Nightmare (32 page)

  "Some. Found out she’s had more than three owners. I talked to some of them. Or I talked to them through a Silent courier, anyway."

  "And?"

  Tan shrugged. "They never noticed any personality weirdness and don’t know of any Silent who were murdered during the time they owned her. Doesn’t mean much, of course. I’m still waiting to hear back from the police agencies—the killer’s M.O. is pretty unique—but it’s slow going. Most of the more densely-populated worlds have a dozen or more governments. That means a dozen or more law enforcement agencies, and they don’t always talk to each other."

  "Then let’s hope they talk to us."

  Kendi grinned and waved as Ben came into sight. Ben nodded to him from the top of the outdoor staircase. It had become their habit to meet here after both their classes were over for the day. Kendi was still living at the Rymar house, though there had never been any indication that the killer was looking for Kendi.

  "Better safe than sorry," Ara had said.

  "Irfan Qasad?" Kendi had said, earning him a
why do I do this to myself?
sort of sigh from Ara.

  Ben was trotting down the stairs past several students going in the opposite direction when his upper body jerked forward. His computer pad flew out of his hand and he fell. Kendi watched in shock as he tumbled down the steps. People swore in surprise and leaped out of the way. The thuds and thumps as his body hit the stairs were awful. At last Ben came to rest at the bottom. His computer pad struck the ground some distance away and skidded over the edge of the walkway.

  "Ben!" Kendi got to his side without any idea of how he had traversed the space between them. Ben’s face was white, and his freckles stood out like tiny lesions. Kendi automatically reached down to pull him to his feet, but then Brother Dell’s first aid training took over and he pulled back. "Ben! Are you all right?"

  Ben shifted position and groaned. "Shit."

  A voice tinged with harsh laughter called down, "Loudmouth!" A pejorative, the opposite of Silent.

Kendi looked up and saw two students he didn’t recognize, one male and one female. Both of them were laughing. Kendi didn’t even think. He sprinted up to the top of the stairs and smashed head-first into the male. Kendi flailed with both fists, heedless of the counterblows that rained down upon him, until a firm hand yanked him straight out of the fight. Ched-Balaar clatter ordered him to stop. Kendi swung twice more at empty air before the order registered and he obeyed. It was hard to breathe and took him a moment to realize he was dangling by his collar from Father Ched-Hisak’s left hand. The Ched-Balaar’s right hand held the other male student, and a human teacher Kendi didn’t recognize had restrained the female. Father Ched-Hisak lowered Kendi to the deck, and Kendi found he could breathe again.

  "What’s going on here?" the human teacher demanded.

  "They pushed Ben down the stairs," Kendi said hotly.

  "That’s a lie!"

  An argument ensued. The two students continued to deny the charge, and Father Ched-Hisak had to restrain Kendi a second time. Finally Father Ched-Hisak sounded a deep, rumbling noise like a foghorn that silenced everyone.

  "No one can lie in the Dream," he said. "We will bring these two there to learn the truth."

  Both students blanched but didn’t protest when the human teacher lead them away. Father Ched-Hisak turned to Kendi. His wide brown eyes were hard.

  "And you," he chattered, "you will once again find yourself on work detail."

  "But they pushed—"

  "That does not excuse your fighting," Father Ched-Hisak told him. "Finish this sentence: ‘Serene must you walk the paths ...’ "

  " ‘ ...and serene must you ever remain,’ " Kendi said automatically. "I know, I know."

  "You do not know," Ched-Hisak said. "Otherwise you would not do these things. I will register your hours. Go to your friend."

  Kendi had actually forgotten about Ben. He hurried down the stairs and found him sitting on a bench next to a brown-clad Sister whose gold medallion bore a square cross, the symbol of a medic. She had his left shoe off and was examining his ankle. Ben’s face was tight with pain. The crowd that had gathered was already drifting away. Kendi became aware that his own face hurt. He touched his lower lip and his finger came away red and sticky. Other parts of his body were also beginning to ache.

  "It’s a slight sprain and a few bruises," the Sister said. "Nothing serious." She removed a dermospray from her medical bag and it thumped against Ben’s ankle. Another dermospray thumped against his upper arm. "You need to sit here for at least ten minutes for the sprain to heal. The second shot will help the pain and the bruises, all right?"

