Rogue Oracle (19 page)

Tara turned down the hallway. Through her respirator, she could smell the metallic scent of blood. Red was smeared on the wall, and she followed the direction of the smear to the bedroom.

This place. She knew that this was where the assailant had killed Lockley. The bedclothes were rumpled, not smoothed back, as they had been at Lena’s house. That was entirely too much activity for a partially paralyzed man. A stain blossomed across the old man’s bed, rust-colored with age. A nightstand drawer was open beside the bed.

Here. Lockley had been going to bed, and the assailant had come down the hallway. She knew that an old shop man like Lockley would be armed. She knelt and sniffed the open drawer. She smelled gun oil, but saw no gun, smelled no residue of gunpowder.

She let herself slip into the dream of the altercation as easily as she slipped into dreams of the Tarot. She imagined Lockley scrambling for his gun, but the assailant had come, anyway. Had killed Lockley in his bed. He’d probably fought off the dog to do so.

But where were the bodies? Tara peered under the bed. The old man’s pajamas were wadded in a ball among the dust bunnies, and she saw the dog’s collar beside them, smeared in red.

Why strip the man and the dog? It made no sense to peel them, unless he was going to eat them. Tara shuddered, remembering a case involving a flesh fetishist she’d worked many years ago. But fetishists and sadists were typically ruled by their passions. The sense she had of this killer, of the person in her dreams who fell from the Tower, was of a cold, organized killer. A broker of information. And there had been no forensic evidence of semen found at the scenes. He wasn’t doing this for thrills. He had a purpose.

Tara straightened, trying to imagine what it would have been like to be the killer. He killed Lockley and the dog … and went to the bathroom to clean up. She paced down the hallway to the bathroom, peered inside.

She sucked in a breath that pulled the plastic respirator close to her face. The bathroom was streaked with red, bloody towels congealing in the bottom of the tub like bandages on a clotting wound.

“This is a fucking abattoir,” a technician muttered, shouldering past her with sample bottles.

“Is it okay for me to touch?” Tara asked.

“As long as you’ve got gloves,” she said.

Tara stood, blinking, in the cold bathroom light. She saw rusty stains on the sink handles, on the grab bars and the bench in the bathtub. Leaning to peer into the bathtub, she saw the towels covered with dog fur. She picked up a sopping towel and turned it over. It was spangled with fragments of a transparent material, like shed reptile skin or mica.

Her eyes flicked to something shiny in the soap dish. A pair of pliers from Lockley’s workshop lay in the dish, denting the soap. Surrounding the pink soap were ivory-white teeth. Some had to be human; they had dental fillings. But others … they looked long and sharp, like canines.

She sat back on her heels, understanding striking her like lightning. The confused jumble of chimeric DNA, Lockley’s clothes on the floor. The World card, and the Sacred Androgyne embracing Lena. The symbol of Chiron in Cassie’s charts, half man, half beast.

This room wasn’t an abattoir.

It was a womb. Their subject hadn’t eaten Lockley, the dog, and all the others. He’d absorbed them, taken them into himself. It was the only way to explain the lack of bodies. He’d not only taken their bodies, but their knowledge.

He was more than they’d all expected. He was the Chimera the Pythia had warned her about, a creature who consumed his prey, becoming some fearsome amalgamation of those he’d destroyed. He was history moving through the modern era, relentlessly ingesting everything in his path. This man had absorbed Lockley, and Lena, and all the others. The Chimera was more than the sum total of all he’d taken.

Her intuition of the truth crackled through her, from the hair at the back of her neck down her spine to her feet. She took a deep breath, grounding the awful truth of that knowledge.

Tara backed out of the bathroom, sidestepped technicians coming down the hall. In the kitchen, she spotted Veriss’s glasses and notepad on the kitchen floor, being photographed by a tech. She asked permission to touch the notebook, flipped through it. Her mouth thinned, seeing the rudimentary list of questions produced by an inexperienced investigator. He’d come here to prove his own points. She scanned through his list of questions, pausing on one that he’d starred and underlined:

Where are the reactor rods from Chernobyl? Do you know?

Her brow wrinkled. Perhaps Veriss’s mathematical theories had led him to something solid. Too bad he hadn’t had the opportunity to ask the question.

Tara’s gaze flickered to the empty wheelchair on the kitchen linoleum. Lockley had met his end in the bedroom. His wheelchair should be there. The killer had brought the wheelchair here. In the shade of the foyer, perhaps he’d been able to convince someone as naïve as Veriss to come in.

