Paradigms Lost (48 page)

“Dr. O’Connell wouldn’t have done that on his own, maybe out of curiosity?”

The tone of her voice indicated she was somewhat offended, somewhat tolerant of my ignorance (partial ignorance, actually—I thought I knew the answer, but it didn’t hurt to ask). “Mr. Wood, no archaeologist worth his or her degree would even think of it. We’re not playing Indiana Jones up here. Such an object is like a time capsule, but a very, very delicate one. Open it under the wrong conditions, and you can destroy what it can tell you.”

“I understand. Was this sarcophagus, or whatever, one of the things you discussed at the UAR conference in Florida?”

There was a long pause. “I’m a bit confused, Mr. Wood. I wasn’t at the UAR conference—Dr. O’Connell intended to go himself. He was going to confirm his travel plans with them either the night he disappeared or the next night, in fact. That never happened . . .” Her voice trailed off, then came back, “. . . but it is a bit odd . . . I did get a letter a few days ago from Dr. Rodriguez of the UAR, discussing some of our finds. I thought it a bit odd, but I haven’t really read it carefully yet.”

“You didn’t attend the UAR conference in Venice, Florida?” I repeated.

“No, I did not, Mr. Wood. Why?”

I looked down at the flyer in my hand, printed from the UAR site. “Because, according to the UAR, not only were you there, but you presented a quick but fascinating overview of what you found,” I answered. “Ms. Gennaro, would you do me a favor? Fax me a picture of yourself, so I can show it to some of the attendees?”

She was silent for a moment, probably still trying to absorb what I’d just said. Then, “What . . . ? Yes, yes, of course. If someone’s running around pretending to be me . . . well, I don’t know what to think. Your number?”

I gave her my fax number—actually an e-fax number, one that would send the fax as an e-mail so I could retrieve it anywhere.

“Will there be anything else?”

“No, not at the moment. You’ve been immensely helpful, Ms. Gennaro.”

“You’re welcome. Could I trouble you to at least let me know what you find out?”

I hesitated. I could probably come up with a bowdlerized version that would be close enough for her to hear. “I certainly will.”

I hung up the phone and turned to Morgan, Baker, and Sylvie, all of whom were waiting. “We have our smoking gun.”

“The damn thing came to the conference?”

“Right here in this hotel,” I said, enjoying Baker’s expression. “And apparently wowed them with the presentation, too. It must’ve absconded with some of O’Connell’s notes and slides.”

“Slides, yeah, but it wouldn’t need the notes,” Baker said, looking chagrined. “Assume it killed O’Connell, then it knew pretty much what O’Connell knew—about recent events, leastwise. Dunno just how extensive it is, but they sure steal enough to be able to get by. Probably just grabbed some rolls of film an’ chose some good shots.”

“And then, finding that the conference just happened to be in Wolf City, it decided there was no reason at all for it to move on.”

“Ayup,” Baker said dismally. “When’s that girl going to send her pic, so we can go around and trace her movements?”

I grinned. “Receiving it now, but I’m willing to bet half of what I own that not one person will recognize her.”

“What? Oh, damn. It booked it under her name because its default human form is female, but no way it looks like her, right?”

“Maybe close in the written essentials, but not close enough to fool anyone, unless it’s so lucky that it oughtta be playing the lottery every day.” A photo-quality print came out of my little inkjet. “There you go.”

Mandy wasn’t bad looking—cute, with a round face, dark hair in a sort of pixieish cut, and a reasonably trim body as you’d expect from someone fit enough to do diving archaeological work. “There you go, Baker.”

“Nope, rather it was you. Remember, more contact I have with the outside, more likely I run into some paranoid who finds out what I am.”

I sighed. “Fine, fine, look, you do the hotel staff anyway, will you? I’ll handle talking to the UAR people.”

“No need to bother,” Syl’s voice broke in.

Baker and I looked at her. “Why?”

“Tsk, tsk, Mr. Information Man. While you were talking, I did a few searches under the members’ names, and looky what I found on Dr. Jesus Rodriguez’s web page.”

On the screen was a photo of a tall, slender, dark-skinned girl of long hair and exotic beauty, pointing at a slide image showing a large stone object. The caption read, “Mandy Gennaro showing some of the spectacular finds from the University of Oxford’s Caribbean excavations.”

Syl smiled at me smugly. “I think you get to keep everything, Jason.”