  Ben nodded and the Sister turned to Kendi. She stanched his bleeding lip, gave him a shot, and declared him fine. They thanked her and she left. Kendi started to sit next to Ben, whose leg was still stretched out on the bench, but Ben pointed at the rail.

  "My pad went over," he said. "Can you get it for me?"

  Kendi peered over the edge and saw the pad caught in the semi-transparent netting. He lay flat on his stomach and was just able to retrieve it with his fingertips. Ben accepted it with a curt "thank you."

  "What’s the matter?" Kendi asked.

  "Nothing."

  "Ben, come on. What’s going on?"

  Ben paused for a long time. "I don’t need you to fight my cousins for me, Kendi," he said. "It’s stupid."

  "Those two were your cousins?" Kendi said in disbelief.

  "They’re creeps and they’ve been pulling shit like that all my life. This was nothing new."

  "Ben, they tripped you down the—"

  "I don’t care what they did," Ben said. "I get it all the time from them. So what? They’re assholes—full of shit."

  "Don’t tell me it doesn’t make you mad," Kendi almost snapped. "They tripped you on the damn stairs!"

  "It makes me mad, yeah," Ben said heatedly. "But I don’t need
you
to take care of me, and I definitely don’t need you telling Mom about it."

  "Ben, I didn’t mean—"

  "Just leave alone for a while, okay?" And Ben’s face shut down. After a moment, Kendi got up and headed for the Rymar home. As a result, he was just getting in the door when Inspector Tan called to tell Mother Ara that another dead body had turned up.

  The first thing Ara noticed was the smell. Mother Diane Giday’s house was high up in this particular talltree, and Ara was less than halfway up staircase that wound around the trunk when it hit her—the ripe, rancid smell of rotting meat. Ara faltered, then forced herself onward. Tan had said on the phone that Giday had been killed quite some time ago and that the body was in an advanced state of putrefaction, but Ara hadn’t thought the smell of it would greet her before she even reached the front door. Now she was doubly glad she had spent considerable time convincing Kendi—ordering him, really—that he didn’t need to come to the site of the murder.

  The staircase ended at a wide platform. Just ahead, Giday’s little house was so high up that the roof poked up above the talltree’s leaves. When she arrived at the address, a Guardian was just switching on the holographic generator. Around the house appeared the same ring of blue light Ara had seen at Iris Temm’s home. Ara walked through it and the generator beeped an alarm, just as the other one had. Ara wondered if she was going to be crossing scene barriers for the rest of her life. The Guardian recognized her and waved her on. Ara wasn’t sure she wanted to go but knew she should.

  Linus Gray, his face matching his name, met her just inside the door. The stench washed over Ara and made her gag. She suddenly wished she hadn’t eaten that sundae at lunch.

  "Here," Gray said, pressing a dermospray to her upper arm. The drug thumped home.

  "What is it?" Ara demanded

  "An neurological inhibitor," Gray explained. "It’ll put the olfactory bulb in your brain to sleep for about an hour. You won’t smell a thing."

  He was right. The horrible stench had already faded. Ara nodded her thanks and glanced around the room. Giday’s house was little more than a cottage, with three tiny rooms and a bath. Ara could see into every room from the front door. The miniature living room contained one easy chair, a short sofa, and a set of wall-mounted shelves that displayed various knickknacks. On the couch was a lumpy bundle covered by shiny black cloth. Two Guardian technicians were just starting to tuck in the edges. Ara caught a glimpse of discolored flesh. Tan was watching, her eyes flat and angry. A small gravity sled hovered in front of the couch like a coffee table.

  Gray handed Ara a set of gloves. She put them on. "Do you want to see the body?" he asked.

  "No," Ara said flatly. "What about her finger?"

"Cut off and replaced," Gray said. "The DNA of the new finger matches Iris Temm’s. We’ve already compared a sample of Giday’s DNA to the samples we collected from the finger sewn to Vera Cheel’s body. It’s a match. Giday’s DNA also matches the blood Tan found on the shirt in Dorna’s room."

  "So Dorna’s definitely the killer, then," Ara murmured.

  "Sure looks that way," Tan said.

  The technicians finished tucking the cloth. With a soft hissing sound, it sealed itself around the corpse and the couch cushions beneath it. The techs gently lifted the entire bundle onto the sled. The first tech adjusted the sled’s controls until it hovered at waist level and maneuvered it out the door. The second technician nodded at Tan and followed.