And Veriss was gone. Dead, like the others, she was certain of it. Part of the Chimera.

Tara stepped out of the kitchen into the garage. Lock-ley’s shop was tossed. The Chimera had fled, taking with him whatever he needed to escape. This wasn’t the organized, careful cleanup she’d seen at Lena’s. He’d been rushed. Veriss had not been part of his plan.

She fingered a smudge of blood on the edge of the table. The Chimera was hurt. Maybe Lockley had hurt him. Or maybe whatever Anderson’s DNA expert had predicted was coming to pass: the Chimera was dying.

Tara’s mouth thinned. She knew where he was going. Her dream of the Tower had told her that much.

He was going home.

She threaded her way through the house, back out into the front yard to find Harry.

Harry was pacing the front wheelchair ramp, growling into his cell phone. Neighbors were peering through their blinds at the man in the radiation suit. The postman glanced at him, looked at the fistful of mail in his hand. He stuffed it back in his bag and kept on walking.

By the volume on the other end, she could tell Harry was getting an ass-chewing from someone. He glanced up when he saw her, hung up.

“Well?” he said, his tone clipped and impatient.

“Our killer. He’s going back to Chernobyl,” she insisted. “We’ve got to catch him. I’ll explain on the way.”

Chapter Fifteen

D
EVOURING THE
deliveryman had been difficult, and he did not finish the job.

Galen had not been much interested in the voices in the deliveryman’s head. The deliveryman’s memories were of insignificant things: schedules and routes, family birthdays, grocery lists, a beat-up paperback novel stowed behind his seat he was reading on breaks. It was a comforting, banal chatter in his head, bits of ordinary life that Galen had never experienced.

But there were some useful nuggets to be gleaned.

Galen had pulled the truck off the road in a discount store parking lot ten miles from Lockley’s house. He’d dug in the cab of the truck for a flashlight, grabbed his duffel bag, and gone to the back of the truck. He climbed inside and shut the door.

The driver lay, still unconscious, on the floor. His breath was weak and thready, and a lump was beginning to swell oddly on the back of his head. Galen sat back on his heels, swept his light around. At eye level was a box that had originated from Tokyo. Galen considered this, scratching under the mask. He needed to get home. And he knew, through Veriss, that the U.S. government agents were close on his heels. They were watching the airports, scanning for radioactive isotopes at the security gates. He would be unable to pass through security without tripping the Geiger detectors, unable to claim his plane ticket.

There had to be another way.

He stripped the deliveryman of his uniform, cast his clothes away. He pressed his hand to the man’s chest, felt his heart twitching under his shirt. Galen closed his eyes. His hand slipped down into the deliveryman’s chest, and he felt the heart against his fingers. The deliveryman’s memories swept past him like blood, and he learned about the package from Tokyo. The delivery service had a hub at Dulles. Packages went in and out at a frenetic pace, under very little supervision.

Galen smiled.

Under his hand, the heart stilled. The deliveryman’s voice drained away, and the air escaped from his lungs with a sigh. Galen pulled back, but his fingers were meshed in the man’s ribs just as surely as if they’d grown there. The deliveryman’s flesh stretched smooth and flawless over the bones of Galen’s fingers.

Galen cast about, dug in the man’s pockets. He found a ballpoint pen and a box cutter. Holding the flashlight in his teeth, Galen cut around the perimeter of the man’s chest, where he supposed his fingers might be. The cheap blade skipped and nicked bone, and Galen ultimately broke the blade point on the sternum.

But he freed himself. He pulled away a mass of flesh connected to his wrist, hissing. It hurt, but he could feel his cells sluggishly trying to reorganize, trying to shut off blood vessels and reform bone.

Cradling his arm in his other elbow, he bound it in his own shirt. His flesh was lumpy from the other assimilations. He was healing more and more slowly. He scrubbed his tongue across the uneven teeth that belonged to the dog and hadn’t fallen out yet. He was disintegrating. But he was not finished. He needed to get home, to complete his mission.

And the deliveryman had provided him a way to get past security.

He dressed slowly in the deliveryman’s uniform. The cap made the silicone on his skin sweat, but there was no help for it. He used a bit more glue from Lockley’s materials to hold his nose in place. He added the deliveryman’s sunglasses, flipped his ID badge around. Passable for cursory inspection, he decided. If anyone were to look at his ID, he’d be found out. With any luck, he wouldn’t need it.

