“There are some near Flagstaff. Or we could head west to the Kaibab Plateau. Not much else in the way of forests near here.” She accepted this without comment, and Oberon jumped in with his own question.
That is another story, Oberon, and it’s not a very happy one. He was with me for nearly a hundred years, though. I do miss him, like I miss everyone.
I petted him and kissed the top of his head. No, we have only been friends for twelve years.
Kind of like caribou.
Like elk or deer, just slightly different.
I don’t see why not. It’ll be cold though. They live far to the north.
The fact that the skinwalkers never approached the hogan and asked for a supper of Druid tartare convinced me that Famine’s spell had been successfully broken; Hel now thought I was dead. According to what Frank had shared about them earlier, the skinwalkers were more concerned with defending their territory than with anything else. I knew they would have to be dealt with eventually, but when I thought of how I might be able to match their speed, my lower left eyelid began to twitch. That problem could wait a night or so and stew in my subconscious while I conducted some business in Flagstaff.
When it was time to greet the sun and the skinwalkers had slunk away to their evil lair-which I imagined was full of bones and skins-I pulled Coyote aside from the others.
“Need to go to Flagstaff today to take care of a bunch of errands. You’ll be all right, won’t you?”
Coyote scanned me up and down, searching, perhaps, for signs that I was going to abandon the project. “Well, yeah, but I thought you ran your errands yesterday in Kayenta.”
“I have a few more to run. Should be back tomorrow.”
Coyote pursed his lips. “Maybe I should help you run them.”
“You’re welcome to come along if you want. But I think you’re more needed here.”
“What is it you need to do, if you don’t mind me askin’?”
“We gotta make my apprentice disappear. And maybe we can do something about that vampire problem.”
Chapter 15
The key to faking deaths is a fine appreciation of arterial spray patterns. One might be tempted to simply smear a bit of blood here and there, but forensics fellows these days are a bit more sophisticated than they used to be. If they figure the scene is a fake, they’ll tell the family and then said family will never hold that all-important funeral for closure. Without a body, the coroner would never issue a death certificate, but the police would at least designate it a cold case if you could convince them there was a high probability of death.
I have found that blood bags work very well at simulating spray with a strategically poked hole; apply pressure to the bottom of the bag, practice a bit, and before long you will be able to write stories of carnage and odes to gore.
A small fan brush-the sort that one dude used to paint happy little trees-can paint a picture of blunt-force spatters if you flick the surface properly. Don’t use a toothbrush; those patterns are recognizable. You could even talk to yourself, as that painter did, while you flick blood around: “And maybe over here we have a nice stab wound. And, I don’t know, maybe there’s a few more back over here. Multiple stab wounds. It doesn’t matter, whatever you feel like.”
When it comes to the actual blood, my former policy was that it was best to use somebody else’s. You could even leave someone else’s hair, as long as it was plausibly the same color, and that was the best practice because magic users would have no way to track you down. Can’t do that anymore, however. Police routinely send all blood and other biological samples to labs for DNA matching, because some of those goodies might belong to the suspect. It’s tougher to fool the coppers these days, but I enjoy the challenge.
Granuaile wasn’t worried about constructing the crime scene, however. She steered me away from that topic.
“What I want to know is how you get around the documentation issues,” she said. She was driving us down to Flagstaff as Oberon napped in the backseat.
“Documentation of what?”
“Of your life before you take on a new identity. I mean, you can’t just show up. You need all this stuff. A credit history. How do you do it?”
“The lawyers do it for me these days. Werewolves in general have the inside line on identity changes. Since they have to uproot their entire packs occasionally and move to another territory, they all figure out some efficient way of getting the job done wherever they are. Hal’s operation is among the best, but you can approach almost any werewolf anywhere and get help with IDs if you need to.”
“All right, that’s good to know, but how do they do it?”
“Well, let’s make a list. You need a birth certificate, to begin with. Then some school records and immunizations. A driver’s license. A passport, a visa, and a green card.”
“What? A green card? Why do I need that?”
“Because no matter what names we use, we are always and forever from Panama.”
“We are? Why?”
“Because that’s where the corrupt officials are. At least the ones that Hal’s pack uses. So you and I-Reilly and Caitlin Collins-were born in Panama to Irish expatriates who died tragically when we were young. We were raised as orphans. We have birth certificates and transcripts and everything. I got better grades than you in school, by the way.”
She ignored this gibe and asked, “Did you do this when you started out as Atticus too?”
“Yep. Mostly all you need is the driver’s license, a Social Security number, and a bank account. Throw cash at a bank and they don’t really give a damn where you come from.”
“How do you get the Social Security number?”
“Same thing. Corrupt officials. Kind of determined ones, though. It’s tough to get around the internal security of the feds, but you can do it if you have the money to spend.”
“But will these IDs stand up under scrutiny? I bet your background as Atticus O’Sullivan is getting searched right now.”
I shrug. “It doesn’t need to stand up. The moment it comes under serious scrutiny, you move on. It only needs to be good enough to fool people at first glance. If it looks authentic, you don’t get the full background check.”
“Who were you before you were Atticus?”
“Still me. Just a different name.”
“Should I call you something else, like your original name?”
“No, Atticus will do. I like that one.”
“Good, I do too. What’s the worst name you’ve ever had?”
“Nigel. It was extremely uncomfortable. Never got used to it.”
Granuaile laughed. “Nigel? When was that?”
“It was only three months in Toronto in 1953, but every day was a new adventure in embarrassment. You never want to be Nigel in Toronto.”
When we got to Flagstaff, we drove to a medical supply store and Granuaile paid cash for some syringes, blood bags, surgical gloves, and other things we would never use. Padding the receipt would throw off the coppers if they ever got this far. I went in first, camouflaged, to make sure that there was no security camera to record the transaction. There was, of course, so I relaxed the silica bindings in the glass lens a wee bit and then allowed them to rebind once more in a different configuration. Light no longer passed through the lens in a sensible fashion, so it recorded nothing but visual noise from the moment Granuaile walked into the store. We ditched most of the purchases in an anonymous trash bin in a residential alley, keeping only what we’d need for the scene.
From there we drove to Shultz Pass Road on the north side of town and pulled over once we saw Shultz Tank below us to the right: a retention area full of stagnant water. There’s nothing in the way of homes or businesses there; it’s ponderosa pine on either side of the road, and the only traffic one can reasonably expect is mountain
