I took the envelope and scooped inside for the contents. There were a few photos, weirdly lit in black and white, like they had been taken with some kind of night vision camera. There was a forested area. I recognized the slope of hill behind Carl and Meg’s house. A couple of people were running with a couple of wolves. One of the faces was circled. Mine, of course. A couple of photos later in the sequence, I was ripping off my clothes and my body was changing shape. These were copies of the photos that set Cormac on me. I put them back.
The rest of the envelope held a half-dozen pages of information. Some phone records, a terse written agreement—someone putting a contract on you didn’t mean it was actually a contract. I didn’t think hit men gave out receipts.
Rick explained. “Those show phone calls between Arturo and his go-between, and the go-between and Cormac. The go-between is a woman with ties to the local militia movement. Cormac has a background with them. She’s been discussing with Arturo the possibility of, ah, signing up, as it were. She’d do anything for him.”
“What else do you know about Cormac?”
“He doesn’t work cheap. There are some figures listed.” He showed me the appropriate piece of paper. I blinked.
“That’s a lot of zeros.”
“Indeed.”
“Arturo wants me dead that badly?”
“Oh, I don’t know. He had backing. There’s a whole conglomerate that’s unhappy with you.”
“Who else?”
“That I’m afraid I don’t know. Sorry.”
“No, don’t apologize. This is great.” In fact, I was choked up. I’d been feeling friendless lately, and here came help from such an unexpected quarter. “Why help me like this? If Arturo finds out you did this—”
He made a dismissive gesture, as if he’d just loaned me five bucks and not saved my ass.
“Don’t worry about that. He doesn’t have to know. You may not believe it, but there are some of us who think you’re doing good work.”
There was always the possibility that Arturo had put him up to this, that this was all part of some nefarious plot to . . . to do something.
Rick deserved better than that kind of attitude. I sighed, humbled. “Thanks. Could you get a copy of all this to Cormac?”
“Already done.”
“Thanks, Rick. I owe you one.”
He tilted his head, regarding the ceiling for a moment. “You know, I could also be helping you because it would make Arturo crazy.”
He winked, grinned, and slipped out as quietly as he’d arrived. He melted into the shadows at the other end of the corridor. Like a vampire or something.
Matt was staring. “Was that . . . was that a . . .” He made a gesture, two fingers pointing down from his mouth like fangs.
“Yeah. So, Matt, how do you feel about this job now?”
He shook his head, whistling through his teeth. “Never a dull moment.”
The next day at work, I had a list of phone numbers sitting on top of the pile of crap spread all over my desk—ratings projections, transcripts, unanswered mail, phone messages, newspapers and magazines that I used as fodder. The headline on Wide World of News this week was “Following Kitty Norville’s Lead, Dozens of Vampire and Werewolf Celebrities Confess!” They had pictures of Quentin Tarantino, David Bowie, Britney Spears (huh?), and . . . Bill Clinton? Yeah, right.
I’d made it to the cover of Wide World of News. I must have really hit the big time. Or something.
I crossed off phone numbers as I made calls. Reporters, police departments, people who knew people who’d disappeared into Elijah Smith’s caravan. I’d already talked to the reporters from Uncharted World who’d tried to break into the caravan. One of them had a theory that Smith was actually a front for government researchers who needed vampire and werewolf test subjects. The other one sounded a bit more sane, thinking that some sort of cult of personality had formed around Elijah Smith. Neither one of them believed he was really curing anyone. We couldn’t know, because we couldn’t talk to any of his people.
No one left him. The caravan was growing. What if it worked?
I tracked the latest piece of the puzzle to Modesto, California, where the caravan had parked two nights ago. The police there had tried to issue Smith citations for trespassing and causing a disturbance. The two officers who’d been sent to issue the tickets woke up in their patrol car the next morning with no memory of what had happened over the last eight hours. The caravan was gone. I tried to talk to the officers in question, but apparently they were still in the hospital, for observation. I spent two hours on the phone, but no one would tell me what was wrong with them, or where they thought the caravan would appear next.
As I hung up the phone, one of the KNOB interns brought me a letter. She bopped into the room, handed it to me, and bopped out again. It didn’t have a stamp or return address—it had been hand-delivered. I should have been suspicious. But I had a feeling. It smelled okay. I opened it and drew out a card, blank except for a handwritten line, You were right. I owe you one, and a phone number.
Chapter 7