Tinnie paused to think. She’s bright but she sometimes forgets to wake her brain up before she lets her mouth take off. Two of us doing that at once causes problems.
Dean says we were made for each other.
Dean has said the same thing about me and several bright, picturesque young ladies. He’s even said it about me and take my pick of his platoon of homely nieces. Real nieces. Dean believes I need more stability. He doesn’t like the way I live.
“Now you’re drifting off on me?”
“Didn’t get enough sleep last night.”
“Bragging or complaining?”
“I was thinking about Dean.”
“Why?”
“He’s gone. They both are.”
“Really?” The news startled Tinnie. “I never thought —”
“It’s the times.”
“Uhm?” She became very quiet. She didn’t say anything until we were back among the books. “Is it permanent, Garrett?”
“What?”
“The split with your partner.”
I glanced around. I tapped my ear. You couldn’t be sure who was listening. The Call were paranoid by nature. After last night they would be doubly so. “It had to happen. My sympathies aren’t what they used to be. Dean wouldn’t see things my way. He wouldn’t listen to reason.”
“And?”
“So they sneaked out.”
The facts awed me whenever I recalled that the Dead Man actually let himself be moved. Maybe even asked to be moved.
Ah. I could find him. If I could unearth Saucerhead. Tharpe must have been in on it. He was one of very few people the Dead Man would trust to help.
I’d be expected to figure that out for myself. Far be it from my pet fruit bat to speak up.
“If the split is permanent...” There was an edge to Tinnie’s voice. She had something in mind. Maybe something risky.
The Goddamn Parrot shuddered and twitched, fell of his perch. He flopped around amongst the books. Dust flew. Inarticulate noises spewed from his beak.
“I don’t know.” I stared. Had something happened to the Dead Man? The bird seemed to be trying to talk. Maybe His Nibs was making a desperate effort to get through.
Or maybe darkness was overtaking him at last.
Maybe, before he checked out, he would be kind enough to share his thoughts about what he’d overheard.
If he’d been paying attention. Chances were he’d fallen asleep and this was one of his nightmares leaking.
Tinnie said, “He’s been acting strange for a long time.”
I opened a book. “How would you know what’s strange for that runt condor? You weren’t in on getting me stuck with him, were you?” Her sense of humor could include a prank like the Goddamn Parrot. Especially if she thought I deserved it.
“No. But I think Morley showed a lot of flair, finding him.”
“That Morley is a piece of work, isn’t he?” I grumped.
“Are we going to move in out here?” Tinnie asked. “I haven’t been home for days. I imagine Uncle Willard is starting to steam.”
“He’ll boil over when he finds out you were with me.”
“He likes you, Garrett.”
“Sure. From a distance.”
“He’s not blind or stupid.”
In a minute we’d be back to me moving into the Tate compound. “You want me to take you home?”
“I don’t think my cute new uncle can do it for a while. Besides, he tickles.”
I looked around. We’d been through scores of books. That didn’t amount to ten percent of the heap. Less if some of the drifts had formed atop dunes of documents not immediately evident.
I didn’t want to leave. The library was a great excuse to hang around the heart of The Call. Just being at the North English place would put me next to a lot of interesting stuff. Nobody would notice me after a while. I would become part of the furniture.
“This is a great opportunity...” No sense letting Tinnie in on everything. What she didn’t know she couldn’t share with friends whose politics were suspect.
“I understand that. I don’t want you to waste it. But Uncle Willard will be foaming at the mouth.”
“Especially when he hears what you’ve been doing.”
She grinned. Those devils wakened in her eyes. “We could give him one more reason for —”
“Wicked, wicked woman. Right here?”
“Look around. Nobody ever comes in here —”
Click! The door opened. “Excuse me. I hate to interrupt, but —”
“That’s all right, Ed,” I told the stiff-backed officer.
He winced. “The old man asked me to include you in our response to a problem that’s just come up. He told me I’d find you here.”
