Gentleman Takes a Chance (40 page)

The thought lasted all the walk back behind the counter, to replace the spent carafe and take up the filled one. Tom was behind the counter also taking over from Anthony and listening to Anthony's instructions on what was cooking and at what stage.

"I'll be back by six, right?" Anthony said. "Is that early enough for you? Because, you know, these double shifts are killing me, though Cecily says we could use the money because she wants a large screen TV. Where she plans to put the large screen TV in our apartment, I don't know, though doubtless I'll find out."

"You'll find out she wants to move to a bigger one," Tom said, in an amused tone, and Kyrie was surprised and admiring at once, that he could keep this calm and joke with Anthony like that, with everything that was hanging over their heads.

Anthony shrugged. "Ain't that the truth. But she's worth it. She's a great cook. Her steak is almost as good as yours. And I'm sorry, Tom, you're a good-looking man, but Cecily is much prettier."

Tom chuckled at that, and Anthony, putting his jacket on, ducked out of the counter and off towards the hallway. And Kyrie turned to Tom and said, "What about the RLF?"

Tom blinked at her. "Beg your pardon?"

"What about the Rodent Liberation Front?" Kyrie said. "What if we asked their help?"

"You're joking, right?"

"Well, they are a group of shifters, and they seem to be . . ." She looked up to see Tom's lips tremble. "Well, all right, the idea of an army of rats is somewhat creepy."

"Creepy isn't the half of it, and what I fear is not an army of rats," Tom said, "it is an army of rats, mice, gerbils, squirrels and guinea pigs."

"But . . . surely they could . . . do things?"

"Like what, nibble people to death?" Tom asked. Then shrugging, "Oh, I grant you they could probably be very useful in spying and that sort of thing, but . . ." He shook his head. "I don't know, Kyrie. All these organizations seem to come with their own, for lack of a better word, agenda: their own assumptions about who's in and who's out. I'd prefer to just be human."

Kyrie had to giggle at that. "Ah. Well. So would I, but we're not."

Tom shook his head. He frowned. "No. But perhaps we must be? I mean, I'm not going to deny, I can't deny, that I'm also something else, but we live in a society of humans and our parents . . . well . . . at least mine," he had the grace to blush, as if just remembering that she had no clue who or what her parents were, "are human. We owe humanity something . . . Even if we owe our kind something too." He looked annoyed, as though he'd just noticed that his tongue had got him hopelessly tangled. "Look, if I saw someone go after a . . . a mouse shifter, simply for being a mouse shifter and because the difference scared them, of course I would defend him or her. We owe each other that. But . . ."

"But if you found a mouse shifter nibbling on human babies at night and counting it as not mattering because he thought himself superior and more human than them . . . You'd eat the bastard?" Kyrie asked.

Tom flashed a smile. "Kill. Despite my dad's imagination, I do try very hard not to be a cannibal."

Kyrie chuckled. She could no more imagine Tom being a cannibal than she could imagine him being a mass murderer. Shifter or not, she knew her boyfriend held himself to a very stern standard. And would not, could not deviate. Not and remain himself. Which meant he couldn't ask for help. And that she would have to be the guarantor to the Great Sky Dragon that Tom wouldn't kill himself. She thought she could do that, if she had asked for help—and not him. If it were her debt.

A couple came in, and Kyrie went to seat them at a table by the window and take their order. The problem, when it came right down to it, was that Kyrie was also not absolutely sure that Tom could kill Dire even presuming he found a way to defeat his mind powers, no matter how much he thought Dire was dangerous to humans. She knew Tom. She thought Tom's own scruples would stop him. He would only kill when cornered. He would kill to protect his friends. But, given Dire's abilities, when Tom found himself cornered it might be too late.

Dire might not kill Tom. Kyrie wasn't sure how the truce of the Ancient Ones with the dragons would hold given an attack on a dragon. But she knew that he would hurt Tom. And wreak havoc on the rest of them.

And she saw no way out of it, she thought, as she set the two orders for French toast on the counter. They had to get rid of Dire, but Tom wouldn't let her ask for the help of anyone who might defeat the creature.

