“That’s right. And here’s your wife, safe and sound.”
“Of course,” said Jason Westover, and reached a hand out for her. Not unlike someone who had just been informed that he’d left his cell phone on the table, Tallow thought. Westover was checking her over with the eyes of a man examining a bottle for leaks.
“Just curious, Mr. Westover. What business are you in?”
“I run Spearpoint Security. Founder and owner. Why?”
“Like I say, just curious. Lucky you could get away from the office on such short notice. But when you own the office, I suppose it’s easier. Well, your wife’s in one piece. Frankly, she’s been terrific company, and it’s been a pleasure to meet you both.”
“You’re very kind,” Westover lied.
“I’m just glad I was there to help. Your wife had quite a shock, and I really was worried about the wisdom of her driving home afterward. I understand there’s medical staff in the building? It couldn’t hurt to have someone check her out. Shock can be nasty. It can sneak up on you.”
“Yes,” said Westover flatly, taking Emily’s arm and turning away. “Well. Thank you, Detective. We appreciate it.”
“Yes,” said Emily, trying to keep her eyes on Tallow as she turned. “Thank you.” He made sure she saw a smile on his face that said it was okay and turned to leave himself with a “Have a good day.”
Tallow let the doors slide open so that the sound was in the air, but he stopped to watch Westover quickly guide his wife to the elevators. He was speaking tightly and insistently to her. Tallow saw the hand of her free arm twist into a fist.
Tallow went to his car. The guard was still standing by it. Tallow smiled again, and shook his head. “I was dropping off a resident,” he said. “No reason to get uptight, okay? I’m heading out.”
“We got laws in here,” the guard said, straightening and expanding his chest.
“Laws?” said Tallow, laughing. “In here? You sound like this place isn’t part of New York City, pal.”
The guard, to Tallow’s amazement, stepped to him. “It’s not. Just happens to be standing on a piece of it. And it’s my job to keep the laws in here. Pal.”
Tallow stopped walking. The guard took another step toward him. “Listen,” Tallow said, “you know what the difference between you and me is?”
“No difference,” said the guard, “except that in here it’s me telling you what the law is.”
“No,” said Tallow. “The difference is that sometimes you take off that shiny uniform with the Kevlar weave that some liar probably told you was bulletproof, and that great big gun that’s never been fired at anything but a paper target, and you dress like a regular guy and take your days off and go out in the world like you’re a normal person. Right? I’m a New York City police officer. I don’t live like a normal person. I don’t take days off. Ever. So when you see me in the street, the way you’ve been dreaming of doing for the last five minutes, you think about that. You have a good long think about that before you ever take one step closer to me.”
The guard took a step back.
“Enjoy the rest of your shift, sir,” said Tallow, and he got in his car and drove away, as slowly as he could. He would never understand why people wanted to hand him whatever shit was in their baggage.
TALLOW TURNED the corner into Bat and Scarly’s office to be greeted by a large plastic Japanese robot on the bench waving its arms and shouting
Bat emerged from behind the thing. “Don’t judge me,” he said. “I got bored.”
“You don’t have enough to do?” said Tallow, laying the three sandwiches on the bench beside the robot, which turned out to be wired into a flat cream-colored box sitting behind it.
“Hey, you never know when the future might need a giant Fuck You Robot wired to a hot-rodded motion detector. Also we got search results back on that ridiculous fucking flintlock.”
“What did you get?”
“Did you bring food?”
“You hate food.”
“The death bag has a mind of its own. Give me the food.”
“It’s on the bench. Talk to me.”
“There’s a reason why I set Fuck You Robot up.”
“Talk to me or I will shoot you.”
“Victim, Philip Thomas Lyman, resident of Rochester, NY. Funnily enough, he ran a security company, called Varangian. Worked out well for him then. He died in Midtown while on a business trip.”
Tallow picked up one of the sandwiches and left the room, saying only “I’ll be downstairs.”
Tallow paced around the simulation, eating his sandwich without tasting it, studying the fake room from outside, testing structures in his mind. Foundations of fact, scaffolding of speculation. Swapping out rods and plates, reassembling what he knew and what he suspected in different configurations. He finished the sandwich and tossed the wrapper, walking to the table. He pulled a couple of leaves off the tobacco plant, tore them up until the pieces were too small for his fingers to manipulate, and dropped them in the mortar. Tallow smashed the pieces with the pestle, hurriedly, still thinking, wanting to get this done. The oils released by the leaves tickled his nose. The scent wasn’t right. He pushed the pieces out into the tin tray, tipped the tray, took his new lighter, and ignited them, waving and working the flame until the smashed green matter began to smoke.
He carried the tray over to the emulation and laid it down in the middle. The smoke rose. It climbed and twisted like a thin dark tree, and as it passed Tallow, he pushed curls of it up toward the ceiling with his fingertips, and he
Tallow stood in the smoke, and inhaled it, and the scent was close to right, close to the dominant note he’d detected in the apartment on Pearl, and he slowly pivoted around and saw the guns wrapping around the room, forming shapes and partings for future shapes but wrapping, turning, revolving, and flowing around the apartment walls and over the floors.
Tallow knew that he’d met the man who’d fired all these guns.
“What are you doing, John?” asked Scarly. Again, he hadn’t heard the elevator, and it felt like a warning: Be in the world. Don’t get caught.
“Thinking,” he said. “What have you got?”
“The paint. Pain in the ass, you are. The white paint seems to be crushed clamshell and egg. Where the hell do you get clamshells to crush up for caveman paint?”
“Any dumpster on Mulberry Street. And it’s not caveman paint. Anything else?”
“Clay. Blackberry juice, for the purple. That kind of thing.”
“DNA?”
“I’m at least a day away from knowing that. And of course it’s caveman paint.”
“It’s Native American paint. Our man thinks he’s a Native American. Or wants to be a Native American.”
“How do you figure that?”
“All this. And more. And also I met him.”
Scarly stepped into the emulation. “What did you just say?”
“I think I met him. Yesterday. He was standing opposite the Pearl building when I went there to take another look at the scene. ECT wasn’t there, it was a shift break, and the follow-up team was late. He bummed a smoke off me. Talked to me about Native American things. About tobacco, and smoke. It was him. The reason I was late back with the food is that I met a woman who I think is sort of sideways connected to the whole thing. Homeless guy walks past with feathers in his hat like a comedy Indian, she freaks out, and I hear her say, at least once, ‘I thought it was him.’”
“John, if you met this guy, seriously, he could have killed you. Hell, I don’t know why he
“You don’t see it yet, Scarly? He couldn’t kill me. He didn’t have the right weapon. Look at all this. All this is the evidence of a man who matches his weapons to his kills according to some compulsive, insane logic. He killed a guy running a rent-a-cop agency in Rochester with the gun that committed the first murder in Rochester. We have