“He was right again. What kind of problem?”
“Murder.”
“Ah, shit. Not again.” I shed some dust and the book I was pretending to skim. “What can I do?”
“The old man says you’re the expert.” Ed looked Tinnie over. He had no trouble with his sexual identity and was one hundred percent in favor of redheads.
The guy might be all right after all.
“Let’s go.”
81
As we descended the front steps, I said, “Ed, I need to take Miss Tate home sometime today. She’s overdue. Her folks will be worried.”
“Why tell me?”
“I didn’t think Venable and his lovable lizards would care and you’ve got the next closest interest in security here, right? I thought you’d want to know who’s coming and going and why.”
“If you want to do me a courtesy, I’d prefer you called me Lieutenant, not Ed.” His voice was brittle.
I was supposed to be cowed. “All right, Ed. I won’t call you Ed no more. But don’t look for any military crap. I’m out of that. I don’t need it, don’t appreciate it, don’t like it. If it helps, think of me as a civilian contractor.”
He didn’t warm to that idea. Civilians are not to be trusted. You don’t have enough control. But he said, “All right, Mr. Garrett. On that basis. Call me Mr. Nagit.”
“Or Lieutenant?”
“Or Lieutenant. Yes.”
Tinnie was tagging along. The Goddamn Parrot had adopted her shoulder for the time being. One of them snickered. I have my suspicions which though both my trials showed straight faces. I asked, “You interested in a parrot, Mr. Nagit?”
“I don’t think so.”
“He can talk.”
“Then definitely not, Mr. Garrett. But when you decide to get rid of the other one...” He chuckled.
“Make me an offer.” I chuckled, too.
“Garrett!”
“Sorry, darling.”
Mr. Nagit smiled. We’d made peace. For the moment.
Mr. Nagit led us toward the front gate. A crowd had gathered out there. More men were headed that way. I said, “These guys need something to do.”
“The old man said give them a day to recuperate. But you’re right. Uhn! What’s this mess?”
We had come to the torn-up part of the lawn. I said, “I noticed this yesterday. I asked Miss Montezuma about it. She didn’t know what happened.”
Mr. Nagit eyeballed the hoofprints. He moved a few steps this way, a few steps that. I tagged along. He observed, “There were at least a dozen animals involved. Pretty light. And poorly shod. Came this way from the gate, swung around there, then went back. They were galloping when they came up to the turn but they walked back down.”
I agreed. “They were chasing somebody.”
“This may connect with our murder.” Nagit started toward the gate, reconsidered the battered ground. “Sure made a mess.”
A mess. Bane of the military mind. “Maybe they were playing with their prey.”
“What kind of people would?...”
“Tinnie and I saw a band of centaurs when we were coming out here.” I described the circumstances. No point being secretive. I’d told North English already a
nd suspected he might have said a word to Mr. Nagit.
“Centaurs? Hmm.”
Meanwhile Tinnie tried to shush the Goddamn Parrot. That clown rooster was having a mild fit. I asked, “Do birds behave strangely around here, Mr. Nagit?”
“Not that I’ve noticed.”
“That buzzard’s had two seizures this morning. I thought he might’ve picked up something.”
“Not here.”
We soldiered on. Toward, it developed, the cluster of evergreens just inside the gate.
I observed, “These people shouldn’t be tracking all over the murder scene.”
“I understand that. I told everyone to stay out of the trees.”
“The body in there?”
“See for yourself.”
82
I saw for myself.
Mr. Nagit bullied the freecorps thugs into moving back. I did admire their discipline.
There wasn’t much smell yet but the flies were plentiful. They’re always the first to know. I heard them before I saw anything.
The first dead thing wasn’t human. It used to be a wild dog. Before something left nothing but a head and some feet and fur and odd bits of bone scattered amongst the well-tossed pine needles.