Rafiel didn't drive in circles. He drove through streets where people were making their cautious way to work—some of them for the first time in three days. It was slow going, and very broken progress, as he had to stop often to avoid ramming into the car in front of him, or else slow down for groups of schoolchildren slipping, sliding and giggling across an ice-patch on the crosswalk.

He stopped by a friendly doughnut shop—not his normal one—and grabbed two crullers and a tall cup of coffee, before retreating to the car parked in front of the shop, sparing just one grateful thought to his shifter metabolism that—thank heavens—allowed him to eat as much as he pleased of what he pleased.

The shop was in a neighborhood of small, remodeled townhouses and apartments. It had either been there since the middle of the twentieth century or someone had gone through a whole lot of trouble to make sure it looked as though it had. Though it had no tables, the interior had that green-formica and chrome look of the Fifties, and the sign over the shop blinked in pink and green neon good doughnuts. Which they were, or at least the crullers were—soft and moist. And the coffee was just as it should be, black as a murderer's soul, hot as hell and strong enough to peel paint—or stomach lining.

Rafiel's phone rang. He saw McKnight's cell number and took the phone to his ear with a "Yeah?"

"That guy you had me check on?"

"Dante Dire?"

"Yeah, I left a couple of the part-timers dealing with the data stuff. They didn't want to see the body."

"Yeah."
Smart part-timers.

"Well, we didn't find signs that he was in the aquarium, but . . . well, his movements are kind of hard to check. He's all over. But he . . . well, he's been in Colorado for a couple of months. Also . . ."

"Also?"

"He made a killing in the stock market. Several times. He's either an amazing gambler, or he is crooked as hell."

Or he can read minds,
Rafiel thought and shivered. "Thanks, McKnight."

Rafiel drank and ate in his car and considered his options.

He was about five blocks away from the aquarium. In the bewildering way towns in the west had of turning from residential to commercial and back again, this neighborhood became all offices as soon as you crossed under the expressway to the west. And then the aquarium was right there. He should go back to the aquarium. Oh, it was only one of the cases on his plate right now, but it was—arguably—the one he could actually do something about.

Whatever Tom and Kyrie had to say, he couldn't figure out how he could do anything about the dire wolf. And he certainly couldn't do anything about Conan and the Great Sky Dragon. He felt sorry for Conan, poor bastard, but that was about it. He didn't know where, if at all, the alligator fit in all this, and he'd be damned if he understood, even mildly, what was going on with a shifter crab. But whatever was going on at the aquarium he had to solve. There had to be a female involved, which seemed to rule out the old Japanese shifter. Unless, of course, the Japanese shifter disapproved of immoral behavior in his aquarium. Who knew? Morals had changed a lot, hadn't they even in the last couple decades, let alone from whatever old era this shifter came from? And then there was always Dire. Dire's casual disregard for life. And even if they didn't find a trail showing he'd been in town, he might have been. And he might have mind-controlled those victims into jumping in the tank. To . . . make their life difficult? Keep them on their toes while he investigated their other alleged misdeeds?

His motives were almost impossible to fathom, except that it was pretty sure they weren't good. He seemed to take relish in casual emotional torture.

Or it could be a female at the aquarium.

He became aware that someone was knocking enthusiastically on the passenger side window, and looked away from pink and green neon to see Lei Lani's face surrounded by fluffy grey fake fur on a red ski jacket hood. She tapped the window again, and smiled.

Hello, suspect number . . . well, many.

He reached for the control on his door handle with a sugary hand and lowered the window. She smiled at him. "Officer Trall," she said. "I just came in for a coffee, and I saw you parked here. Nothing wrong in the doughnut shop, is there?"

He shook his head. "No. Just having breakfast. I'm afraid I was up all night and was starting to flag. But I am about to head back to the aquarium, to look at a few things."

"Oh, good. May I go to the aquarium now? I won't come near the crime scene. I know you guys have it all taped up and everything. I just want to go to the office and pick up some reports on shark health that I've been looking at which are urgent." Suddenly, her happy expression dimmed. "Well . . . if we don't end up having to kill half of them because we need to recover parts of people, and have the others shipped to parts unknown. I mean, who's going to come and look at our sharks, if they know they've eaten people?"

Rafiel shrugged. A tingle ran up and down his neck. His dad, now retired from the Goldport force had first told him about these
feelings
. The sense that
something
was wrong.

