Emma Bull (11 page)
Authors: Finder
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thought the me
ss we'd left behind us the night
before was undisturbed. Then I recognized that the whole
business had be
en shifted just enough to form a grid, which had then been examined with downright archaeological sensibilities.
"Your apparition," Linn began, "manifested here, by the inner doorway?"
Rico nodded. "Table with the note on it over there, in the middle of the room."
"The remains of it are there still. We found nothing by the door; if there was some small thing to serve as vessel to the spell until it was freed, it was destroyed or carried away."
Rico clenched one hand, as if she would have liked to whack something with it.
"But see what we did find, in fallen plaster." Linn handed her a clear plastic bag, and she frowned. I leaned over her shoulder for a better look.
"I'll be damned," I said. "The Ticker was right." I snagged it out of her hand without thinking, for a closer look.
Before Rico could object, Linn asked sharply, "You know its nature?"
"It's a photocell. Tick-Tick does things with 'em now and then. This one's smaller, though, and the part that picks up the light looks sort of burnt."
"Indeed. It was made to use only once, to close the contact in a circuit. In
that
circuit." And he pointed at the remaining ceiling above my head.
His excavations in the plaster had exposed it, or enough of it: the light-gauge covered wire, the battery holder that now dangled empty, and the four terminal ends, only one charred black where something explosive had been attached and gone off. Three more that hadn't fired.
"Had the wind not turned and brought a fey spirit with it, we'd have taken your bodies from out of this wrack."
Four ceiling beams blown loose at once could have dropped the whole top of the building into this room.
Linn's assessment seemed pretty reasonable. A quick image crossed my mind: Charlie's broken body
wearing my bloodied clothes. I felt as if someone had twisted a stick in my guts.
"I don't get it," Rico said. "Why the indirect route? Why not just plant a bomb and blow us up?"
Linn looked startled. It was an expression so much like one of Tick-Tick's that I smiled. He'd been so busy unravelling the fine points of "how" that "why" had never come up. The Ticker was the same way, given some complex puzzle to work out, or some delicate structure to assemble—
There are times when the light bulb goes on over your head so emphatically that you can hear the pull chain click. "Because it wasn't meant for us."
They both turned to stare at me, but it was Linn who said, "So sure?"
"Well, it couldn't have been. Charlie's keys led us here. But Charlie's keys wouldn't have done jack if I
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hadn't be
en involved, a
nd I wasn't involved until maybe an hour before we showed up at this place. And
that," I finished, pointing at the wires
and battery holder, "wasn't set up in an hour, was it?"
"Indeed, no. The ceiling was patched after the trap was laid, and there was no sign that the fallen plaster was still wet."
"So who was it for?" Rico asked.
I shrugged. "They were Charlie's keys."
She thought about that. "Okay. This starts to make sense. Assume our illusion-maker doesn't realize that I'm watching Charlie already. Also understand that if somebody blows up a building, even in Soho, we all kind of notice, but that a building falling down from rot and old age is common enough that we wouldn't think much about it. Whoever it is wants to dispense with Charlie and not attract too much attention to him
post mortem
. So, a shame about him being in that old building when it collapsed, or, gee, his friends warned him about being stoned on top of tall things."
"So this was just the leftovers." I fingered the photocell through its plastic bag. "But why was it still here? Once Charlie was dead…"
"You already explained that. They thought they had plenty of time. They didn't know we had you."
Linn was contemplating me with a sort of interested pity, much like his reaction when I'd passed out in the morgue. "You have led us to a place we should not have found. You have brought Charlie's last moments out of the past, and with them, the proof that his death was not an accident. Our quarry will know soon, if he does not yet, that you are a danger to him."
I suppose I'd already figured that out. Or at least, I would have shortly, just as soon as I could have seen past the puzzle itself to the consequences. I was getting to be as bad as Tick-Tick.
"Why the note?" Rico said, and I tried to concentrate on that. "There wasn't anything like it on the Pigeon Cloisters roof. And why a melodramatic, "So long, sucker" message, anyway?"
"Let me see it," said Linn.
I left them with their heads, sandy-brown and silver-white, bent over the battered square of note paper, and picked my way through the rubble to the stairs. I sat down on the top one. I didn't know what I felt, besides afraid, and even that didn't seem to have any shape or direction. No, not true. There was one direction that always seemed to attract fear and anger, and it could be best described as: If I wasn't able to find things, I wouldn't be in this mess. It was almost comforting to have such a familiar cause for my problems.
The black-haired woman appeared at the bottom of the stairs. "You mean they're still at it?" she said when she saw me.
"Whatever it is. Yeah."
She climbed the stairs and dropped down next to me. "You're not ours, are you? No matter what the hell Linn says."
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"We
ll, I'm scared of dying and I don't care who knows it."
"I mean, you're not a cop."
"No. No matter what Linn says."
"Didn't think so. Civilians get kind of a look in the presence of the constabulary. You know, more of the whites of the eyes showing."
"No, I didn't know that."
"Hey, nothing personal. It's a reasonable reaction, anyway. I mean, Jesus, who comes to Bordertown to be a cop? It makes sense to figure all the Silver Suits have a spoke loose."
"Do you?" I asked. I half expected to see a bottle labelled "Drink Me" on the step at my feet. "Have a spoke loose, I mean."
"Oh, yeah, but just barely. I've only been in it for a year and a half. But you have to wonder about Linnùhell, I never heard that the elves have anything like police, when they're at home. So why would he do this?"
"He probably started with crosswords," I said, "and got hooked on the harder stuff as he went along."
She frowned at me.
"Sorry. He reminds me of a friend of mine, is all."
"Would your friend become a Suit?"
"She'd be anything that gave her enough of the kind of problems she likes to solve. I don't think she has a choice."
"Maybe that's it. But his partner—that was her, wasn't it—she's got
two
spokes out."
"How's that?"
"I hear her father was a cop, back in the World. I mean, if you've seen this job up close, you've gotta be crazy to want it. And who the hell ever heard of somebody coming to B-town to be just like her
parents
?"
I thought about that one. Certainly nobody I knew had run away to join the family business. But maybe it was something that happened when you got older. Which made me wonder how old Sunny Rico was,
anyway…
"By the way, I'm Kathy Hong."
I shook her extended hand. "Is there a rank with that?"
"Nah. Some stations use 'em, especially on the Hill. Maybe they're cops because they all miss ROTC or something. And sometimes down here you'll tack a rank onto your name if you think it'll scare
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somebod
y into being helpful. But mostly if it's anything, it's job description more than rank. De
tective,
Patrol, stuff like that. And
you're…"
"I'm called Orient."
"I've heard of you! You're the Finder, right? You found a Taylor twelve-string for a friend of my roommate's, once."