Yeah, I could recognize his signature. So could Mac, and thecity mage, and a few others. Probably Bycheck could, if he’d flashed his ID atthe Medical Examiner or the crime-scene crew soon enough.
We few, we favored few, we band of brothers could walk thestreets from now ’til the last echo of the last trumpet without crossing histrail. Those traces fade within a few hours, if a wizard isn’t using magic.They fade back to the level of personal identity, like old Major Ridge left onhis sabers and pistols and ledgers, something I could pick up from sniffing anobject long in his hands. All I had to do was find Al Kratz’s front door byother means and I could identify it. It came down to a chicken-or-egg question.Get the picture?
The part I reallydidn’t like, Kratz knew me, knew where to find my front door. He knew what I was doing. He’d come to my office,come to my apartment, followed me up to Podunk Hollow and Malcolm Ridge’splace. He’d rubbed my nose in all those moves, no attempt to hide them. And Ididn’t have the proverbial clue on how to find the bastard. They call it asymmetricalwarfare these days, giving him all the odds.
I’d be a lot safer hiding, breaking my pattern, but I’ddecided against that. Sure, he could hit me anytime he wanted. If he hit me, atleast I’d know where he was and could attack the ambush. I’d decided that wasworth taking a risk or two. Risks don’t matter as much to me these days,without Maggie in my life.
I closed the file and shut down my computer — didn’t bother tosave or back up. That blank white page looked too depressing. I swiveled my chairaround and stared out the office window. The pigeons across the courtyard cooedand bobbled and strutted along their guano-crusted ledges. They didn’t offerany more information. I glared at them. I knew a way to increase my reach, addscores of eyes and ears and noses to the hunt, but couldn’t use it.
I didn’t dare.
First, the trick was illegal as hell, that bit I mentionedearlier about a case where the Feds confiscated our files and slapped a monsterOfficial Secrets geas on everyone concerned. If they’d known that I actually understood what I’d found, couldprobably duplicate it, I think they would have vanished me. Don’t try to tellme Big Brother doesn’t have ways of removing inconvenient people. Which meansthat this might be one of the places where I’m lying.
Second, the trick was damned dangerous. One of the perps wenailed had ended up like a sci-fi movie mindwipe. There wasn’t anything wrongwith his body or his brain that science could measure, he just wasn’t livingthere anymore. Doctors called it a persistent vegetative state, no higher brainfunctions at all. Don’t ask me how you can have an undamaged organic structurebut nothing happening inside it — you need a PhD and post-doc in cognitiveresearch psychology to understand the jargon, and I’m just a dumb cop wizard. Iknew an empty husk when I saw one.
The bottom line, simplified for us cretins on the street, wasthe guy had sent his personality into a bunch of rats or squirrels or sparrowslooking for secrets, and the bits and pieces didn’t come home again. We neverfound out if that was a random result, or whether he’d crossed some thresholdof mind-brain percentage beyond which Dire Events happened, or went walkaboutin the Dreamtime for too long, or what.
That would require research that violated about ten basicrules of medical ethics. Maybe Bycheck knew what the Feds had learned since, insome deep dark CIA lab unbothered by such trivia. I’m sure they looked into it.I can count too many ways too many people in power could benefit from that kindof trick.
But a couple of guys had known how to do it. One ended updead, blew his brains out when we smashed the lock on his door, and the otheris still growing bedsores and feeding through a tube into his stomach. Worsethan dead. Or maybe he developed an infant personality and progressed like ababy from there to make a new person. The Powers That Be haven’t kept mebriefed.
However you cut it, I didn’t like the odds. As I said, thetrick was damned dangerous. I quit glaring at the pigeons.
As for why it was illegal five ways from Sunday — how’d youlike to wonder if that cockroach skittering away to hide under yourrefrigerator was maybe reporting back to the IRS? The ACLU is still throwingserious weight behind a constitutional amendment barring any level ofgovernment from using magical surveillance.
I filled another pipe, pinch by pinch of tobacco, tamping eachlayer to perfection with my new pipe tool, mindless concentration freeing mysubconscious to study the problem. My subconscious didn’t offer anylightning-bolts of inspiration or intuition in return.
Where was Kratz? Why’d he kill John Doe? What was John Doecarrying, and from whom to whom? How did Kratz follow me up to Podunk Hollowwithout my noticing? I’ve been in this trade long enough. I notice people following me around.
I shook my head and lit the pipe. About ten puffs later,Detective Sergeant Cash walked in, no knock. And again, I hadn’t heard or felther coming down the hall. That woman would make a good ghost.
Or leopard, the tall grass of her ancestral veldt again. Shehad her hunter face on.
She also had a scarlet mini-dress on, reached about halfwaydown her ass. Took me three or four blinks to realize that the brown from thereto her boots was cloth instead of Cash — the tights hugged her skin and matchedit perfectly. Someday that woman was going to give a poor drooling wretch aheart attack. It looked like the strategy was stun ’em and then clobber ’emwhile they gasped for air.
“Get your hat. We need you out at the airport.”
Just the two sentences, no preliminaries, no chit-chat. Igrabbed my hat and shrugged into the Burberry. Her hunter face had that effecton people.
We headed down the stairs, out into
