by L. A. Graf
Sikes wasn’t sure Pickett would like hearing all the things Sikes knew about him. “It just seems like an awfully big coincidence, is all—you showing up here in Pittsburgh right about the same time the Newcomers do.”
Pickett shook his head. “I’m here ’cause I got paid!”
“Paid?”
“Paid!” He glared up at Sikes in almost humorous defiance. “Some local dude who cares about this country’s future got hold of me through the UPP. He knew the slags were coming for their propaganda parade, and he wanted somebody with experience to organize protests. That’s all I’ve been doing—protests and tracts.”
Sikes studied Pickett’s ratty little face for almost a full minute. He didn’t like the glow of honesty he saw there. “What’s his name? What’s he look like?”
Pickett spat on the front of Sikes’s jacket, and Sikes thumped him once against the wall in return. “Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you!” Pickett insisted, eyes clenched shut. “It’s my duty to the human race not to give in to bleeding heart liberals like you, who would sacrifice our sacred place on this earth just to—”
“Oh, shut up.” Sikes took a step back, jerking the weight bar out of Pickett’s hands as he did so. The skinny Purist seemed intent on pressing himself even flatter to the wall, as if afraid of whatever Sikes would do next. “Are you telling me you came all the way across the country to work for some guy you’ve never even seen?”
Pickett shrugged awkwardly, looking as though the stupidity of that was only just occurring to him. “I knew he was a slag-hating fascist,” he said in a significantly calmer voice. “That’s usually enough.”
Sikes planted one end of the bar on the floor and leaned the length of it up alongside his cheek. “You think you could identify this guy’s voice in a phone call?”
“You just don’t get it, do you?” Apparently reassured by Sikes’s relaxed posture, Pickett eased away from the wall and struck a haughty pose. “I’m not gonna help you snag this guy.”
“There’s a good chance he’s an accomplice to murder!”
“It’s not murder unless it’s a human.”
Sikes hissed a curse he’d learned from George and resisted whacking Pickett with the full length of the weight bar. “That may be your opinion, but it sure as hell isn’t the law’s. You could get hauled in just for withholding this kind of information.”
Pickett sneered. “Not by you,” he said smugly. “You’re not a cop in this state, remember? And if you try to take me in, I’ll have them arrest you for kidnapping.”
The reality of that threat made Sikes’s stomach roil. “I can still make a citizen’s arrest.”
“I’m not committing any crime,” Pickett countered. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. “I’ve got a paper that says I work here. I’m not on probation anywhere. In fact, you’re the one who broke in here after I specifically told you we were closed, and then you threatened me with that stick.” He made a move toward the house phone on the front desk down the hall. “Maybe I should call security and have them haul your ass downtown, hmmm?”
Sikes’s first instinct was to roundhouse the shit and stuff him in a locker. He managed to quell that, though, and instead tossed the bar a little farther down the hall so that Pickett didn’t have to go past it on their way to the entrance. “Fine. You let me out and I’m gone. I’m getting to where I can’t stand the smell in here anyway.” Besides, he had more than he came in with, and he could always send Protzberg’s people out here later to lean on Pickett on their own time.
The Purist’s grin was crooked and toothy as he unlocked the gate for Sikes. “I think I could get to like Pittsburgh,” he commented. “This is the most fun I’ve ever had with you, Sikes.”
Sikes yanked the gate closed behind him, taking evil pleasure in how close he came to catching Pickett’s fingers in the hinge. “Don’t get too used to it,” he advised, “ ’cause if I have my way, Darren, you’re not going to be in Pittsburgh very long.”
C H A P T E R 1 2
IF ONE MORE person complained to him about what the FBI had done, George thought bleakly, he was going to hurl himself through the hotel’s wall of windows and straight into the nearest river. Emma Bovary was the eleventh one since lunch, and the fourth since this coffee break had started five minutes ago. It didn’t help that she was also the least logical.
