Tremble in the Dark: A Gwen Farris Novel (28 page)

She
stood and looked at everyone.

"Thank
you all for coming. I wanted you all here for two very important reasons. One,
of course, is so that everyone can wish Bethany and Martin a happy engagement.
Congratulations!" She managed to sound excited by the idea and almost
everyone else clapped, even the horrible douche of a waiter, Jonathon. He
didn't mean it though, she could tell. He was just softly sneering and looking
at her like he was trying to figure out how to best part her from her money.

It
decided her as to how she was doing the rest of this though.

"I
also worked out who the murderer of those women is. If you men would grab
him
?"
She pointed at Jonathon Darling, who looked suddenly panicked. Sam and the
other large and powerful men set on him gamely enough, looking confused. Which
made perfect sense really, and had a lot of the people seeming nearly just as
baffled.

"Now,
beat him for a bit?" They actually
did
it, too, with the new muscle
man being the one to work over the other man's mid-section. He didn't even
hesitate, which said a lot about him, since he knew that the waiter was
innocent, Gwen didn't doubt. Darling gasped out a few words though, which got
her to smile.

"I
didn't kill anyone!" Then he shut up, being hit again.

"I
know, but you've been ripping me off for a week and I don't like you. No, the
guilty party is, well, almost everyone else. First-" She pointed her hand
at the big man that had been doing the punching and blasted him, and then Sam,
hard enough they both bounced off the wall, after crushing Jonathon against it.
Then she got the other large man, and waited to see who'd move first. No one
did though. "Good, Martin, would you help us tie them up? We'll need some
rope."

No
one moved, until Clara half stood, and started to take the white cloths off the
nearby tables. It would work, if they twisted the linen, Gwen thought. The two
of them worked on that while everyone else stared at her uneasily.

"Sorry
about that. Those three were the biggest threat really. Fighters, I think. I'd
love to see what they can do sometime. When, you know, that won't involve them
getting away with murder. Right. Now, I'll walk us all through this, because
it's the tradition where I come from. It's also the tradition for the guilty to
deny they're part of it all, and then confess, after they realize that my impeccable
logic has won the day. Is everyone ready?"

No
one moved, except for the people doing the tying and Beth, who smiled.

"I
have it too. I just want you to know that. I mean, it's my job, after
all."

Gwen
didn't doubt it at all, but this was her little show. She'd gotten a cake for
it and everything.

"First,
let's start with why? This part is a guess, but I think that it's because of
Erin Debussey. The terrorist actions and all that? Maybe even me, in part. The
way I was ripped from my own world and brought here? That isn't as important as
the idea it inspired. Removing radiatives from the world, by blocking them out,
much like how an expert would break a curse, right Carter? That part was yours
wasn't it? And when you insisted on it, Regina, your girlfriend, started to
work against you?"

The
man made a sour face and shook his head.

"No,
it was her idea all along. She's brilliant, but feckless. She thought she saw
another fellow with brighter prospects and lured the poor sap in without him
even knowing about it. The only good thing was that she'd forgotten her own
idea. It was pillow talk, you know, just a random thing that she'd come up
with. I find it fitting, taking it from her now. A bit of a whore,
really." He turned and looked at Sally and then Clara and blushed.
"Sorry ladies, I mean no offense."

Sally
laughed. "None taken I'm sure. I didn't know you were part of this. I'm
not really a prostitute. I was just brought in to get the girls."

That
got a strange look from Carter, though Gwen worked it out quickly enough.

"Ah,
she actually did what I paid her to do, because otherwise I would have known
she was lying to me. So she kept her cover. Makes sense." She looked over at
Clara and winced a bit. "In case you didn't get that, she'd bought you so
that these others could kill you. I take it that the hand on the knife was yours,
Mr. Hadley?"

Cordell
and Clara were just finishing the job of tying up the powerful looking men, and
the rest of the staff looked ready to freak out, but weren't trying to fight at
all. She didn't really know who else was in on it all, but figured at least a
few of them would be. That could be worked out later, when they got to a place
that Bethany could mind strip them all.

The
salesman sighed. "I'm supposed to deny it, aren't I? Well, I can't. It was
me. I wasn't alone in it, but the plan was mine. I suppose it's off to the
gallows now?"

Beth
turned and pointed her PC at the man, but Gwen shook her head.

"No.
I mean, you'll get your day in court and all that, but it wasn't all your idea.
You're smart enough, but you steal ideas, as a rule. You take what other people
come up with, and make it into something cheaper, or more easily sold. Really
it's a shame that you're going to prison, since that's a
really
useful
skill to have. I'd love to see what you could do with some proper funding.
There's someone else behind all this however, and they have a long reach. I
don't suppose anyone will just give me the name? It will save time and probably
be more comfortable all the way around. We've gotten rather good at getting
people to talk lately." It was meant to be menacing, but the people around
her just acted like she was playing. Like it was all a joke.

Hadley
even made a small, derisive sound at her, and then started chewing something.
At first she didn't get it, until he coughed again.

"
Fuck
."
She didn't know what to say, but it was clearly a suicide pill. Jumping forward
she clipped Carter on the jaw, and spun to hit Sally in the head with about
half a blast of energy. It cut off partway through, magic going out like it had
been, so didn't send the woman flying.

Beth
covered the others, but it was too late for a lot of them. Half the staff was
down, choking on their own pink spittle. It was either the color of the poison,
or more likely, blood had mixed into the froth. They weren't putting their
hands to their mouths, which meant what? Fake teeth? Like in a bad spy novel?

