Anonymous Rex (9 page)

“I don’t have a wet bar in my office,” I say to no one in particular. The doors close softly behind me.

“Donovan?” A shadow detaches itself from behind the desk, stands rigidly behind a chair. “Is that really you?” Her voice carries the affected aristocratic lilt of someone who wishes to give the impression of being money-born, of having come from great status through the accident of birth rather than having achieved it.

“Morning, Mrs. McBride.”

“My lord … Donovan, you … you look well.” She hasn’t moved.

“You seem surprised.”

“Of course I’m surprised. I heard about the fire, and …” Mrs. McBride is on the move now, arms outstretched, sunlight strobing across her face, coming in for a hug, mayday, mayday.

We embrace, and the guilt sets in. I stiffen. She pulls back and takes a good look at me, soaking in my frame, my features.

She says, “You changed guises.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Black market?”

“What the Council doesn’t know …” I mutter with practiced indifference.

“I like the old one better,” she says. “This one is too … too Bogart.”

The grin explodes onto my face; I can’t help it. Bogart! Wonderful! Not exactly the look I was going for, but darned close enough. But now she’s backing away, shooting me sidelong glances, and I have to let the proverbial cat out of the Ziploc.

Slowly, calmly, I spill it all. “Mrs. McBride, I didn’t mean to worry you … I’m not Donovan Burke.” I steel myself for the impending outrage.

None comes. Instead, Judith McBride nods mutely, anxiety welling in those big brown eyes. “Are you the one?” she says, feet backing her body away in a jittery waltz. “Are you the one who killed Raymond?”

Wonderful. Now she thinks I’m her husband’s murderer. If she screams, it’s all over—I wouldn’t lay odds against the notion that those two slabs of dino meat from the elevator are still waiting just outside the door, eager to burst in, beat me into burger, and toss me seventy-eight stories to the bustling street below. I can only hope that my blood and brain matter splatter into a pattern of enough artistic merit to properly complement the building’s architecture. Then again, if we can avoid the situation altogether …

I gently open my hands to display their lack of weapons. “I’m not a killer, Mrs. McBride. That’s not why I’m here.”

Relief slides across her features. “I have jewels,” she says. “In a safe. I can open it for you.”

“I don’t want your jewels,” I say.

“Money, then—”

“I don’t want your money, either.” I reach into my jacket; she stiffens, closes her eyes, ready for the bullet or the knife that will send her to meet her husband in dino Valhalla. Why hasn’t she screamed yet? No matter. I pull out my ID and toss it at her feet. “My name’s Vincent Rubio. I’m a private investigator from Los Angeles.”

Anger, frustration, embarrassment—these are but a sampling of
the emotions that flit across Judith McBride’s face like so many misshapen masks. “You lied to the receptionist,” she says.

I nod. “Accurate.”

Her composure coming back now, color returning to that middle-aged face. Wrinkles crease her size-seven crow’s-feet. She says, “I know people. I could have your license taken away.”

“Probably true.”

“I could have you thrown out of here in two seconds.” “Definitely true.”

“And what makes you think that I won’t?”

I shrug. “You tell me.”

“I suppose you think that I would be intrigued by all this. That I want to know why you would come in here pretending to be an old business acquaintance.”

“Not necessarily,” I reply, bending at the waist to retrieve my ID from the shaggy carpet. “Maybe you just don’t get a chance to talk much. Maybe you need a chat buddy.”

She smiles, a nice turn of her lips that erases ten years from her features. “Do you enjoy detective work, Mr. Rubio?”

“It has its moments,” I say.

“Such as?”

“Such as getting to hug beautiful women who think you’re someone else.” Banter, banter, banter. I love this stuff. It’s a game, a contest, and I never lose.

“You read a lot of Hammett, don’t you?” she asks.

“Never heard of the guy.”

“Rubio … Rubio …” Mrs. McBride lowers herself into the desk chair. “Sounds familiar.” Her fingers twitch, head cocked to one side, as she tries to drag some recollection of my name through the morass of memories surrounding her husband’s murder.

“I tried to question you about nine months back.”

“About Raymond?”

“About Raymond, and about my partner.”

“And what happened?”

“I think I couldn’t get an appointment.”

“You think?”

“It was a rough week,” I explain.

She nods, eyes aslant, and asks, “Who was your partner?”

