta to with –?“

  “I want the names of any people that you happen to hang out with.”

  There’d been four of them up at the Manor, not just him. His head began jerking about confusedly.

  “Guys, you know. No one special. Just a few dudes I’m on nodding terms with. No one in particular.”

  “You sure about that?”

  And then Saul pointed, for my benefit.

  On Thad’s left hand, on the middle finger, was a thick bronze band with foreign looking lettering on it.

  “Fraternity ring, right?”

  Thad went flushed.

  And then he muttered, “Oh, yeah. That.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The frat house was right down at the bottom west side of the campus, tucked away behind a little grove of trees. Lauren, Saul, and me walked to it down a sodden path. There were no other people out.

  It was an almost square building of yellow brick, three stories tall, which looked as if it had been built around the same time as the college. The roof was flat, and there was water dripping from a number of small gullies. There were lights on inside, and shallow stone steps leading up to an ornately carved front door. Above it were set three big Greek letters.

  A delta. An epsilon. And a theta.

  “If I remember my Greek alphabet,” Saul said quietly, and he’d had to learn a little when the Shadow Man had first shown up, “delta is a ‘dee,’ epsilon’s an ‘ee,’ and theta is ‘tee-aitch.’”

  “Deth House,” I muttered. “I’m beside myself with laughter.”

  Saul wasn’t looking all that amused either. He led the way to the front door, then tried the knob. It was unlocked, so we went in.

  Straight into what had to be the common room, except that there was nothing particularly common about it. It was like entering a fine gentleman’s club sometime round the era of old Phileas Fogg. Flocked wallpaper and expensive rugs. Antique-looking furniture, all darkly polished wood and brass and padded silk. Glossy coffee tables, and big crystal ashtrays on three-legged stands. If I’d known that college was like this, I’d have thought twice about joining the force directly after leaving high school.

  But the place was stiflingly warm as well. I saw no need for that.

  Half a dozen young male faces were staring back at me from underneath their pricey haircuts. There was not a trace of acne I could see, the features on view uniformly smooth. These frat boys had been lolling around, presumably just chilling out, till we’d arrived. Each of them was sporty, and a couple of them had the same kind of inflated physique as Thad. They were dressed as expensively as he’d been too, and one of them was even got up in a double-breasted blazer.

  Aside from that punch I had delivered to a cloaked intruder’s collarbone, I’d landed another blow to the side of someone’s head. And Lauren had kicked another guy dead on the chin, not to mention throwing an attacker up against a wall. So it was bruises I was looking for again.

  But there was not a mark on any of them. Either these were not the culprits, or else something was restoring them real fast. And that meant magic.

  They looked surprised and curious when we walked in. But then several of their faces took on supercilious smirks. Those were directed at Lauren, and I felt my hackles start to rise.

  “What a perfect babe,” the fellow in the blazer said. “And she’s walked right in here of her own free will. Someone ought to hang a tie on the front doorknob.”

  A couple of the others laughed. And then the boy next to the blazer guy started squinching up his mouth and blowing Lauren kisses.

  “You think that’s funny?” Saul pulled out his badge again, and their smiles evaporated. “Who’s in charge here?”

  “No one in particular,” came a new voice, from above us.

  And I thought I recognized it, back from Woody’s ballroom, only it had been muffled by a hood back then.

  “But I suppose that you could call me the first among equals,” it continued.

  There were polished wooden railings up there, hemming in a balcony that ran the whole circumference of the common room. A row of doors told you that there were rooms aplenty on the second story. One of those had now come open, someone had emerged. But there were no lights on up there, which made him little more than a silhouette against the thicker darkness.

  He stepped forward a second later, though, setting his hands against the railing. And a little part of him came into view.

  He was shorter than the others, more compactly built. His fingernails were manicured, and the wristwatch that he had on was considerably more expensive than a Rolex. I did not let that impress me.

  “And you are?” I called up.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but my name is Ryan Eastlake.”

&
nbsp; That immediately struck a chord.

  “Any relative of Harker Eastlake’s?”

  “You could say that, yeah. He happens to be my father.”

  Harker Eastlake was – among other things – the owner of about a third of all the property in East Meadow and Garnerstown, the two poorest districts in the Landing. Which, to my way of thinking, made him more than half the distance into being a slum landlord. He lived not too far from the top of Sycamore Hill, in a mansion easily as grand as Gaspar Vernon’s. I had never met him. Few people of lower station had. The guy was no recluse, but he preferred to stick with his own kind.

  His son shifted his stance a little, and his face was finally captured by a patch of muted lamplight.

  At first glance, it was a handsome one. Dark hair, dark eyes, chiseled features, a strong chin. But then you noticed how overly wide the mouth was, the lips very flat and straight. And how thick his eyebrows were, the way they seemed to lend his face an extra touch of shadow. When he smiled down at the three of us, his teeth were very small and glittered.

  “Do you people have a warrant?”

  “I can have one delivered,” Saul replied, “so why waste time?”

  But I was only half listening, studying this Ryan Eastlake all over again.

  There was something decidedly odd about him. Something about his appearance that did not match up. At first, I got the notion that his features were all partially off-center. But it wasn’t that. No. The off-center quality … it was coming from his eyes. From inside of him, in other words.

  “And how can I help you?” he was asking.

  We’d already agreed on the way here that we would get no further than we’d done with Thad by simply questioning these guys. What we needed was hard evidence. And we would surely find it here, if there was any.

  “We’d like to take a look around,” Saul said.

  “This entire house?”

  “Well, yeah, that’s the general idea.”

  “In the hope of finding what?”