“Hold still,” I told him, “or you’ll bleed to death.”
He nodded at me, his eyes wide with fear. I carefully sheathed the Nife, then stumbled out of the bathroom, heading for Aunt Zelda’s bedroom closet. I quickly found two belts and brought them back to Teague. The blood pooling around him was extensive. I pressed his earlobe, told him to call 911. As he did, I cinched the tourniquets around his stumps.
“Ambulance coming?” I asked.
Teague nodded, his whole body shivering. “My hand is gone. Flushed.”
“I’m sorry about that.” But I wasn’t sure how sorry I really was. Practically drowning doesn’t make a guy very sympathetic.
“You should kill me,” Teague said.
“Not going to happen.”
His teeth were chattering now. “If you don’t, I’m going to chase you to the ends of the earth.”
“I know.”
I checked the belts, and saw I’d managed to staunch the blood flow. I dragged Teague across the floor and raised his legs, putting them on the toilet. Then I covered him with blankets.
After taping some gauze around my bleeding finger, I grabbed the TEV and kicked Teague’s to pieces in case he recuperated faster than I anticipated.
Time to go.
I caught the killer’s trail on the first floor, as he climbed out of the elevator. He still wore the celebrity veil. I chose to follow him going forward, rather than in reverse, because it was easier to track.
Once out in the street I paused and stepped aside as two paramedics ran into the building. They didn’t give me a glance, but I realized that walking around in broad daylight when I was the most wanted man in the world would eventually lead to me getting identified. I remembered the celebrity veil the killer had left on top of the fridge. It was in my utility belt. I put it on over my head, able to see clearly, but unable to be seen.
Then I tailed the killer, going north. He kept a steady pace. No running. No sudden moves. Walking alongside him was an odd experience, sort of like walking with someone in reality. I almost expected to look over my shoulder and see him actually standing there.
After several blocks, he turned left on Adams, heading east. I anticipated him climbing onto a biofuel scooter, or hopping the El, which would complicate things. As I’d expected, we came to a bike carousel. Carousels were miniature pneumatic parking garages. You paid for a predetermined amount of time, placed your bike into the clamps, and the carousel lifted it up and held it for you until you returned. Larger models could hold fifty bikes vertically, saving valuable street space. This model held twenty.
The killer took a plastic parking chit out of his pocket-chits identified to location and row of your bike, which was necessary because Chicago had more than a hundred thousand carousels-and fed it into the meter.
If I had access to the CPD parking records, I could trace him paying for parking and get his ID. Or…
I got a close-up of the chit and read the drop-off time. It was parked here a few hours before Aunt Zelda’s murder. I rewound the transmission, going back to that time, and then paused when I saw a familiar face.
Neil.
He’d parked the bike here. He’d been the killer all along.
FORTY
I sprinted back to Aunt Zelda’s, reaching the front door just as the ambulance was pulling away. Neil had been pretty doped up while he was in the shower, so he could still be inside. But he could have been faking that. Like he’d been faking everything else. If he’d left, I’d track him.
The elevator ride seemed to take forever. I burst through Zelda’s door, Nife drawn, ready for anything.
Except for maybe hearing Neil singing “You Are So Beautiful” in the shower.
This was the criminal supergenius behind this whole plot?
I rushed into the bathroom, the floor slick with Teague’s blood. Neil had finished shaving his boobs, and was soaping them up, again. I liked boobs as much as the next guy, but his behavior bordered on obsessive.
Still, they were pretty spectacular.
“Out of the shower!” I yelled, flinging open the sliding door.
Neil jumped backward, covering up his chest with his hands. “Pervert!”
I grabbed him by his hair and sat him on the toilet.
“Why Boise, Neil? Aunt Zelda was enough to send me to jail. Why kill half a million people?”
He had his palms over his nipples. “WTF are you talking about?”
“I know it was you. I followed the killer to the scooter carousel. It was your bike.”
“What bike?”
If he was faking being stoned, he was doing a damn good job. I held up my TEV, showed him the recording of him at the bike rack.
“That’s me,” Neil said, pointing to the screen and smiling.
I wondered if this would be enough to convict him. The hard part would be getting someone to listen when the entire world had already convicted me of the crime. But maybe, with Neil’s confession…
“He told me to park the bike there.”
“What?”
Neil was looking at his breasts again. “The bike was delivered to my house, with instructions. I had to park it in a carousel on Adams.”
“What did you do with the chit?”
He glanced at me, cockeyed. “I flush it down the toilet. What do you do with it? Build little mushy brown sculptures?”
“The chit, Neil. The bike chit you got, after you parked it.”
“Oh. I came here and put the chit on top of the refrigerator.”
I took the TEV back into the kitchen, and tuned in to when the killer put the celebrity veil on the fridge. This time, I checked the top of the appliance while he did it. The killer had traded the mask for a bike chit, which had already been waiting there for him.
My hopes sank. I was still Public Enemy Number One. I shuffled past the bathroom, wondering what to do next. Neil was rooting through the medicine cabinet.
“Which pills make them bigger?” he asked. “I want to go up a cup size or two.”
“Antiandrogen,” I said. It was a lie. Estrolux made them bigger. Antiandrogen shrunk the dick.
I left the apartment, plotting my next move. I could follow the killer in reverse, find out where he came from. Or I could follow him on the bike, and see where he went.
I chose the bike, and jogged back to the scooter carousel. As I ran, I thought about the celebrity veil and the bike chit. I also thought about the disk blocking the killer’s chip. This was someone familiar with timecasting protocol, someone who thought he could beat it. But you can’t beat timecasting. No matter where he ran to, I’d be able to follow him. Eventually he’d need his chip to pay for something, and I’d be there to catch him.
Which made me wonder, why all the subterfuge? He knew I’d be following him. What did he hope to accomplish?
I found out right after I picked up his tail again.
Timecasting someone on a biofuel bike wasn’t easy to do solo. The timecaster’s attention constantly switched between watching the perp and watching the road, all while operating the scooter one-handed. I expected the killer would know this, and make it difficult for me to follow him.
My expectations were wrong. Once he fed his chit into the carousel, he took out his DT. I zoomed in to see what he was doing. He brought up a keyboard and typed:
I’m taking 1-90 north to exit 15. You can pick me up again at the biofuel station on the northwest corner. I trust you’re wearing the veil mask I left for you. See you soon, Talon.
I froze. Then I looked around, as if the killer was watching me right now. But he wasn’t. He’d written this more than forty-eight hours ago.
