“An execution style murder,” the anchorman was saying. “He was bound hand and foot and killed with one shot to the back of the head. Police suspect links to recent gang activities in the Mission district. The truck was otherwise empty, although it was apparently used in a burglary earlier this evening.”
Nathan clicked off the sound again as the anchor began another story.
“Does this sound like teenage gangs to you?” I said.
“No. The police have to give the media something, I suppose. I’ll call in tomorrow morning and see what kind of bullet they’ve retrieved.”
That simple word, “retrieved,” made my stomach clench when I realized exactly where they’d be retrieving it from.
“I doubt, though,” Nathan went on, “if it’s going to be a silver bullet, even if Johnson is involved. You don’t use a long gun to execute someone.”
“He wouldn’t use the silver bullets in a handgun?”
“If it’s a modern handgun, it wouldn’t fire properly with that kind of ammunition.” He paused to cover a yawn with the back of one hand. “You know, tomorrow we should drop in at the office if we’re going to keep our cover.”
I remembered the creature I’d seen in the lobby. A part of my mind had been keeping me away from the place, I realized. Smart or cowardly? I wasn’t sure.
“That’s true,” I said. “I need to file a report to the Agency. I’m assuming you’ve got your own ways of keeping in touch.”
“Through the local police and Interpol, yes.” He yawned again and shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t think I’m completely over the time change. Jet lag and all that.”
I was expecting a hassle over the sleeping arrangements, but Nathan kept his word, though he decided to try sleeping on the couch instead of the floor. I had an extra pillow and blanket for guests, and then I gave him one of my blankets, too, because I can stay warm by stockpiling my energy in what the Agency calls Mental Thermal Regulation. The bathroom had two doors, so I could lock the one that led into my bedroom and let him use the other.
Once Nathan was settled, I took the book bag into my bedroom and picked up journal number four. I ended up flipping through it, scanning rather than reading, because it mostly contained a collection of special prayers for the Hounds to use during their meetings. Some touched me deeply, others I found unsettling, full of imagery that would, I suppose, make a lot of sense to wolves. I could understand the theme of not slaughtering Jesus’ sheep, but marking God’s territory in your heart? I knew what he meant, but I decided not to dwell on the details.
The fifth journal brought more information about the Hounds, though nothing so concrete as where they met or their human names. Apparently they had organized themselves like a real wolf pack. As the alpha pair, Fr. LG and Sr. MR were planning on marrying and having cubs. Pat, as the newest member of the club, was the omega wolf. In the wild, he would have eaten last and acted in general like a puppy, starting wolfish games such as tag and mock tussles over sticks. In this version of wolf society, he took on the role of deacon, hence the book of prayers he’d written. He also supplied the refreshments—raw legs of lamb and the like—for their wolf-night meetings. Although it all made great sense to them, I’ll admit I found it disturbing.
Although I did manage to finish journal five, I was yawning compulsively by the end. I put it back in the bag, put the bag back in the hamper, sealed it with a Chaos ward, and went to bed.
I woke in the morning to the sounds of Nathan shaving in the bathroom. Although it had been a while since I’d had a live-in boyfriend, I recognized the dabbling of the razor in the basin, the slapping sound of applying aftershave, the gurgle of the filthy water—
“Nathan!” I called out. “Make sure you rinse the sink, will you?”
He laughed and called back that he would.
I got out of bed and craned my neck to look up the airshaft: steel gray sky. When Nathan finished, I showered and dressed in a pair of gray glen plaid slacks, warmer than jeans, and a dark green cotton top with long sleeves. No angels appeared during the process. I assumed that they’d delivered their one important message about Joseph’s coat and now had nothing more to tell me.
I came out into the living room to find that Nathan had folded the blankets into a precise cube at one end of the couch. He’d made coffee, too. Without a word he handed me a mug, then looked me over.
“Don’t you ever wear dresses?” he said.
“When there’s an occasion,” I said. “This isn’t one.”
“I don’t suppose I can talk you into eating breakfast.”
“That’s right. You can’t.”
He shrugged the problem away. “I just heard from the police. They’ve been in touch with Interpol, and they’ve run a check on their own records. We have another impossibility on our hands.”
“Say what?”
“William Johnson, a man who looks exactly like the pictures I have from the Israeli cases, is in prison in California for aggravated assault. He’s been there for four years now.”
“Well, William Johnson is a real common name, and the guy in those photos looks like a basic American type.”
“Yes, but their fingerprints match.”
I stared. My mouth would have dropped open like in the cartoons if I hadn’t kept it firmly shut. Nathan allowed himself a brief smile at the effect he’d produced.
“The Israeli police found fingerprints in the consular official’s flat,” Nathan went on. “The local police have a clear print and a couple of partials from Romero’s body. Johnson had her blood on his hands, apparently, when he shoved the corpse away.”
“And they all match this guy who’s been in prison for the past four years?”
“Yes. Identical twins, by the way, have different fingerprints.”
“So much for the last rational explanation.”
“Just so. Now, look, I want you to stay inside till I get back. Keep the curtains drawn and avoid the windows as much as possible.”