CHAPTER 68

Hiding in Plain Sight?

I looked at the stony face and sighed. “Another one, I see.”

“Fourth, or if we’re right about the disappearances, seventh of us.” Baker grimaced. “I swear, the thing’s probably out there laughing.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. We certainly aren’t having luck catching it. The question is where the hell did it go after the convention? Plenty of people saw ‘Mandy Gennaro’ there, but afterwards?”

Baker shook his head. “Nothing. We’ve been around with photos, checkin’ the stores all through the area. Couple of people saw her during the convention, but not afterwards.”

I turned away from the statue of the late Deputy Arnaud and headed up the stairs to Baker’s office. He shut the door behind us and followed. “So, she went into hiding. But that’s not a nondescript appearance; she’s going to be noticed if she was looking like that.”

“Ayup. But . . .” Baker’s eyes narrowed; for a moment I almost thought I saw a yellow gleam. “Now there’s an interesting possibility. Look here; it’s hard to tell, but it looks to me, if we take best guesses, that we end up with a new statue around the time we get a new missing persons report. There’s been a lot of events in the past couple weeks, so I dunno if we can say it’s a real pattern, but . . . what if she’s killin’ people, takin’ their place for a while, then shifting to someone else? The people who been disappearin’, she actually killed ’em days before. Then she hits someone else for a quick fix, uses them that day to scout out a new sucker, an’ takes them. An’ a few days later, it starts again.”

I sucked in a breath. That theory made sense. “I see. Yeah, quite a bit. If that’s so, then she’s got to be either hiding the statues near the kill sites, or she’s got herself a good storage spot for a bunch of statues . . .” I smacked my forehead. “Duh! She’s not keeping the statues. She’s pulverizing them.” I gestured out the window, where you could occasionally get a glimpse of blue ocean. “Your
habeas corpii
are probably out there on the beach.”

Baker looked like he wanted to kick himself as well. “Right, right, Wood. Shoulda thought of that. Ya must’ve hit it on the head. Damn.”

“Around here, it’s easy to get rid of something like that. Getting rid of a body like Mansfield’s, that’s harder. Unless this thing eats flesh, too, and lots of it.”

“Nope. They can eat—an’ some do, just like we do—but they ain’t like us in that area. Me, I could’ve polished off Mansfield in three or four bites, bones an’ all, but the Mirrorkillers don’t do that.”

“But then why the hell is it leaving statues?”

Baker pursed his lips, thinking. “Well, I’m thinkin’ it’s like running a business. Location, location, location. Even at night, if you’re out in the middle of town like she was with Weimar, it’s gonna draw attention if someone sees ya lugging a statue down to wherever it is ya plan to do the rock-crushing. Sure, by now she can probably do it with her bare hands, but it’s still gonna be noisy.”

“Right,” I said. “So the ones we find are just stopgaps—she takes the form like you said, uses it to find someone she can nail in a more private location and then replace them for a while. You people all work together, and once she killed a couple of you she’d know everything about who she could and couldn’t talk to about what was going on—from your point of view, I mean. So I’d guess it wouldn’t be hard for her, as one of you, to talk to the right people and get them into a convenient locale.”

“Nope,” Baker agreed. “We gotta be ready to cooperate with each other here, especially in shifting people around. The humans that work with us sometimes’ll have to be in two places at once, so to speak, and it’s our job to cooperate with ’em to that extent.”

“Oh? Why do they have to do that?”

“People in any business that’s got a lot o’ contact with outsiders. Either the ones doing the interaction have to be human, or we need humans who can do jobs that we can swap places with. You have no idea how complicated this can get. So any of us can call on the others to help out—moving bodies, switching places, whatever.”

I nodded my understanding. “So it would be very easy for her, in the guise of her stopgap body, to get someone else to accompany her, or let her inside their house, or whatever.”

“Ayup,” he agreed.

“Then we’ve got her. Just make it so that people can’t do it that easily—they have to coordinate it with you, or some other central group. Next time she tries it,
bang
, she’s finished.”

“Can’t be done,” he said heavily. “The masquerade can break with just one bad run o’ luck, and my people’ve gotta be able to respond to an emergency right away. Besides, ya don’t realize just how hard it is gettin’ wolves to work together this way if’n you ain’t the King. They hate bein’ shoved into coordinated slots, an’ it’s takin’ me just about everything I got to keep this thing workin’ as it is.”