Galen found the largest box on the truck, opened it. Inside was a large stuffed toy: a unicorn. He scooped it out and stuffed the deliveryman inside the box. He resealed the tape on the top of the box and stacked others on top. The mangled body would be found, but not right away.

He exited the back of the truck with the unicorn under his arm and headed for the cab of the truck. He saw, across the parking lot, a young girl watching him while her mother unloaded her shopping cart. The mother was distracted, yapping into her cell phone, and did not notice Galen’s approach.

Galen walked across the pavement, his gait slow but improving. Without a word, he handed the toy to the girl, who hugged it to her chest and smiled widely.

Pretty child, he thought. Too bad that her world wouldn’t last.

Galen climbed back into the truck and cranked the ignition. He drove the truck to the airport, followed the deliveryman’s memory to the shipping entrance. He parked his truck at the back of the line, hopped out. Galen lost himself in the bustle of boxes and crates being screened for loading, walked across the tarmac into the open bays where carts waited, heavy with packages. No one stopped him as he walked through the freight terminal to the passenger terminal, wearing Lockley’s face and the delivery-man’s uniform.

He paused to duck into the men’s room. He unzipped his duffel bag in an unoccupied stall. He changed quickly into Lockley’s clothes, put Lockley’s straw hat over his head. He wadded the deliveryman’s uniform back into the bag, slung it over his shoulder. Pausing to admire his reflection in the mirror on the way out, he marveled at his handiwork. Lockley had truly earned his reputation as a disguise master when he’d been alive.

Ambling slowly back into the hallway, he examined the computerized schedules posted on the wall. He was careful to keep his wounded hand in his pocket, away from prying eyes. People flowed around him, ignoring him. Many had recently come from security screening on the other side of the terminal, reorganizing carry-on bags and computers, adjusting their shoes. Galen had bypassed it entirely by entering through the freight terminal, avoided the close scrutiny and Geiger counters that would have given him away.

He saw what he wanted: his flight to Rome, leaving in an hour. He took his time getting to his gate, limped up to the flight attendant’s desk.

“I believe you have an electronic ticket waiting for me,” Galen said. He pushed a slip of paper containing his confirmation number across the desk.

The attendant punched some keys on her computer. “Boarding’s already begun, and all I have left are aisle seats, sir. Will that be all right?”

“Absolutely.”

The attendant handed Galen a paper ticket. “Enjoy your trip, sir.”

Galen turned his silicone lips upward. “Thank you, miss. I’m sure that I will.”

“W
HERE DO WE FIND HIM
?”

Stress crackled in Harry’s voice as he cradled his cell phone in one hand and sawed the steering wheel in rush-hour beltway traffic with the other. The strobe light perched on top of the car did little to part traffic, and Harry was zipping down the shoulder.

The seatbelt jerked against Tara’s shoulder, and she struggled to keep her cards from spilling off her lap. She’d told Harry what she’d pieced together about the Chimera’s power, that he was much more than the scientific oddity they’d believed him to be. He was a monster.

Harry didn’t dwell on the philosophical or scientific ramifications of what she suggested. Instead, he charged into action to keep the future from unfolding, leaving the sticky questions of the past for later. “We’ve got three airports in the immediate vicinity with international departures—Baltimore, Ronald Reagan, and Dulles has reopened. Can we at least narrow it down?”

“I’m not the Magic Eight Ball,” Tara snapped. “I’m working on it. You know, from a mundane perspective, it might be easier to just detain anyone with a Ukrainian passport.”

They were en route to Dulles on the assumption that since the Chimera had been here before, he’d return the same way. But they couldn’t be sure. A red string of taillights showed the congested path to the terminal.

Harry covered the mouthpiece on his phone. “I’m trying.” He spoke back into the mouthpiece. “Yeah, we’ve determined that the radiation contamination is specific, from Chernobyl. Scanning those passengers isn’t enough … Yeah, well, fuck you, too. This is a national security threat, you asshole. You want me to call the press? I’m certainly happy to let them know that the administrator of Dulles International Airport is willing to expose his passengers to some nicely warmed-over cesium—”

She plucked four cards from the deck, muttering to herself and trying to focus. She picked the Ace of Cups, the Eight of Cups, the Six of Swords, and the Fool. The Fool was number zero in the Major Arcana.