I heard a little “Tee-hee.” I looked over my shoulder and wasn’t surprised to see my one-eyed, lizard-loving buddy Venable checking another savaged remnant of wild Rover.
“Did your babies do this?”
He tittered. “Killed the wild dogs and ate them, they did, yes. And never laid a claw on Stucker. He was dead already. They won’t touch carrion unless they’re absolutely starving. Even then, sometimes, the strong males will eat the weak ones before they touch cold meat. Hee.”
The dining preferences of his pets didn’t interest me. Mr. Nagit was less intrigued than I. I asked, “What’s this about Stucker? He looked pretty healthy when I saw him a few minutes ago.”
Venable looked baffled.
Soon I saw why.
Stucker’s corpse was naked. It was dirty and far from fresh. The wild dogs had been at him during the night, long before my glimpse of him in the house a while ago.
There was no doubt he’d been dead half a day before the dogs found him. I muttered, “But he was at supper with us last night.”
The pine needles were well stirred. Here and there, in the soft soil beneath, were clear hoofprints.
“Why didn’t they bury him?” I wondered aloud.
“They did. Over there,” Venable told me. “Just not deep enough. The dogs dug him up. We pulled him over here and brushed him off before we sent for the lieutenant.”
I wanted to scream and give Venable a good throttling. But that would do no good now.
I reminded Mr. Nagit that, “We saw centaurs on the road just north of here yesterday. And nobody was on the gate when we got here. We were talking about that when Stucker came out of here still pulling up his pants. I figured he’d gone off to take a dump. But...”
Mr. Nagit looked puzzled.
“The boss will understand. It’s a matter of shapeshifters. Killer shapeshifters.”
The light dawned. “He told us how he handled a couple of those at the Weider masque. I thought they’d all been captured.”
“Some were. And used their abilities to get away. There seem to be an awful lot of them around. They keep turning up.”
“We’d better grab the Stucker back at the house.”
“Good idea. Only I’ll bet we don’t find him.”
“Why not?”
“If you were him up there and saw this mob down here, what would you think?”
“That we found the body.” Mr. Nagit showed me his comradely smile.
It wasn’t that endearing. Venable’s pets smiled that way while they waited for your friendly status to evaporate.
“Exactly. What else strange has happened the past few weeks? Any assaults? Unexplained deaths? Mysterious thefts? People supposedly seen two places at the same time?” The shifters seemed to have the solution to that difficulty worked out, though.
“No.” Mr. Nagit barked at the freecorps fighters gradually pushing into the grove, wanting to sneak a peek at disaster. He finger-pointed half a dozen. “You men go up to the house. Grab Stucker.”
“But —”
“If you see Stucker it won’t be Stucker. Stucker’s right there. Already starting to ferment. Get moving.”
I observed, “That’ll teach those guys to get so close an officer notices them.”
Nagit smiled again. This had to be a record day. “I suppose it will.” He glared around like he was thinking of something else that had to be done. Men backed away.
There was a lot of soldier in those guys still.
“Settle down!” I snapped at the Goddamn Parrot. Having decided he didn’t love Tinnie anymore, he had jumped to my shoulder where he was practicing some weird tribal fertility dance.
Lieutenant Nagit said, “Looks like he’s trying to see the body but you keep moving.”
He was taking up for the bird? “Maybe he’s hungry. He’s a vulture in disguise. Venable. Think he could play with your pets?”
No?
That wonder buzzard is so damned useless I can’t even turn him into lizard bait.
83
There was no sign of pseudo-Stucker. Surprise, surprise. The shifter was somebody else now.
So I was not surprised when I spied one Carter Stockwell, known shapechanger, drifting behind the crowd, moving toward the front gate. Evidently it never occurred to anyone else to wonder why an unfamiliar fellow would be wearing the same clothes Stucker had had on for the past two days.
“There’s our man,” I told Nagit. “Right there. That face is the one he wears whenever he’s not replacing someone.”