“Well, we’ve got a chance now, anyway. Look, she can’t be sure of exactly when the statues of her quick kills are going to be found, so she’s got to move fairly quickly. So somewhere around the area should be the place where she found her new longer-term host, so to speak.”

“And how does that help us?”

“I think there might be a way to test it. The Maelkodan isn’t vulnerable to silver. So if we can check all the wolves in the area, you just need to find one that doesn’t react. Wear a glove or something with a little silver on it and shake hands; anyone who doesn’t get burned or whatever is your monster.”

Baker gave me a respectful look. “Y’know, that might just work. I’ll get my people on it . . . right after I give ’em a handshake m’self.”

CHAPTER 69

Lie Down and Reflect

I put down the phone, sighed, and sank into a chair, toying with the just-finished duplicates of my CryWolf glasses. One advantage of working for the wolves was that I wasn’t restricted in movement if I stayed on the case, so I’d ordered the custom parts, then taken a day, flown up, and assembled the things. At least now I could be subtle. I put them on, adjusted the fit.

“Bad news?” Syl asked sympathetically.

“My bright idea was a bust. All we’ve got now is a bunch of werewolves with itchy palms, and I don’t mean that they’re looking for tips.” I chewed my lower lip idly. “Now, this could mean Baker’s idea still works, but she’s going farther afield than we thought looking for her replacement.”

“Why does she have to switch so often, though?”

“Remember her basic limitation, Syl. Every time she whacks a wolf, she gets a brand-new face. She doesn’t keep a record of the old ones in her matrix, so she can’t just go back to where she was . . .”

I saw it then; it was, in its way, sheer genius. It wouldn’t work forever, but certainly for longer than it had already. And I could confirm it so easily . . .

Picking up the phone, I called Baker and asked him a few questions, as though I was clarifying something. Then I hung up. Sylvie watched as I checked my gun once more. “What are you going to do?”

“The rest of my job. But I’ll do it my way, not Carruthers’ or Baker’s way.”

She nodded, serious. I started to say something else as she began to put on her own gun, but I stopped. She knew what I was going to do before I did it, and there was no arguing with her when she decided what part she was going to play.

Besides, I needed her to play that part.

I went down to the lobby, where Vic glanced up. “Hey, Mr. Wood! Need anything?”

“Actually, yes, Vic. But it’s kinda private . . . ?”

He nodded his understanding—certain business, after all, not being something to discuss in non-secured public areas. Even though it was late, there was always the possibility of someone dropping by at the wrong moment. He hung a “back in 15 minutes” sign up and we went into a back room. “Okay, how can I help?”

I studied him. “First, let me congratulate you,” I said, to his image sparkling in the glasses. “I almost didn’t figure out how you were doing it, and without that, we’d never have caught you.”

He froze for a moment, just as he had the night we checked in, then sighed. “Goddamn. If you don’t mind my asking, how’d you figure it?”

“Partly the timing of the killings, partly luck, and just a few little things that nagged at me,” I said, making sure I was not blocked in and had at least two ways to run. “Baker’s theory on what you were doing wasn’t bad—and it was actually close, in some ways—but when we came up with nothing on that, I started thinking it was a complete bust. But then there had to be some explanation for the pattern. So I was thinking . . . why? If you’re not moving from life to life, what’s the point of the pattern of one person disappearing, one person being found?”

He nodded, sitting down on a crate some distance away. Apparently, he really did want to hear the explanation. “Go on.”

I was careful to avoid staring directly into his eyes; despite assurances that an alert human could probably break contact fast enough, I wasn’t taking any risks. “Then there was the whole Jerry Mansfield episode. It didn’t quite fit with the others. Especially the silver dust bit.

“But it did make sense if I assumed someone got a little panicky. The wolves certainly did. Mansfield was a quick and dirty attempt to get rid of me. His death made it look like someone was out hunting wolves the conventional way. Once I’d weathered that threat—when Karl Weimar left me alive—it was clear that the quick impulse had failed. You knew who I was when I registered, and it flustered you. Here you were, still adjusting to the way this world works—and even with your ability to grab people’s knowledge, I’ll bet that still takes some getting used to, the changes in the world since you were last out and about—and along comes this guy with a reputation for dealing with Weird Crap. No warning. You knew you’d killed a fairly important guy already, the cops were looking for him, and if they’d gotten a whiff of the weird, well, who would they call? Jason Wood, of course.