Night Shifters (79 page)

Tom shook his head again. Snow and ice flew from his dark hair. He frowned at Rafiel. He’d become alarmingly pale in the cold, so that he looked like he was wearing white pancake make-up, from which his lips—a vague shade of blue—the tip of his nose—a lovely violet—his dark eyebrows and his blue eyes emerged looking vaguely unnatural in all their chromatic glory. “Look, he knows something. And it’s something that might help us. He knows about the Ancient Ones.”

“Okay, even supposing he knows,” Rafiel said impatiently, “what do you propose to do about this? And why are we whispering? If he didn’t hear the cell phone ring, and doesn’t know we’re here, then he’s way too addled to help us.”

“That’s not it,” Tom said. “I don’t want him to know we’re about to go after him.”

“We are? Into a sewer tunnel? After an alligator?”

“I don’t think it’s a sewer,” Tom said, looking into the shadows under the bridge. “At least, I don’t think the city would have an open sewer through a recreation area. I mean, I’m well aware that they’re all crazy, but all the same, there’s a difference between crazy and loony.”

Not from where I’m standing, buddy.
Aloud, Rafiel said, “Look at it this way—that connects to a drainage pipe somewhere. And that drainage pipe is connected, somewhere, to the Goldport sewers. You have heard of people flushing baby crocodiles, right?”

Tom made a sound of profound exasperation. “Yes, in New York City. Some science fiction writer or another wrote a very unpleasant story about it. But it’s an urban legend, you know. No pet stores have sold crocodiles, that I remember. So it mustn’t be legal anymore.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Rafiel said, pragmatically. “It was legal back in the fifties. And crocodiles live forever.”

“And migrate from New York City to Goldport, Colorado?” Tom shook his head. “Rafiel! Next thing you know, you’re going to tell me we’ll find Denver’s lizard man from Cheeseman Park under there. Come on. Just come here, shine your flashlight under there. I promise I won’t make you actually go under there and look amid all the dangerous animals.”

He gave Rafiel one of his more irritating smiles.

“Oh, all right,” Rafiel said, grudgingly.

For all that Tom had cajoled Rafiel into shining his light under the bridge, he was somewhat scared of what it might uncover. What if Rafiel was correct, and it would show a bunch of dragons under there, all of them spying on Tom?

Choking back a laugh at the absurd image, Tom told himself he was getting worse than his father. Any moment now, he’d start asking himself if he’d eaten people.

Rafiel slip-skated to stand beside Tom, closer to the center of the river, and shone his flashlight searchingly into the space beneath the little arched bridge.

It was cozier under there than Tom expected—or at least, there was none of the trash he’d come to expect in that sort of place. He’d slept in that sort of place, sometimes, and it seemed never to be empty of a few rusting cans, a couple of unidentifiable, shredded cardboard boxes and perhaps the rotting body of a road-kill racoon. But under this bridge, it looked pretty clean. A couple of branches and some leaves, and other than that, just the clean shine of ice.

“Fine,” Tom said. “I guess there isn’t—”

But at that moment he heard the clack-clack-clack of alligator teeth that seemed to be Old Joe’s way of laughing. It was faint and muffled, but definitely there. Tom grabbed Rafiel’s wrist and aimed the flashlight at the place the sound had come from. There in the dark, Old Joe was squeezed under the place where the bridge came down to meet the bank and where it was, therefore, almost impossible to see.

Tom heard himself make a sound that was much like that of a steam train stopping. “Come out,” he said, peremptorily. “Come out now.”

He didn’t know what he expected. Old Joe had obeyed him in the past, but in the past he’d caught Old Joe raiding The George’s dumpster, and therefore he was, technically, trespassing on Tom’s property. This time, Tom half-expected him to turn tail and run very fast, which, Tom understood, could be very fast indeed for an alligator.

Old Joe must have thought it too. For a moment there was a rebellious light in the tiny eyes, in the reflection of the flashlight. Rafiel must have thought of worse things, because he tried to pull the flashlight away from Tom and started to say, “Enough. You know—”

But Tom said, in his best voice of command, “Don’t you dare. Don’t you even think about it. I thought you were dead. I’ve been worried sick for days. Now, you’ll come out here, shift, and explain yourself.”

Old Joe slithered forward, swinging his tail from side to side. Rafiel must have been still pretty unsure about what the creature meant to do, because he took a step backwards. But Tom stood his ground and Old Joe gave him a sheepish look, as if sorry that he had tried to scare him, or perhaps simply sorry that he hadn’t managed to scare him.

He shifted, right there on the snow, and stayed sitting down on his butt on the ice, his hands around his knees. Rafiel made a sound and said, “I have clothes. In my car.”

Old Joe gave him an indulgent, almost amused look, the sort of look grown-ups give cute little children. “No need,” he said. “I will shift again, after you’re gone.” He looked up at Tom. “And now, what do you want? Why did you think I was dead?”

“Because of the dire wolf,” Tom said. “You said he had talked to you and you clearly knew him, so I thought . . .” He felt as though he’d lost some of his capacity to command and his righteous indignation too, now that Old Joe was treating him as if he had been silly and alarmist.

Old Joe shrugged. “Yes. Dire is a bad person,” he said. “He and his council of ancients, always dictating the way in which people are supposed to live, the way in which shifter people are supposed to be people, and whom we should respect and whom we shouldn’t.” He shook his head. “He’s a very bad person.” He looked up at Tom, intently. “You stay away from him.”

“I have every intention of staying away from him,” Tom said, hearing his own voice sound sullen, like an annoyed little boy’s.