There was something to Lei Lani, to her talk, that made him suspect she knew something.

He doubted she could be
the
shark shifter, if there was one, because how did she convince her victims to go swimming in there? She didn't look strong enough to
push
men over. Unless she got them to lean over the tank somehow.

But she knew something, and she was trying to get him not to notice.

"Lots of people will come, probably," he said. "People do." He reassured her. "Why do you think they like sharks? Because they're fascinating marine creatures? No. Because they eat people. And this is their best chance at seeing them confined and safe, you know . . ."

She looked at him a moment, with huge, incredulous eyes, then blinked. "Perhaps. I guess being a shark expert, I have a soft spot for them. I don't think of them as . . . man-eaters."

And right there, Rafiel decided he needed to talk to Ms. Lani. Everyone thought of sharks as predators! And being, as they were, on semi-informal terms right now, it would probably be easier. But he'd like to reconcile what he'd heard from John Wagner about her with her comment that the male employees often had sex by the shark tank, and that, again, with the fact that the condoms found had vaginal secretions.

"Why don't you hop in?" he said. "If you're going to the aquarium, I might as well give you a ride." And because he had no intention of letting her go near the aquarium alone.

"Oh, thank you," she said, suddenly acting shy. "I could walk, you know? It's only a few blocks." She gestured vaguely across the way. "I live just over there. Normally I walk."

"Judging from the pedestrians I saw on the way here," Rafiel said, "there's quite a bit of ice on the sidewalks. I might as well give you a ride."

She got in, gingerly, and put her coffee cup on the dashboard as she sat down and buckled herself in, before picking the cup up again. "Thank you, really."

Rafiel backed out of the parking space and into the flow of traffic, while his passenger remained absolutely quiet. It wasn't till they were a block away that she said, still in that oddly shy tone, "So, I suppose I shouldn't ask you if you have made any progress? You said you don't discuss your investigations."

He answered with a shrug. "Well," he said, "we have made some progress. As you told us, there were some condoms discarded in the planters by the water." He watched carefully for her reactions, while seeming to ignore her.

"Oh?" she said, and raised an eyebrow. "I told you, I heard the guys at the aquarium talk, and that John Wagner? He's the worst. He has this . . . imaginary friend or whatever that he calls 'the drool'—you know, like it's a part of him, or a mobile, sentient weapon. If people displease him, he'll say 'fear the drool, I am basset,' and everyone laughs and all, and you know, he talks about how he used to own a basset and how much they drooled. But . . . it feels creepy somehow. And he keeps saying things like 'I'd never say anything impolite. Now the drool, he's a brazen bastard.' Like . . . like he's schizophrenic or something."

Rafiel was so horrified by the vision the words conjured, of the ebullient John Wagner turning into—of all things—a basset hound, that he could barely trust himself to speak. While silence lengthened, he caught himself thinking,
But . . . he can't be a shifter basset, can he? I mean I can imagine dog shifters, but would they be a particular breed?

His limited knowledge of dog fancy told him that the current breeds favored as pets in the U.S. must all be of fairly recent creation. Recent, at least in evolutionary terms. And surely, surely, being relatively recent they couldn't have gotten enmeshed with human genes, could they? It seemed to him all the shifters he'd seen so far changed shapes into species and breeds that had been very long on the Earth. Some longer than humans. But then again, they had no idea how the shifting mechanism worked. Was it truly genetic? Or was there some other mechanism at work? Rafiel was hesitant to say it was magic, but then, wasn't magic just a name for a process no one understood yet? And after all, as far as they knew, dragons had never even existed.

"I'm sorry," Lei said, sounding distant, and somehow worried. "I didn't mean to cast aspersions on John. I mean, he's a nice guy and all. A little . . . extroverted, you'd call it, and he makes some jokes that could border on sexual harassment, but I'm sure he means well."

Oh, I wouldn't be sure of any such thing,
Rafiel thought. Much as he'd liked the guy—and he realized with surprise that he had liked the guy, which was odd, considering that John Wagner appeared to consider him a dumb ass—he was quite sure it was part of Wagner's fundamental approach to the world to put the cat among the pigeons as much as humanly possible.