“—it’s not that I don’t appreciate the protection.” The model gave an exaggerated and distinctly human-looking shiver. The younger Tenctonese and human males who swarmed around her as mindlessly as midges made appreciative noises, although George wasn’t sure if they were responding to the emotion or to what it did for her low-cut dress. He wondered how Bovary could stand to expose that much of her back in the cold hotel air. “After all, with people getting ripped to shreds every night around here, a girl needs as many strong men around as she can get.”
George suppressed a snort, remembering how Ann Arbor had thrown around the FBI agents assigned to protect her. Even Emma Bovary, for all her painted china delicacy, could probably have broken any bone she wanted to in the men she was gazing at with such helpless appeal. With an effort, George refrained from pointing that out. He sipped his tea in grim silence, barely tasting the refreshing bite of soy sauce.
“But really, some things are just more important than personal safety,” Bovary continued bravely. She took a deep, determined breath. “The clothes in my room are literally priceless, Mr. Francisco! They’re unique originals, donated by professional designers for my exclusive use. I just can’t take the chance that one of them will disappear if the FBI decides to move us again.”
George sighed into his tea. “The FBI isn’t going to move us to a different floor each night, Ms. Bovary,” he said for the third time. With each repetition, he found himself using simpler words. “They just want to keep us safe from Purists breaking in our windows. And I don’t think they want to steal your dresses.”
“Oh, I’m not accusing them!” Emma Bovary cast an apologetic glance at the gray-suited young man at her right, and he reddened. For a minute, George wondered how she had picked the agent out so unerringly, then realized it must have been his clothes. “But with so many things disappearing in this hotel—I mean, the souvenir hunters are just having a field day! First it was the Frees’ manuscript, then one of Leo da Vinci’s chess pieces, and now poor Ann Arbor’s medals—”
George frowned. “Other people had things stolen before Ann Arbor?” he demanded. “Did they report that to the police?”
“I don’t think so,” Emma Bovary said in surprise. “I mean, why should they? It wasn’t anything really valuable, at least not before Ann Arbor lost her medals. Leo told me he has to replace his chess set almost every month.” She shrugged and another appreciative murmur went up. “You get used to fans wanting little souvenirs when you’re a celebrity.” Bovary’s beautiful violet eyes darkened with determination. “But I won’t let them take any of my clothes! If you could just explain to the FBI how important that is—”
His patience exhausted at last, George opened his mouth to tell her exactly how important he thought her clothes were. Before he could speak, however, a hand tugged urgently at his elbow and he looked down to see Cathy’s anxious face.
“George, Susan sent me to get you. She needs to talk to you right away.”
George felt both his hearts miss a beat. Susan had gone up to their room at the beginning of the coffee break to call Albert and find out how Vessna was doing. Had there been bad news? “Excuse me,” he said, cutting Emma Bovary off in mid-word, then turned and followed Cathy across the balcony.
“Bless you, neemu.” Susan stepped out from the alcove that sheltered the ladies’ room, and smiled at him. “You brought your tea.”
George handed it to her, sighing. One glance at the color of his wife’s blue eyes told him there was nothing wrong at home. “So what did you need to talk to me about?”
“Getting you rescued from that Hollywood har
py,” Susan said with a mischievous smile. She warmed her hands around the paper cup, shivering a little in the chilly air. “Aren’t you grateful to me?”
“Yes,” George admitted ruefully. He held an arm out, offering his warmth to her. Susan slid into his clasp at once, her silk-clad shoulders cold under his hand. “Couldn’t you find anything warmer to wear than this dress?”
Susan chuckled. “I thought about wearing my Pillagers sweater, but I didn’t think it would look right over fuchsia and teal silk.”
“Cathy wore hers,” George pointed out. The stylized penguin skating across the heavy black-and-gold sweater somehow managed to look casually elegant on the other linnaum, combined as it was with a metallic gold scarf and a short black leather skirt.
“Cathy is younger than I am, George,” Susan reminded him tartly, “and a lot more trendy.”
The biochemist shook her head. “No, I was going to wear a silk dress, too. But then I decided comfort was more important than fashion.”
Susan chuckled. “No wonder you and Matt get along so well.”