They
had Carter Palmer and Sally Kiers left though, and she wasn't letting them get
away that easily. A short and merciful death, choking as they painfully died.
They had information, and it wasn't going to be lost, not if Gwen could help
it.

She
looked at Beth and made a hand motion, not knowing if the tool even existed in
this world. Gwen said a single word, but didn't know if it meant anything.

"Pliers."
From the lack of expression on the woman's face that didn't mean anything at
all here. Not that a Westmorland would know about. "They might have
poison, hidden in hollow teeth. We have to pull them, so they can't kill themselves
easily."

The
cook, who was still both alive and scared looking, got it first.

"Graspers?
The engineer will have some. I can get them?" She seemed to want to be out
of the room, which was either a good way for her to escape, or the natural
reaction a person might have to a bunch of dead and dying people that had been
her co-workers not five minutes before. Gwen took a gamble and nodded at the
woman.

"Do
that, please. Hurry. They're waking up."

The
woman ran and the train wasn't big, so she was back in about two minutes,
holding a very familiar looking thing. Needle nose pliers.

"Perfect.
Martin, help me pry open Carter's mouth. I don't know which tooth it is, so we
may have to pull them all." The man tried to set his jaw, in order to bite
down, so Gwen kicked him in the groin, hard. It was enough of a distraction at
least. She had to knock him out again, as he lay on the floor, but found the
right tooth, after only taking out the back six on the bottom. She showed it to
Beth and then Cordell, so that he'd know she wasn't just hurting people for
fun.

Then
she moved on Sally, who started to scream.

"I
don't have a fake tooth! No one said anything about that! I was just hired for
the job." Then she tried to sob, until she was knocked out too.

Beth
looked at Gwen and seemed tense.

"I
can't tell if she was telling the truth or not. The fields here are too choppy.
Maybe in state?"

"We
can't risk her killing herself. Get her jaw open."

No
one else moved, except Clara, who looked hard suddenly. She did it, and not all
that gently either. That was fair enough, given that the woman had been setting
her up for death. Gwen tried for the same tooth that had been fake in Carter,
which cracked off easily.

"Got
it in one." Holding it up, the others seemed a little upset, but she
couldn't tell why? The woman had the fake tooth too. Had it been that she'd
lied about it? Or that the others weren't certain it hadn't been the truth?

Gwen
didn't know and for the moment, didn't care. "Bind them, we need to have
someone watching them all the time. Suicide capsules in fake teeth aren't the
only way to die, and most of our information has already died. That speaks of
something pretty major, doesn't it? We need to get to the bottom of this. Beth,
can you get this thing turned around? I don't know how that's done. Can it go
backwards?"

"No,
we need a turning point. It means going forward for a ways, I bet. I'll do
that. Can you control the situation here?" She waited, looking at everyone
that was left.

Gwen
understood that without having to even read minds at all. Not that she could.
Just because the others hadn't killed themselves, that didn't mean they were on
their side, did it? Anyone there could be working against them and just biding
their time. Or, they might be waiting to kill themselves, or maybe just... She
didn't know. It could be anything and there was no way to trust them.

"Yeah.
Everyone is staying here, with us now. Bethany, if you could take care of your
part?"

It
was going to be a tense few days, she knew, but they were going to just have to
get through it all. For the time being she didn't let anyone touch the bodies
either, since as soon as possible she was having them read with one of
Grainger's new forensic devices. Then she was having him and his entire class
checked out. If Carter hadn't been lying, the original idea had been Regina
Botstein's. Who else was in on it, knowingly or not?

She
was keeping the pliers too. She had a feeling that they were going to have to
pull a lot of teeth, before this was all over. Worse, most of those teeth would
be real. She just didn't think they'd have a choice. Wincing, she realized what
that meant, as to the room they were in.

She
turned to Clara.

"I
need to rip out one of your teeth. It will hurt. Sorry about that."

"How
come?"

"To
prove you aren't in with this lot. Everyone will get a turn."

"Even
you?" That came out sounding a little sullen, but she shrugged.

"If
it makes you feel better, but we already know that
I'm
not in on it.
Beth either. Sally might have lied about you."

"Oh.
Just a back one? Not in the front? That would make me look ugly." There
was a simple bit of rationalization to the words. The kind of logic that a
simple person might use, if they were used to harsh treatment by the world all
the time.

"Right.
It should be the same one in everyone. I'll check the dead first though, just
to see if it's a thing I can tell without pulling them first." She really
should have done that before saying anything. She was halfway through by the
time one of the remaining waiters went down, having realized that she could
actually tell if the tooth was fake, just looking. Gwen didn't spend any time
with the man, since he was gone as far as she knew, just checking Clara and
then Martin first. Those were the people she cared for after all, out of the
bunch.

That
idea nearly made her laugh, since if anyone had asked her what she thought of
them the first day she wouldn't have been all that charitable.

The
rest were cleared, and while that didn't mean they were all innocent, it was
probably a good sign. Beth came back, and looked at the number of bodies and
shook her head.

"Not
good."

Gwen
explained how to find the fake teeth at least, and was able to show her what
they looked like. They were like teeth, but all exactly the same. Beth nodded
and left, going to the front again, she came back shortly, her face blank.

"The
engineer is clean. It will be about six hours before we reach a turning
station. Then we'll have to work our way back. We'll need guards on Carter and
Sally. I'll take the first watch?" It made sense, being that she was more
of a night owl than Gwen was now anyway. Or rather, it took her longer to get
around in the morning, most days.