“His name was Ernie Watson. He was looking into your husband’s death when he was killed. Name ring a bell?”

She shakes her head. “Watson … Watson … I don’t believe so.”

“Raptor, about five nine, smelled like ditto paper?” I’m starting off on the wrong foot, Ernie’s memory taking over my lips, my tongue, asking the questions by themselves, and it takes a Tyrannosean effort to still my tongue.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Rubio. There’s nothing more I can say.”

We silently examine each other for a moment, feeling out our respective positions. Her scent is strong. Complex. I smell rose petals drifting through a cornfield, chlorine tablets in an orange grove. And there’s something else in there that I cannot place, an almost metallic smell that dissolves in and out of her natural odor, tinting it in some implacable direction.

Judith McBride’s human guise is attractive enough, pleasant without being too overwhelmingly gorgeous. As a rule, we dinos try not to draw attention to our faux forms by constructing costumes that might prove too enticing to the average human; the potential pitfalls are numerous. I dated an Ornithomimus once who insisted on wearing a knockout disguise—we’re talking a 314 on a 10-point scale, curves like a glassblower’s experiment gone wrong—and, as a result, ended up as one of the most sought-after bathing suit models in the world. But when a zipper malfunctioned on a bikini shoot in Fiji, the dino community nearly had a full-scale crisis on its hands. Fortunately, the photographer was one of us, and he cleared the set before anyone not of our ilk could notice. The photo shoot continued as scheduled, the incriminating negatives destroyed before they even made it into a darkroom, and the world never knew that beneath that fetching left ankle, so carefully hidden by rocks, seawater, and kelp, was a green three-toed foot scratching wildly at the sand.

“So,” says Judith, “I assume this time you came back to talk about my husband’s murder.”

“And other matters.” No need to bring up Donovan Burke at this point. If she wants to talk about McBride’s death, I’m more than happy to listen.

“I’ve already spoken with the police,” she says. “Hundreds of times.
And a veritable squadron of private detectives, like you, hired by this company or that company. I’ve signed on my own private investigators, as well.”

“And?”

“And they came up empty-handed. All of them.”

“What did you tell them?”

She keeps the game alive. “Don’t you read the papers?”

“Can’t trust everything you read. Why don’t you tell me what you told the cops?”

Mrs. McBride inhales deeply and adjusts herself in the wide-backed chair before beginning. “I told them the same thing I told everyone else. That on Christmas morning, I came up to Raymond’s office to wrap packages with him. That I found my husband lying facedown, blood pooling, staining the carpet. That I ran, screaming, out of the building. That I woke up an hour later at the police station, unsure of how I got there or what had happened. That I cried for six months straight and only now can I find the strength to reserve it for when I am alone in my bed at night.” Her nose twitches; she stops, takes a breath, and holds my gaze. “Does that just about cover your questions, Mr. Rubio?”

This is certainly a moment for condolences if I’ve ever seen one. I remove my hat, finding yet another use for my newfound accessory, and say, “I’m very sorry about your husband, ma’am. I know how difficult this can be.”

She accepts with a curt nod, and I cover my head back up. “They scoured the office,” she continues, “they scoured our house. I gave them full run of our financial records—well, most of them, anyway—and still, nothing.”

“The investigation … stalled, as it were?”

“Dead,” she says. “As it were.”

“What about the coroner’s report?” I ask.

“What about it?”

“Do you have a copy?”

Judith shakes her head, ruffles her blouse. “I assume they have a copy down at the police station.”

“I’d hope so. Do you remember anything from the report?”

“Such as?”

“Such as whether or not they decided your husband was killed by another dino.” This information was never released to the Council—they were “working on it” last I heard before they ousted me from their ranks—and I’m wondering if the geniuses down in forensics were able to piece the info together sometime within the last nine months.

“I don’t know what they decided,” she says, “but I don’t believe that it was a dino attack.”

“You think or you know?”

“No one knows, but I am quite positive.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I was told his death was a result of firearms. Does that satisfy you?”

I shrug. “We’ve been known to carry guns. Capone and Eliot Ness were just two Diplodoci with a grudge to settle, you know that.”

“Then allow me a gut instinct. I imagine that those in your profession work off of hunches quite often, yes?”

“When they’re justified,” I say, “a hunch is indeed a powerful tool.”