“Speaking of Matt—” Cathy turned her head to scan the balcony with a frown. The crowd was thinning out as people drifted back into the ballroom for the second session of talks. “I thought for sure he’d show up in time for the coffee break. Where did he go this morning?”
“To the downtown police station to help Captain Protzberg interrogate some Purists.” George glanced out at the midafternoon sun and frowned. “It must have taken longer than usual.”
“Or something else came up that he had to deal with.” Cathy sighed. “As it usually does.”
Susan reached out and patted her hand. “Don’t worry, dear. I’m sure he’ll show up in time for your talk today.”
“I know he will,” George said firmly. He took Cathy’s elbow and steered her back across the balcony with Susan still tucked under his arm. “Even Matthew wouldn’t forget something as important as that.”
“He wasn’t here, was he?”
George met Cathy’s gaze in the darkened ballroom, seeing resignation as well as disappointment in her eyes. She dropped into the empty seat next to him, crumpling her note cards in tense hands while the last echoes of applause for her talk faded to an appreciative murmur.
“No,” he admitted, “but your talk was superb, whether Matthew heard it or not.” Around them the audience stirred and settled, waiting for the next speaker to be fitted with his microphone while the cable news network took a commercial break. In the interim, static hissed and burst across the ceiling speakers, an electronic counterpoint to the crowd noise below.
Susan leaned across George, covering Cathy’s clenched hand with her own. “I’m sure Matt wanted to be here. Police work just doesn’t stop for other people’s schedules.”
“I’ve noticed that.” Cathy managed a small smile. “I didn’t think it would happen while we were on vacation, though.”
George thought about the last time he’d considered this trip a vacation and decided it had been somewhere over St. Louis. He sighed. “Cathy, for Matthew and me, this has turned into a busboy’s holiday.”
“Busman’s holiday, George.” Susan gave him an affectionate swat on the arm. “And I think you’d find some police thing to worry about no matter where we went for vacation.”
“Humph.” He sat back, trying to find a comfortable spot on the slick metal chair. The afternoon talks were winding to a close, and it was obvious that most of the audience were ready to break for supper. It made their enthusiasm for Cathy’s discussion of female Tenctonese scientists even more impressive. When the next speaker launched into a discussion of Tenctonese contributions to the television industry, George drifted into contemplating how receptive the audience was likely to be for his own talk. Given all the interspecies police cooperation this symposium had already generated, he thought ironically, he might even rate a sound bite on the evening news.
“George!” Susan joggled his elbow in the darkness, her voice an urgent whisper. “George, my purse is gone!”
Used to these sporadic alarms, George didn’t even open his eyes. “Did you look under your chair?”
“Of course I did. It’s not there.”
“Then how about under my chair? Or Cathy’s?” Up on stage, the speaker was explaining how interspecies situation comedies could provide role models for other families. It sounded more like a sales pitch than a lecture, and George wondered if the Newcomer was an agent.
Susan’s breath feathered his hand as she leaned over to see beneath him. “It’s not there, either. And anyway, I distinctly remember putting it under the chair in front of me.”
“Let me look.” George ducked his head down between the closely spaced seats and deliberately widened his eyes, forcing his pupils to dilate to their maximum extent. He saw the backs of several trousered legs, a few kicked-off women’s pumps, and a small army of discarded coffee cups, but no trace of Susan’s handbag. Surprise jerked him upright, blinking against the brighter light until his eyes adjusted. “I can’t believe it. Someone did steal your purse, Susan.”
“I told you so.”
“Maybe someone took it by mistake, thinking it was theirs.” Cathy leaned over to add her whisper to theirs as the speaker began promoting the use of Tenctonese actors in commercials. “I’ve done that with briefcases sometimes in dark conference rooms like this.”
“That’s possible.” George could see empty seats in the row before theirs, seats he knew had been occupied earlier in the afternoon. “Did anyone just leave from the row in front of us?”
Susan shook her head, looking annoyed with herself. “I was so busy watching Cathy’s talk that I didn’t pay attention,” she admitted. “At least there isn’t much money in my wallet. I just wish I hadn’t put all my pictures of Vessna and Emily in there!”