“Okay, but for God’s sake, will you watch the traffic? If you cause a multiple fatality, you’ll spoil your good relationship with the local cops.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my driving.”
“The hell there isn’t.”
He scowled but let the subject drop.
After Nathan left, I logged onto TranceWeb and posted the news about Johnson’s apparent double on our open board—open to agents, that is. I was hoping that someone would have an explanation or at least a theory about doppelgängers to offer me. When I finished, I logged off and continued with Pat’s journals, scanning more than reading, until I reached the second to last notebook. It began with a few pages of his usual mix of spiritual meditations, family gossip, and chatter about the doings of the Hounds. Soon, though, his prose turned cryptic, echoing the style of those pages written when Fr. LG had first contacted him. I could pick up, however, that someone had approached the Hounds and wanted to join them. The pack scented trouble. How had this person even known they existed?
Pat believed that the alpha Hounds suspected him of letting the secret out, even though they denied it. He went on to write a lot about how grieved and hurt he was and nowhere near enough about this mysterious person. I was ready to bite him myself by the time he finally divulged that this man, whom he called DD, had been hinting that he could put the Hounds in touch with something very “big and important,” something hidden from the vulgus, the common herd. DD often expounded on his scorn for the vulgus.
I had just turned the page when I heard a key slide into the door lock and the deadbolt shoot back.
“Nola?” Nathan’s voice called out. “I’m back from Sheboygan.”
I unchained the door and opened it to find him grinning at me. He was holding two sets of keys and a white paper bag. He handed me my set of keys on their familiar ring and put the second set into his trousers pocket.
“How did you get these?” I said.
“I took them out of your bag.” He
walked in, then turned to shut the door and chain it again. “I wanted to lock you in from the outside, just in case you had the urge to go wander around where Johnson could find you. I made copies, so I can get in and out of the office on my own.”
“You arrogant son of a bitch.”
He laughed and handed me the paper bag. “I’m not sure what you call this, but it looked good.”
Since it smelled good, too, I opened the bag and looked in. “A blueberry Danish,” I said. “I’m tempted to shove it into your face, but I’ll admit to being hungry by now.”
He grinned at me with his big-eyed boyish smile. It dawned on me that he enjoyed making me angry, perhaps as payback for the frustration I was putting him through. I suspected that very few women—if any—had ever told Nathan no. He reached inside his jacket and brought out a folded sheet of paper.
“A photocopy of Johnson’s letter to the newspaper,” Nathan said.
“Thanks.” I put it down beside my multifunction printer. “I’ll get this off to the Agency expert.”
While I ate my breakfast, Nathan told me what he’d learned from the homicide detective in charge of the Romero case.
“He’s convinced that Romero must have known the killer,” Nathan said, “because she was shot at close range. I didn’t bother to tell him your theory that she’d been the one stalking him.”
“Oh? You think I’m wrong?”
“Of course not! He wouldn’t believe a word of it, is all. So, the police suspect a man from her group of college friends, most likely her boyfriend, Lawrence Grampian.”
“Fr. LG, aka Lupus Gubbionis.”
“Yes, but I didn’t tell him that, either. Most murders are committed by someone the victim knows, and when a woman’s killed, the murderer generally does turn out to be her husband or boyfriend. So I understand Lieutenant Sanchez’s line of reasoning.”
“Even with the resemblance to the Israeli cases?”
“Sanchez had something new to tell me about that.” Nathan paused for a grim smile. “Grampian visited Israel on one of those Christian pilgrimage group tours, although it was some while before the murders were committed. He could easily have gone back at some point.”
“Was this after my brother died?”
“Some months after, yes. Sanchez doesn’t know about your brother’s death, of course, but I did bring Patrick officially into the investigation as a missing person. What happened to him is part of the pattern, although ‘missing’ is far as I could go under the circumstances. Sanchez also knows that Pat had a connection to Grampian. He brought up the records of the missing person reports your mother filed at the time. Grampian was interviewed then.”
“So Sanchez thinks he has a case again Frater LG?”
“He’s too good an officer to think so at this stage of the investigation. He does see Grampian as a person of interest, especially since Grampian has no alibi for the night of the Romero murder.”
“Of course he doesn’t. It was a full moon night, which is why we can rule him out as a suspect, even with the Israel visit thrown into the mix.”
Nathan looked puzzled.
“He couldn’t have shot her.” I spelled it out for him. “He had paws, not hands. Even if he’d gone back to Israel later, those murders happened at the full moon, too. No way he could have used a gun.”
“All perfectly logical.” Nathan paused for an aggrieved sigh. “That’s probably why Romero’s family won’t hear a word against Grampian but can’t explain why they feel that way to the police. They must know about his lycanthropy—and hers, for that matter.”
“You can’t keep it hidden from the people you live with.”
“I can well believe that. Sanchez does want me to attend the funeral. I told him that my girlfriend would come with me.”
I merely smiled.
“Well,” he said, “I didn’t want to expose your cover.”
“That’s fine.”
He looked so aggravated that I laughed.
“Are you sure you’re not a werewolf, too, Nathan?” I said. “You look like you’re going to snarl.”
