she’s not from money by any stretch. Community college. Address is listed in a house near the Art District. High- end housing for a high school grad but no indications why. About all I can get without a court order.”
“So what now?” Kurt asked.
“It’s late,” Barb said. “Let’s go find out what the Art District is like after everyone’s gone.”
At night, with everyone gone, the Art District was definitely spookier. The pleasant paths reflected the surrounding lights oddly, as if they were going through thick glass. The wind from the river whistled between the buildings with the moan of a dying man.
Barb ignored that, walking along the sidewalk with her thermals on. Some demons had been reported to produce an image of heat higher than the ambient. If there was something stalking the grounds, she wanted to see if it would turn up on thermal imagery.
“Anything?” Kurt asked.
“The feel from underneath is stronger,” Barb said. “But I don’t see anything under thermals.”
She took the goggles off and looked around. There didn’t seem to be anything abnormal-then she caught a flicker in one of the upper windows. It wasn’t hot, it didn’t even have the feel of a demon. But something was up there.
“There’s something there, but not the target,” she said. “I wonder how long the demons, if they’re here, have been on this hill? They don’t have the feel of American Indian spirits.”
“Your side of the investigation,” Kurt said. “I’m not seeing anything. But here’s an interesting fact.”
“What?” Barb asked, looking around. There was no one and, as far as she could tell, nothing in sight except the buildings.
“Chattanooga has its fair share of street people,” Kurt said, looking around. “Lots of sheltered nooks and crannies in this area. As far as I know, the cops don’t specifically roust people around here. So where are they?”
“Not here,” Barb said.
“As if they know better?” Kurt asked.
“Possible,” Barb said, nodding. “It would probably be a question for one of your cop friends. We’re supposed to meet with Hugh tomorrow evening, right? Let’s pack it in.”
“There, I told you,” the woman said, peering through night-vision binoculars. “They’ve sent another.”
“Not a powerful one, though,” the man with her said. “Not from what I can see.”
“She’s strong. She tries to Cloak it, but she does so poorly. On the other hand…”
“They’re looking in the wrong place.”
CHAPTER SIX
George Grosskopf, Assistant Deputy Director, Special Investigations Unit, thought that he might as well buy stock in Pepcid AC and Ambien. There were things man ought not wot of. And he, for his sins, was the guy in the federal government in charge of all of them.
During his slow climb up the FBI ladder George had tried, like any sane agent, to stay off the Special Circumstances call list. Unfortunately, not only did he get more than his fair share of SC investigations, he managed to survive them all, not a common characteristic of the positions. If you weren’t killed by your third, you were generally driven insane. Statistically, five was about the maximum any field agent could handle. He’d had a total of eight.
So since he’d managed to get up to Section Chief when the previous head of SIU had dropped dead of an almost assuredly natural heart attack, he’d been tapped to replace him. Since that day he’d never gotten a night’s sleep without a triple dose of the strongest sleeping pills known to man. And don’t even get started on the acid reflux.
As an ADD, even of the smallest and most secret section in the Bureau, he reported directly to the Deputy Director. And while other ADDs might have to wait on hold or call back later, he never did. Of course, he rarely hit the red button on his STU-III. But when the DD got a call from SC-SIU, he dropped everything. Because it meant the shit was about to hit the fan.
Nobody visited SIU. Damned few people had any idea what it was other than a box on the manning chart. It was deliberately buried deep in the belly of the Hoover Building. If he didn’t occasionally have to run to the DD’s office like a bat out of hell, he’d rather it be in the satellite office in West Virginia. SIU didn’t exist, and he liked it that way.
So he’d been sort of surprised to be asked to meet with a guy from DARPA. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency often interacted with the Bureau on aspects of national security and counterintelligence. But how the guy had picked SIU for his visit was anyone’s guess.
“Doctor Roland,” George said as the scientist entered his office.
Roland was a “suit” scientist. Nice suit, no less. Armani. Probably an egghead as well, but he’d gotten far enough up the feeding chain to have the standard bureaucrat look. Five foot eleven. Two hundred, maybe two-ten. Brown, brown. Wore contacts. No distinguishing marks.
“ADD Grosskopf,” Roland said, shaking his hand. “Thank you for meeting with me so quickly.”
“I was curious what interaction there might be between my office and yours,” Grosskopf said, noncommittally.
“I can’t open up the details of the compartment; the information is highly secure,” Roland said, uncomfortably.
“It’s a shield office,” Grosskopf said. “My SCI classification is the same as the Director’s and I do more secure work. You can talk.”
“In that case, I think it’s a case of blue on blue, frankly,” Roland said, smiling disarmingly and sitting down in the lone chair. “We have a contract with a company that is investigating some advanced concepts in crowd management. Some of the people they work with are…unusual people. Recently some of them had a visit from the FBI. The company contacted me to find out what was going on. I checked into it and found that it was an SCI investigation out of your office. So I’m here to try to calm the troubled waters.”
“That’s vague enough that while I get what you’re saying, I have nothing to go on,” Grosskopf said, flatly.
“It involved some officers of a corporation called Trilobular,” Roland said, sliding a packet onto the SC’s desk. It appeared to be a pamphlet for a corporation, and the design on the front was…three curves forming three lobes.
There had been occasional moments in his job when George wished he could crawl under a rock and forget everything he knew about Special Circumstances. He knew he was the best guy to be sitting in the seat; he just wished he wasn’t. But there had never previously been a time when he wished he could just have a stroke, right now-go out quick and not have to hear the rest of a conversation.
He was feeling that way.
There were never very many SC investigations. So he read the field reports every morning. And he had a near-eidetic memory. Furthermore, not only were the Madness killings a major SC hot spot, the description of the jewelry the “hostess” wore was strangely hard to forget. He’d read Kurt’s report, including his reporting of Adept Three Everette’s reactions and suspicions.
And now he had found out that the US Government, specifically the DOD, had its fingerprints all over the Madness killings.
Oh. Joy. Might as well call Chattanooga “Raccoon City.”
There was only one thing to do. Dissemble.
“I can take care of that, I’m sure,” Grosskopf said. “But I’ll need the contract code, the SCAP box, and the name of the contracting company.”
“Why?” Roland said, frowning.
“To make sure we don’t stumble on each other again,” Grosskopf said, smoothly.