“Thieves usually take the money and throw the rest away,” George reassured her. He got up, careful not to intrude his head into the projected beam of light from the speaker’s slides. “I’ll see if anyone has turned it in at the hotel desk.”
“Thank you, neemu.” Susan caught his hand and squeezed it gratefully as he slid out of the row. “You see, Cathy, there are advantages to having a policeman in your life.”
Cathy made a sound that might have been the ghost of a chuckle. “You mean besides a refrigerator full of doughnuts?”
That young linnaum had been spending entirely too much time with his partner, George reflected. He hurried out of the room, barely avoiding the bearded cable news reporter who had jumped up to challenge the speaker about Hollywood clichés of Tenctonese life. A spontaneous burst of applause followed his question.
The balcony outside the ballroom had lost its sheen of sunlight, the shadow of Pittsburgh’s sheltering hills already fallen over it. Mixed groups of Tenctonese and humans drank tea and chatted as they waited for the symposium day to end, while a soft twilight mist gathered over the melting snow outside. George scanned the crowd, hoping to find a plainclothes FBI agent who could take him downstairs to the main lobby. Instead, his gaze snagged on an elegantly gaunt linnaum who stood alone near the balustrade, looking into an open leather purse. A second purse hung unobtrusively from her elbow.
George frowned and shouldered through the crowd, police instincts keeping him silent until he was close enough to catch her if she ran. “Mrs. Vegas, may I talk to you?”
“Oh!” Photos spilled from between unsteady hands as Lydia Vegas jerked around to meet him. George recognized the sweetly smiling face of his baby daughter and felt his frown deepen. The Overseer’s wife didn’t seem to notice, heaving what sounded like a genuine sigh of relief before she bent to pick up the pictures. “Oh, Mr. Francisco, you’re exactly the person I needed to see!”
George dropped to one knee beside her, gathering up a picture of Emily dressed as Pocahontas for a school play. He held it for a minute, smiling despite himself at the sight of his ultramodern teenager in the archaic Earth costume of fringed buckskin and lon
g skirts. Then he stood and helped the older linnaum to her feet.
“How can I help you, Mrs. Vegas?” he asked, handing the photos back to her and keeping his voice carefully neutral.
“It’s this purse.” She tucked the photos inside the leather bag and held it out to him, solemn as a ritual offering. “I found it in the trash can of the ladies’ room just a few minutes ago. Could you return it to its owner for me?”
George studied her in speculative silence. “You could do that yourself, if you wanted to,” he said at last. “All you’d have to do is look in the wallet and find out whose it is.”
Lydia Vegas met his gaze, her gray eyes turned almost black by embarrassment. “I don’t feel—I can’t do that. The person it belongs to might think I’d stolen it.”
Not the usual attitude of people who found lost property, George thought, but that didn’t necessarily mean Lydia Vegas was a thief. The same lack of self-esteem that led her to marry a kleezantsun might just as easily convince her she’d be blamed for someone else’s crime. He sighed and took the purse from her outstretched hand, feeling her thin fingers quiver as he did.
“I’ll make sure this goes back to the proper owner,” he told her. “But I’d like you to report finding it to the police and the hotel management. They’ve had a rash of thefts recently, and the information might help them track down the culprit.”
Lydia Vegas nodded, her eyes fading back to a more normal pale blue-gray. “Then I’ll certainly make a report.” She surprised him by reaching out to touch Susan’s photos again, carefully tucking them into the open purse. “I wouldn’t want anyone else to lose something so—precious.”
George watched her walk away, baffled into stillness. After four years on the police force, he could usually tell when people were lying, but the combination of sincerity and insecurity in the Overseer’s wife threw his intuition all awry. Something wasn’t right about her explanation of finding Susan’s purse, but George would be willing to swear in court that Lydia Vegas hadn’t wanted to steal anything from it. Except, perhaps, the pictures of Vessna, he thought suddenly. With her own child lost to miscarriage late in life, she might have been tempted—