“You stay away from her, too.”

“Her?” Tom said, with some strange notion that Rafiel had paid Old Joe to warn him against Kyrie.

“The girl that came to the aquarium, in the car,” Old Joe said. “Just a little while ago.”

Rafiel cleared his throat. “I know he spends more on his hair product than most third world nations produce in one year, but that wasn’t a girl. It was my subordinate, McKnight. Though he might have had a girl with him,” he said, vaguely remembering something about Michelle, one of the part-timers.

“No. Not the police people!” Old Joe looked aggrieved, like they were both very dense. “The other woman. She came by, after the police left, with a guy. She left without the guy.”

“You mean . . .” Rafiel took a step towards the aquarium, but Tom held his wrist. He couldn’t say anything. He wasn’t about to cast aspersions on what Old Joe was saying right in front of Old Joe, but he held Rafiel’s wrist and said, “Wait.”

Then to Old Joe, he said, “And you haven’t seen Dire again? He hasn’t talked to you again? Tried to find out things about us?”

That embarrassed look that he suspected meant Old Joe was lying, flitted across the alligator’s face again. “Well,” he said. “He came and he did ask me some questions. Like, what had happened at the castle, and all, but he . . .” He shrugged. “I didn’t tell him anything that could hurt you. I swear I didn’t. And then I ran away so I didn’t have to tell him anything else.” He looked at Tom, a look much like a glare from under his fringe of hair. “That’s all I know. Can I go now?” And without waiting for permission, he shifted, and ran—in alligator form—back under the bridge, in a clacking of teeth, much like a fugitive snicker.

“We’ve got to go to the aquarium,” Rafiel said.

Which meant, Tom thought, that he wasn’t thinking at all. How was he going to get in? And if he did, how was he going to justify going into the aquarium to look for a body just now? Tom was fairly sure his friend hadn’t thought this through.

“Wait. Let’s go to your car and discuss this first,” he told Rafiel.

“But—”

“Wait.”

In the car, Rafiel turned on the gas to start warming up the motor, so they could have heat soon.

“Rafiel, you can’t go in there,” Tom said. “You just can’t.”

“What do you mean, I can’t?” Rafiel said. He reached for his phone, ready to call McKnight and ask him to come and process the scene.

“I meant, you can’t.” Tom looked very grave and slightly sad, which was very odd. If Rafiel didn’t know him better, if Rafiel weren’t sure this was one dragon who didn’t go about pushing people into aquariums . . .

“Why not?” he asked belligerently, while behind his rational mind, there ran thoughts he wouldn’t even acknowledge, much less express, such as that dragons were aquatic creatures and that, as aquatic creatures, they might have some craving or other relating to water and pushing people in it. “You know it’s my duty. I’m a policeman. If there’s a body in there—”

“
If
,” Tom said. “But beyond that, Rafiel, how are you going to tell them you heard about it? Who are you going to say informed you? And how are you going to say you got in?”

Rafiel tapped his fingers on the seat beside him. “But . . . time is of the essence,” he said. “If there is a corpse, the more complete it is, the better the picture we will get. I mean, with the other ones, we don’t even know if they were already dead when they were dumped in. And if we’re dealing with shifters . . .”

“Yes. Of course. Perhaps an anonymous phone call? From one of the phone booths remaining, at a convenience store not on Fairfax?” Tom said. “One of the ones in the less busy areas? You can park at the back, or even farther away than that, and I can call and tell the police that there is a corpse in the aquarium. But it has to be to the central station. And I can’t be identified.”

“Yeah,” Rafiel said, thinking. “So long as you don’t stay on the line. They’ll try to keep you on the line, so that they can get to you. You must not do that. Say your piece and run, and we’ll get out of there fast.” As he spoke, he thought of the convenience store to go to, on Fer de Lance Street. Between the local pioneer museum and a high school, the place was guaranteed to be deserted today.

He started off, headed that way, by the shortest route possible. “Well, at least what Old Joe says,” Rafiel said, “sort of narrows it down to a female employee of the aquarium. I had a list of names of male employees to interview, but now . . .”

“No,” Tom said, seriously. His features were set in such a way that they seemed to be carved, and a muscle played on the side of his face, giving the impression that he was about to have a nervous breakdown or something. “No, don’t be so sure. What you’re not thinking about, Rafiel, is that . . . well . . . Old Joe is not the best of witnesses, you know? He often . . .” He shrugged.

“He often what? Drinks? Does drugs?”

Tom shook his head, emphatically. “No. Nothing like that. At least, not that I know, and I think I’d have been able to tell. No. But he sometimes seems to be . . . not quite anchored to reality, if you know what I mean?”

Rafiel quirked an eyebrow. Sometimes he wondered how anchored to reality they all were. Considering what they were, and what they could do, it would be a wonder if they didn’t sometimes feel unmoored and adrift. “Okay,” he said.

He pulled up behind the store, on Fer de Lance. Actually behind and on the other side of the street, so that no one associated him with the phone call. There wasn’t anyone around, in any case. The high school was closed, as was the pioneer museum. The rest of the block had the sort of empty feel that areas of town had that aren’t flourishing. Like the last houses that had stood there had just been bulldozed, and they hadn’t come up with anything else to replace them. The vacant lots didn’t even have trees or proper plants. Just a sort of scrubby grass, now completely covered by snow.

“What are you doing?” he said, realizing Tom was throwing himself over the front seat and towards the back.

Tom, now fully in the back seat, gave him a grin. “Getting out on the driver’s side,” he said. “It’s towards the school, and that’s firmly closed, so no one will see me.”