He wiped the look away. “I do wish,” he said, “that you’d call me by my first name.”
“Yeah?” I got up and started for the kitchen. “Want more coffee?”
“No. We should get down to the office, but I’ll drive.”
“I’ll take the streetcar and meet you there.”
Nathan did snarl, though he reminded me more of a tiger than a wolf. The sight of flashing teeth reminded me once again of the scaly little spy. I disliked the idea of letting another such get a snoutful of my scent. Besides, when I glanced out the window I saw rain clouds gathering. The idea of dealing with a damp and crabby Nathan did not appeal.
“To be honest, though,” I said. “There’s a lot of stuff I can do right here, like finish the journals.”
“I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“Do you really think Johnson’s going to attack me in broad daylight?”
“I don’t know what Johnson’s going to do.” Nathan turned grim again. “Neither do the police. It’s just not the papers—the police themselves are afraid they have another Zodiac killer on their hands, because of the occult element. Sanchez had always considered the silver bullets an occult element, but now they have the letters, as well. They never caught the Zodiac, did they?”
“No, that’s very true. But he killed at random for fun. There’s a pattern to our case, and I suspect there’s a motive, too. We just haven’t found it yet.”
“Of course, but we can’t tell the police when we do.”
“That does make life difficult, yeah.”
“I’ll admit that it’s not likely that Johnson would come after you during the day, not unless he’s willing to risk being seen, but why take chances?” He shrugged to emphasize the point. “I’ll go down to the office, pick up a few things, and then come back. Don’t leave.”
“I won’t. One last thing. Keep your eyes open when you’re crossing the lobby. If you think you see something moving, like out of the corner of your eye, you’re not imagining things. You may not be able to see it, but something could be there.”
“Something?”
“Something it takes special training to see, yeah. I’m not joking or teasing you, Nathan. Chaotic forces generate some strange phenomena. At times they produce things that look like little animals. They’re not alive, strictly speaking, but they can carry information back and forth.”
Nathan stared at me. Since teaching him how to throw a Chaos ward would have taken weeks, I fell back on ancient lore.
“You don’t have anything with you that has a Star of David on it, do you?” I said. “A tie clasp, maybe?”
“No, I don’t. What are you talking about?”
“Wards. Things that repel Chaotic forces and beings.” I considered for a moment. “If I drew a Star of David on a piece of paper, would you keep it in your breast pocket?”
Nathan sighed and looked upon me with the reproachful stare. “Oh, very well,” he said at last. “If it’ll make you feel better.”
“It would. Definitely. And watch your back.”
“That’s always good advice.”
Once Nathan had his improvised ward, he left, and I settled down with Pat’s last two journals. These I read carefully and slowly. I even took notes on a scratch pad as a number of things began to fall into place. Once I finished, I went to my computer and logged on to the Agency to file a thorough report via TranceWeb. By the time Nathan returned, I had plenty to tell him.
Thanks to the first splatter of rain, he arrived damp, crabby, and lugging his sample case and a brown paper sack of groceries. Apparently black lettuce didn’t appeal to him. While I put away the high calorie stuff he’d bought, he hung up his wet jacket on the shower rail, then returned to sit at the kitchen table and watched me.
“While I was at the office,” he said, “I didn’t see anything invisible.”
“Good.
” I ignored the sneer in his voice. “You’re lucky.”
“Did you find anything new in the journals?”
“Yeah, a motive for Pat’s murder.”
He leaned back in his chair and smiled the tiger’s smile, not his boyish grin. “Brilliant!” he said. “Tell me.”
What I’d pieced together revolved around this mysterious DD, initials for a pseudonym, I assumed. At first he’d been all flattery as he tried to interest the Hounds in whatever his “something big” amounted to. Despite his protestations of piety and spiritual longing, they’d been wary and refused to take the bait. He’d withdrawn, leaving them all feeling “unclean” as Pat put it, as well as in danger. How had he known what they were and where to find them? DD never divulged that answer.
My poor brother had decided to try to find out. With the blessing of the group he pretended to be interested in DD’s hints. They fenced back and forth for a while, with Pat fishing for information and DD doling out scraps. Finally DD admitted that he belonged to another secret organization, one devoted to a personage he called “the ruler of this world.” All of Pat’s well-trained Christian alarms went off. DD tried to convince him that this ruler operated as an agent of God, but Pat heard “Satan” loud and clear. He broke off all contact with DD, or so he thought.
“By then,” I finished up, “DD must have figured that Pat knew too much about his secret group, not that he could have gone to the police about it.”
“Why not? For that matter, doesn’t your church have ways of dealing with such things?”
“It’s not my church anymore, but Satanism’s not illegal in the United States. DD didn’t have to worry about the police on that score.”
Nathan looked honestly surprised. “After all I’ve heard about your preachers and their television shows, I’d assumed something quite different.”
“Oh, they’d love to start a crusade, but they can’t, thanks to the Constitution. There was an openly Satanist group in San Francisco for years. My aunt told me that when she was a girl, their high priest used to drive around in a beat-up station wagon with an elderly lion in the back, behind one of those dog grates like Kathleen has in her SUV.”