“Believe what you will, Mr. Rubio.” A glance toward a nearby mirror, a primping of the hair. Judith McBride would like to be done with me. “I have a lunch date at noon, did I mention that?”

“Almost done here,” I assure her. “A few more moments, please. Did your husband have any enemies? Dinos or otherwise?” I hate this question. Anyone with that much money is bound to have a few, if only for the fact that deep, deep down, no one likes anyone with that much cash.

“Of course he had enemies,” Mrs. McBride says. “He was very successful. In this town, that can be dangerous.”

Time to pose. I take out a cigarette, flip it toward my waiting mouth. As it flies, slo-mo, spinning toward my lips like an out-of-control bandleader’s baton, I realize that for all my fantasizing, I haven’t yet practiced this move. The first shot bonks into my nose, and the cigarette drops to the floor. Decidedly nontheatrical. I grin sheepishly and pick it up.

Mrs. McBride frowns. “We don’t allow smoking in the McBride Building, Mr. Rubio. An old rule of my husband’s that I have seen fit to carry on.”

“I’m not going to smoke,” I say. Another flip, and this time I catch the cigarette on the edge of my lip. Perfect. I let it dangle. Perfect still.

Mrs. McBride laughs, and another ten years of wrinkles and blemishes vanish into that grin. If I can keep this woman happy, she’ll regress into a past life. But that’s not my job.

“Tell me about Donovan Burke,” I say, and her smile drops away. I watch as she struggles with it, strains at it, pulls and prods and coerces it, but the grin is gone.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“I’m not asking for life history, here. I’m just curious about your relationship.” I remove a brand-new notepad from my brand-new trench coat and open up a package of brand-new pens. Cigarette still in place, I am ready for action.

“Our relationship?” says Mrs. McBride.

“You and Mr. Burke.”

“Do you mean to imply—”

“I don’t mean to imply anything.”

Judith sighs, a faint huff of air that ends with a tight gerbil squeak. I get a lot of sighs from my witnesses. “He was an employee of my husband’s. Came over to the house for dinner parties, mainly. Once or twice we attended functions with Donovan and Jaycee, sat with them at dinner, that sort of thing.”

“Jaycee?” Here’s a new name.

“Donovan’s fiancée. You did say you were a private investigator, didn’t you?”

“Fiancée … yes …” This must be the J.C. that Burke called out to from within the depths of his coma. J.C., Jaycee … close enough. Dan’s background sheet on Burke hadn’t mentioned any of this. The more contact I have with my pal on the police force, the more I realize what a font of noninformation he has become.

“Jaycee Holden,” says Mrs. McBride. “Lovely girl, just darling. She was a Council member, you know.”

“Upstate or Metro?”

“Metro.” She fishes around the desk for a photo; finding one, she turns it into my line of sight. “This was taken three or four years ago at a fund-raiser. It was for a hospital here in the city. Raymond and I had donated a child care center.”

“Of course you had.” I draw the picture in closer, then hold it at
arm’s length to wipe away the fuzzies. My eyes aren’t what they used to be, and the sprig of basil I downed on the way over has just begun to take effect, exacerbating the problem.

There’s Judith, decked out in a light blue dress that would put the sky itself to shame, pearls dancing like clouds about her neck. Raymond McBride, dutiful hubby, is flanked to her right, looking sharp—black tie, diamond studs and cuff links, cummerbund canted like the
Titanic
. These two are instantly familiar; even if I had never met Judith in person, I have scanned my way through enough supermarket tabloids in my time (only while waiting in line, I swear it!) to recognize the wealthy couple in their human guises.

I have never laid eyes on either of their dining partners before, photo reproduction or otherwise, but it is clear that they are deeply in love, or at least in a physical approximation of it. Intense swells of desire stream out from the picture like radiation waves; the glossy surface of the photo steams up the surrounding air. Donovan, the dapper young Raptor, looks a whole heck of a lot better than he did at the hospital, I can tell you that, and my heart dutifully pounds out “Taps” in mourning for my kindred soul. As for his date on that fine evening somewhere in the unreturnable past, she is quite the healthy filly, with a strong back and wide hips. Of course, this could just be a trademark of the guise she’s in—like the way that most Nakitara guises have a birthmark on their butts—but I can sense that beneath the costume, her actual body conforms nicely to the polysuit. Auburn hair, shoulder length, frames a face that is cute enough for a guise, nothing to cry over one way or the other.