Blood Hunt

on the door of the car.

They drove around the block and came back through an-other intersection, behind the parked car this time. He still couldn’t make out what the sign said. But there was definitely someone in the driver’s seat.

“So what now?” the driver said. “You want we should go down the street or not?”

“Pull over,” Reeve ordered. The driver pulled the car over to the curb. Reeve got out and adjusted the mirror on the passenger side. He got back into the backseat and looked at the mirror, then got out and adjusted it again.

“What’s going on?” the driver asked.

“Don’t worry,” said Reeve. He made another very slight adjustment, then got back in. “Now,” he said, “we drive down the street, just the way we talked about. Okay?”

“Is your money.”

As they neared the parked car with the man in it, approaching it from the front, Reeve kept his eyes on the wing mirror. He was just a passenger, a bored passenger staring at nothing while his driver figured out an address.

But he had a perfect view of the car as they passed it. He saw the driver study them, and seem to dismiss them. Nobody was expecting anyone to turn up in a cab. But the man was watchful. And he didn’t look to Reeve like a policeman.

“Where now?” the driver asked.

“That car we passed, did you see what was written on the side?”

“Yeah, man, it was some cable company. You know, cable TV. They’re always trying to get you to sign up, sign all your money away in exchange for fifty channels showing nothing but reruns of Lucy and shitty soaps. They been to my house three, four times already; my woman’s keen. They can smell when someone’s keen. Not me. So, where now?”

“Turn right, go a block or two, and stop again.” The driver did so. “You better fix your wing mirror,” Reeve said, so the driver got out to change it back. Reeve had a couple of options. One was to confront the man in the car, give him a hard time. Ask him a few questions while he pressed the life out of him. He knew interrogation techniques; he hadn’t used them in a long time, but he reckoned they’d come back to him like riding a bicycle. Just like the map-folding had come back. Instinct.

But if the man was a pro, and the man had looked like a pro-not like a cop, but like a pro-then he wouldn’t talk; and Reeve would have blown whatever cover he still possessed. Be-sides, he knew what he had come to find out. There was still a watch on Dr. Killin’s house. Someone still wanted to know whenever anyone went there. And it looked like there was nobody home.

His driver was waiting for instructions.

“Back to where you picked me up,” Reeve told him.

He paid the driver, tipped him a ten, and walked back the way he’d come. Back into Old Town State Park. He was in a gift shop, buying a postcard and a stamp and a kite that Allan would probably never use-too low-tech- when he saw the cop from the street corner watching him. The guy looked relieved; he’d probably gone back to his partner and then gotten jumpy, decided to look around. The park was full of tourists who had decamped from some trolley tour; it must’ve been a hard time for him. But now he had his reward.

Reeve left the shop and sauntered back to his car. He drove sedately back to his hotel, and only got lost once. He was assuming now that he was compromised; they’d be following him wherever he went. And if he lost them too often, they’d know they’d been compromised. And they’d either get sneakier-homing devices on his car, for example-or they’d have to gamble on direct assault. Maybe even an accident.

He didn’t think it would be a simple DUI.

In his room he wrote the postcard home and stuck the stamp on, then went down to the front desk to mail it. One man was seated in the reception area. He hadn’t brought any reading material with him, and had been reduced to picking out some of the brochures advertising Sea World, the San Diego Zoo, and the Old Town Trolley Tours. It was a chore to look interested in them. So Reeve did the man a favor: he went into the bar and ordered himself a beer. He was thirsty, and his thirst had won out over thoughts of a cool shower. He savored the chill as he swallowed. The man had followed him in and ordered a beer of his own, looking delighted at the prospect. The man was around the other side of the bar from Reeve. The other drinkers had the laughing ease of conventioneers. Reeve just drank his drink, signed for it, and then went upstairs to his room.

Except it didn’t feel like a room now; it felt like a cell.

SEVEN

NEXT DAY, GORDON REEVE saw the ghost.

Maybe it wasn’t so surprising under the circumstances. It was a strange day in a lot of ways. He packed his things away when he woke up, then went downstairs for breakfast. He was the only guest in the restaurant. The breakfast was buffet-style again. He could smell bacon and sausage. He sat in his booth and drank orange juice and a single cup of coffee. He was wearing his dark suit, black shoes and socks, white shirt, black tie. None of the hotel staff seemed to realize he was on his way to a funeral-they smiled at him the same as ever. Then he realized that they weren’t smiling at him, they were smiling through him.

After breakfast, he brought his bag downstairs and checked out, using his credit card.

“Hope you enjoyed your stay with us, Mr. Reeve,” the smiling robot said. Reeve took his bag outside. There was no one watching him in the hotel lobby, so there’d be someone out here, maybe in the parking lot. Sure enough, as he approached his car, the door opened on a car three bays away.

“Hey, Gordon.”

It was McCluskey. He was wearing a dark suit, too.

“What’s up?” Reeve asked.

“Nothing. Just thought you might have trouble finding the… thought you could follow me there. What do you say?”

What could he say-I think you’re a liar? I think you’re up to something? And I think you know I think that?

“Okay, thanks,” Reeve said, unlocking the Blazer.

He smiled as he drove. They were tailing him from in front, tailing him with his own permission. He didn’t mind, why should he mind? His business here was almost done, for the moment. He needed some distance. A good soldier might have called it safe distance. It was a perfect maneuver: look like you’re retreating when really you’re on the attack. He knew he wasn’t going to learn much more in San Diego without wholly compromising himself. It was time to move camp. He’d been taught well in Special Forces, taught lessons for a lifetime; and as old Nietzsche said, if you remained a pupil, you served your teacher badly.

Someone somewhere had once termed the SAS “Nietzsche’s gentlemen.” That wasn’t accurate: in Special Forces you depended on others as thoroughly as you depended on yourself. You worked as a small team, and you had to have trust in the abilities of others. You shared the workload. Which actually made you more of an anarchist. In Special Forces there was less bull about rank than in other regiments-you called officers by their first names. There was a spirit of community, as well as a sense of individual worth. Reeve was still weighing up his options. He could work alone, or there were people he could call. People he’d only ever call in an emergency, just as they knew they could call him.

He knew he should be thinking of Jim at this moment, but he’d thought about Jim a lot the past few days, and he didn’t see how another hour or two would help. It wasn’t that he’d managed to detach himself from the reality of the situation-his brother was dead, maybe murdered, certainly at the center of a cover-up-but that he’d accepted it so completely he now felt free to think about other things. Mr. Cold Rationalist himself. He hoped he’d stay cool at the cremation. He hoped he wouldn’t reach over and thumb McCluskey’s eyeballs out of their sockets.

The ceremony itself was short. The man at the front-Reeve never did learn if he was a priest, some church functionary, or just a crematorium lackey-didn’t know the first thing about James Reeve, and didn’t try to disguise