Nagit looked at me narrowly, briefly — then gestured several men closer. “How do you know that, Mr. Garrett?”
“I’ve run into this shifter before. He always collapses into this shape.” Did that make sense?
It did to me.
The creatures really did have to be psychic when it came to threats. Carter looked at me suddenly, as though responding to my interest. He lengthened his stride immediately.
“He knows I’ve made him, Mr. Nagit.”
The lieutenant gave orders quickly, softly. Everyone hurried to execute them. These freecorps boys took their military stuff seriously.
The mob took off after Stockwell, determined little turtles vainly coursing a hare. Stockwell changed as we watched, his legs lengthening until a foot of calf showed below each cuff. He bounded away, gaining ground fast. He circled the tent city and disappeared into the woods beyond.
“Wow,” Mr. Nagit said. “That’s what I call putting on a burst of speed.” He kept a straight face.
Stockwell dwindled into the distance. What was his connection with the centaurs?
There had to be one. Tinnie and I had run into centaurs just up the road. Minutes later the Stucker look-alike, still buttoning his trousers, comes out of the very copse where later we find what’s left of the real Stucker. Just downhill from a lot of ruined pasture. “The torn-up turf. The way it was torn up. Those centaurs helped catch the real Stucker for the changer.” Which meant that there must be a common mission between the centaurs and shapeshifters. Which I thought the Dead Man, with his special interest in things and personalities out of the Cantard, would find very intriguing indeed. I might even tell him about it. Someday.
The Goddamn Parrot took flight. That little traitor would give the news away first chance he got. For free. Apparently out of practice flying, he had trouble staying straight and level getting across to Tinnie.
“How do I spot one of those things if they come back? Or if there’re more of them around?”
“I’m trying to find out. That’s why I was in the library. But I hadn’t found anything yet. I do know they don’t like silver. Not even a little. You could whap everybody with a solid silver ugly stick every once in a while. Why would they
replace a low-level guy like Stucker?”
Nagit looked at me like he had sudden doubts about my smarts. “He was on the gate eighteen hours a day. He saw everyone who came and went. Valuable information to a lot of people, I’d think. Plus he had the run of the house in his free time. He could’ve dug around in there whenever he wanted.”
“The perfect spy. He was good, too. I didn’t know him so he had no trouble with me but he did fool Miss Montezuma at dinner last night.”
“Stucker was the perfect target. He was a loner. Nobody knew him very well. Everybody knew he was totally committed to the movement, though. He did everything possible, in spite of his social handicaps. So the boss always said. You’d never suspect him.”
Unless the replacement Stucker never got a chance to bury the man he replaced deeply enough. On account of that meddlesome Garrett turning up. I shivered, thinking a dark wing had brushed my soul. In Stockwell’s place I might have paid me a deadly visit during the night.
I assumed the boss was right about the original Stucker. “You had doubts?”
“About Stucker? Never. The man had a minor job. He did it well. I notice people only when they don’t do their jobs well.”
“I see.” I also saw that Tinnie was headed our way, oblivious to the moon-eyes around her. The woman put a definite strain upon these superior beings’ commitment to correct behavior.
Every man in sight hated my bones the instant she slipped her arm inside mine.
She purred, “How much longer are you going to be?”
“I don’t know, darling. This’s another shapeshifter incident. The gatekeeper was a changeling.”
“Too bad. He seemed nice.”
“We only met the shifter. The real gatekeeper was dead before we got here.”
Tinnie glanced that way. She flushed.
I said, “It isn’t pretty. Wild dogs got after him. Then Venable’s little pals got after the wild dogs.”
“I know that, Garrett. What about you being much longer?”
I wasn’t looking forward to facing Uncle Willard. “Mr. Nagit, I’m going to take the lady home. I’ll be back.”
Mr. Nagit wasn’t completely thrilled. “Do what you need to do. I’ll leave word to let you in.”