“Search for any flight or plane combinations of these four digits: one, three, six, zero,” Tara interrupted. Her fingers lingered on the Fool. She’d seen him recently, and was surprised to see him again. Something about the card bothered her, but she couldn’t figure out what.

She pulled another card from the deck, the Chariot. It showed an armored man charging forward, pulled by two horses. It was a card of fast movement, of relentless pursuit of one’s goals.

“Flights leaving soon,” she amended. “Our Chimera is on the move.”

Harry hung up on Dulles. “He won’t ground any more flights. If we can get a description of a suspect, he’ll have the suspect detained. But that prick won’t allow any more delays to his fucking timetables. DHS is screening all passengers going through security with Geiger counters; if he’s hot, they’ll stop him.”

“I can’t conjure up a description. The cards don’t work that way.” She showed him the Chariot. “He’s making fast progress. I don’t think that security has caught him.”

“There are four flights leaving in the next fifteen minutes from Dulles with those number combinations,” Harry said. “One to Texas, one to Oregon, one to Mexico City, and one to Rome.”

“Rome,” Tara said automatically. “That has to be our flight.”

Harry pulled the car into the passenger drop-off area, left it parked in the fire lane. He flashed his badge and elbowed through the crowd. Tara struggled to keep up with him, swimming in the mass of people. He paused at security to argue with the DHS personnel. Someone recognized him and waved him back. They took off running to the gate from which the Rome flight was leaving. By the departure board, it was taking off in minutes.

Tara scanned the crowd, heart pounding. The Chimera had to be here, somewhere. She had no idea what he looked like—or what he would look like after playing with Lockley’s disguises. How would she know him if she saw him? Would he look like the World in her dreams?

They sprinted down the people movers, past students with their backpacks, business travelers with stuffed briefcases, and families with children. Her attention snagged on a familiar face in the crowd. A dark-haired young man in a denim jacket, carrying a backpack, met her gaze. His eyes widened.

Tara recognized him. Zahar Mouda, the kid who had been accused of trafficking in dangerous chemicals. The Fool.

Tara shouldered past the passengers to get to him. She had questions, starting with:
What the hell are you doing outside of detainment?

Zahar’s eyes met hers. He turned on his heel and ran.

Tara chased him, yelling at him to stop. The kid was fast, zagging right and left like a linebacker through the crowded field. Through the gaps in the crowd, she saw him dig a cell phone out of his jacket. He stabbed the buttons on the phone furiously.

Tara tackled him, trying to wrest the phone out of his grip. They fell down in a tangle of limbs, the phone spiraling away under feet on the concourse. Tara reached for it.

A thunderous boom rocked the terminal, echoed by screams. Dust rained down overhead as the building shook. Tara covered her head with an arm, keeping the other firmly wound in Zahar’s collar. She smelled smoke.

It was as she’d feared. The son of a bitch had an ignition device.

Klaxons sounded overhead and emergency lights began to flash. Tara spat hair and dust out of her mouth and shook Zahar’s collar. She dragged him away from the stampede of feet, near a drinking fountain.

“What the hell did you do?” she screamed at him.

Zahar stared at her with a belligerent glare. “Revenge. Revenge for what your people have done to mine. I want you to feel what we feel.”

Zahar was suddenly yanked out from beneath her hands. Harry hauled him up and slammed him into the wall. “What kind of bomb was that?” he yelled. “What was in it? Chemicals? Nerve agents?”

Tara’s breathing quickened.

Zahar spat in his face. “Plenty of things that glow in the dark.”

The lights flickered overhead. Tara saw that planes were still taking off behind the glass windows. Tara paused, staring through the glass at a plane taxiing down the runway. Over the klaxons, her intuition was screaming at her. She advanced upon the glass, wiped away the dust to see more clearly. The glass still held some vibration from the blast, quivering under her hands.

Her hands balled into fists when she saw the number painted on the side of the plane: 1860.

G
ALEN KNEW THAT SOMETHING WAS WRONG WHEN THE
plane lurched into the sky.

He’d settled into his seat, beside a woman with a dachshund in a carry-on bag. The dog pressed its nose to the mesh ventilation holes, staring and whining at Galen. Perhaps she could smell some of Lockley’s dog on him.

“I think she likes you,” the woman in the next seat said.

Galen smiled through his silicone lips, careful to keep them over his uneven teeth.