Odd Girl Out

I let him sit me down on the curb. 'I don't suppose you have any idea why anyone would want to do something like that,' he went on, sitting down beside me.

I shook my head. My stomach was starting to recover, but my brain was still reeling with the shock of the mutilation. 'Looks like a ritual murder.'

'Yeah, that was my first thought, too,' Kylowski said. 'Trouble is, we don't have any of the other usual trappings. No robes, no weird jewelry or tattoos, no strangled chickens. Not to mention that they were killed and mutilated here on the street and not in some abandoned warehouse or tenement.'

'Maybe it's a new—' I broke off as a key word abruptly penetrated the haze of nausea. 'They were mutilated?'

'That's right,' he confirmed. He was back to scrutinizing my face. 'Both of them were done the same way.'

I hauled myself to my feet, my stomach suddenly forgotten. One mutilation was a sick perversion. Two mutilations was a potentially intriguing pattern. 'Let me see,' I said.

We retraced our steps to the bodies. Kylowski crouched down beside the man and twitched aside the cloth.

His head behind the ear was a copy of the mess that was now Lorelei's, with the lower part of the skull torn to shreds. But there was one vital difference between his upper face and Lorelei's: right in the middle of his forehead was another thudwumper hole. 'Which of them was shot with my gun?' I asked Kylowski.

'Funny you should ask,' Kylowski said. 'Both of them.'

I frowned at him. 'Both of them?'

'Near as we can tell,' he confirmed. 'Kind of a puzzle, isn't it?'

I stepped back over to Lorelei's body and lifted the cloth, searching her torso. This time I spotted what I'd missed on the first go-around: two small wet spots where blood had oozed rather than flowed.

The marks of snoozer rounds. 'So much for your big puzzle,' I said, pointing to them. 'This guy and at least one friend got the drop on Lorelei and got in the first shot. Once she was out, they took her gun and did all this.'

'The vic's friend did this to him?' Kylowski asked, gesturing to the dead man. 'That's one hell of a friend.'

'Yes,' I murmured, staring at the man's mutilated head as it suddenly made sense. The plane of destruction torn by the thudwumper rounds had sliced right across the lower part of his brain.

Right where the collection of polyps that formed a Modhran colony would have been located.

The men who had assaulted and killed Lorelei were walkers.

I looked at the man's closed eyes, a shiver running through me. One of the creepiest aspects of the Modhri group mind was the way it could infiltrate other living beings, Humans and Halkas and Bellidos, setting up small, sentient colonies within their bodies that could telepathically link with other nearby colonies to form a larger and smarter mind segment.

The puppetmaster scenario was bad enough. What made it worse was the fact that the walkers themselves were completely unaware that they'd been drafted into the Modhri's little war of conquest. Most of the time a polyp colony lay quietly, controlling its host with subtle mental suggestions that the host would usually obey, coming up with the most bizarrely convoluted rationalizations afterward for his or her behavior. Under more extreme conditions, though, the colony could push the host's own mind and consciousness aside and take direct control of the body.

The Modhri hadn't infiltrated the Terran Confederation nearly as extensively as he had most of the other governments and cultures around us, but I knew he had a few walkers down here keeping an eye on things. It was a good bet that Lorelei had somehow wandered into his sights and been eliminated.

But why? The Modhri didn't kill just for the sick fun of it. Had Lorelei known something the Modhri didn't want getting out? Had she been another Spider agent like me, someone the Spiders had neglected to tell me about?

Or was it something to do with her sister? The sister on New Tigris, the girl Lorelei had said bad people were trying to find?

'Well?' Kylowski prompted.

'Well what?' I countered, stalling for time while I tried to think. To me, what had happened here was now obvious. Lorelei had shot and killed the first walker, but had been nailed with snoozers before she could take out his companion. The Modhri, rightly guessing that her gunshot wouldn't go unnoticed or uninvestigated, had had the second walker obliterate the dead man's polyp colony, lest an autopsy discover it. He'd then created the same damage to Lorelei's head to make it look like ritual murder or a psycho killer.

But knowing the truth was one thing. Talking about it was something else. The galaxy at large was unaware of the Modhri's existence, let alone his plans and ambitions and techniques, and for the moment those of us in the know wanted to keep it that way. 'Okay, so maybe friend was too strong a word,' I added. 'Either way, there was a third person on the scene.'

'Obviously,' Kylowski said. 'That still leaves us with the question of why he took the time to do all this. Especially since multiple thudwumper shots draw a lot more attention than just one or two.'

'I can't answer that,' I said, which was perfectly true if slightly misleading.

'Yeah,' he said. 'You always load your guns with thudwumpers?'

'I load them with snoozers, like my permit specifies,' I said. 'It doesn't take a criminal mastermind to change clips.'

'Assuming he or she can find a supply of thudwumpers for that new clip.'

'Finding thudwumper rounds doesn't take a criminal mastermind, either,' I said. 'I presume some other gun fired the snoozers into Ms. Beach?'

'Small-caliber Colt,' Kylowski confirmed. 'So her name was Lorelei Beach?'

'That's the name she gave me, anyway,' I said. 'By the way, did any of your people remove anything from either body?'

'No,' Kylowski said. 'Why, is something missing?'

'She had a silver necklace when she was at my apartment,' I said. 'It's not there now.'

He made a note on his reader. 'Why was she at your apartment?'

I shrugged, running a quick edit on the brief conversation Lorelei and I had had. The fact that her attackers had been walkers changed everything. 'Like I said, she told me she was in danger and wanted my help,' I said. 'That's all.'

'And instead of helping you sent her out.' He nodded back toward her body. 'Into this.'

'If I'd known this would happen, I wouldn't have done that,' I said stiffly.

'Obviously,' he said. 'Any idea what she might have been doing this far from your place?'

I shook my head. 'None.'

'Heading for Central Park, maybe?' he persisted. 'Or to see some friend who lived uptown?'

'I said I don't know.'

He pursed his lips. 'Okay. What did you do after she left?'

'I double-locked the door and went to bed.'

'Any way to prove that?'

I grimaced. Here was where it was going to hit the fan. 'Not unless we had a cat burglar working the neighborhood who looked in my window.'

'Yeah,' Kylowski rumbled. 'See, here's my problem. Four problems, actually. First, by your own admission you met with one of the vics a few hours before her death. Second, you have no alibi for the time of the murder.'

'You must be joking,' I said. 'Cops and vampires aside, precious few people have alibis for this hour of the morning.'

'True enough.' Kylowski raised his eyebrows. 'Problem number three is that the murder weapon hasn't been recovered.'

I frowned. 'I thought you said it was my gun.'

'Oh, it was,' he assured me. 'We were able to do a micro-groove analysis on a couple of the slugs. Most people don't even know we can do that.'

'I know it,' I said. 'So what would be my reason for taking the gun away?'

'Because you also know that the chances of recovering a slug in good enough shape for a positive groove ID