  "How long was she in here?" Ara asked.

  "Preliminary scan suggests about two weeks," Tan said.

  "Two
weeks
?" Ara gasped. "How did she go this long without being found? Who found her?"

  Tan took out her data pad and consulted notes. "The downbelow neighbors called in to complain about a weird smell. One of our boys came up to look around and found her. No one noticed Giday was missing because she was supposed to have left for an off-planet vacation fifteen days ago. Spaceport records show she had a ticket to DelaCruz, but she never boarded the ship. Between that and the fact that her house is up so high hid the smell for a while, no one even knew she had been murdered."

  Ara thought about a woman named Diane Giday in the Dream taking care of last-minute business and looking forward to her vacation. Perhaps she had hummed to herself a bit or sighed with satisfaction at the completion of her last piece of work. Then a dark man appeared and turned the Dream into a nightmare, leaving her corpse to rot in her cozy little house. Ara’s mouth turned down with silent fury.

  "If she’s been dead for two weeks," Ara said in a flat voice, "there’s no way I can recreate the scene. Too many minds won’t be in the same place, and most of the others will have forgotten the patterns."

  Tan nodded. "I thought as much, but figured I’d ask anyway."

  "Giday was probably the thirteenth victim," Gray said. "That means the killer is escalating."

  Ara gave him a blank look.

  "He means the attacks are coming closer together," Tan explained. "Look, Prinna Meg was murdered about three years ago, a few weeks after Dorna Saline was recruited into the Children, in fact. About a year later, Wren Hamil is killed. Eleven months after that, Iris Temm is murdered and we bring you in to have a look. Nine months later, this woman Giday dies, but we don’t find the body until now. Two and a half weeks after that—two and a half
weeks
—the monster goes after Vera Cheel. There’s going to be another one, Ara, and soon. We have to find this guy."

  "The word is out among the Children," Ara said. "Female Children aren’t supposed to enter the Dream alone, and they need to be ready to leave it on an instant’s notice. But you know how it goes—plenty of people disregard the advice. At last count, we have over three thousand Sisters, Mothers, and Grandmothers, and most of them figure that they’re either more powerful than the stalker or the odds are against any one of them being attacked."

  "Technically they’re right about the odds," Linus said. "Less than one in three thousand."

  "Tell that to Mother Diane." Ara shuddered. "
I
certainly wouldn’t take the risk."

  "Let’s do the search," Tan said. "See what clue the killer left for us this time."

Searching the cottage didn’t take long. Ara found six pairs of earrings lined up on Giday’s dresser and a thirteenth singleton broken in the wastebasket. "It was probably fourteen earrings and the killer broke one to make a ‘set’ of thirteen so he could keep one and leave twelve."

  "Dorna’s a she," Tan said. "Unless there’s something the monastery medics don’t know about."

  "I don’t think it’s Dorna," Ara said.

  Linus Gray, who was carefully stowing the earrings in an evidence bag, gave her a hard look. "Why not?"

  "Call it a feeling," Ara said. "It’s just—it’s just—I don’t know. Out of character for her."

  "For Dorna, maybe," Tan pointed out. "But who knows about one of her alternates?"

  "I just think we need to keep an open mind," Ara said. She started to sit on Giday’s narrow bed, then stopped herself. The crime scene technicians might want to examine it.

  Tan nodded. "I agree. And you’re right—it’s possible Dorna didn’t do any of it. But the fact that she disappeared right after one of the murders says she’s got something to hide."

  "Which may not be connected to this case," Ara said.

  "And there are those nightmares about people dying in the Dream," Tan said. "Kendi mentioned her talking about them."

  "She’s not the only one," Ara countered. "I’ve had a few bad dreams myself."

  "And I found Giday’s blood on her sleeve," said Tan.

  "Someone could have planted it there," Ara said. "If
I
had chopped someone’s finger off and there was even the tiniest chance some of my victim’s blood got on me, I’d burn my clothes. I certainly wouldn’t hang them in my closet for the Guardians to find. And if I were afraid the Guardians were close to catching me, it’d be awful tempting to plant some phony evidence in the room of someone who had recently disappeared under mysterious circumstances."