Skin of the Wolf (7 page)

M
aybe the whole damn Job really was a mistake.

Staring at the crimson splashes and smears on the shelves, the carpet, the boxes housing their precious objects, Charlotte Hamilton heard her uncle’s voice. “What does it matter that you weren’t born up here? You can still come home. This land is where you belong.” Uncle James popped into her head with a variant of that sentiment whenever she found herself wondering what the hell she was doing on the NYPD.

In the Academy, when she’d been young and gung ho, the doubts had come only when some no-neck called her “Pocahontas” or let out a war whoop when she walked by. Her response then was to smirk, deck the guy, and dare him to report her to their training officer. After she’d decked half a dozen guys the whoops became scarcer and she questioned the direction of her life less often. But since she’d made detective she’d begun to wonder weekly, and since she’d come into Homicide—and God knows since they’d partnered her with that loony tunes Framingham—it was pretty much daily.

She shouldn’t even be here. Seriously, to be pulled out of the rotation and handed this one only because the vic was in the Native
Art department at Sotheby’s? What did the captain think, that she’d pick up some tribal vibe, sniff the air and follow the perp to his effing tipi?

“It’s not like that, Hamilton,” Captain Greg Friedman sighed with weary patience. “Everyone’s watching this because Sotheby’s is high-profile. It’s yours because of the motive.”

“You have motive? So there’s a suspect?”

“Let me correct that. The possible motive. Come on, the whole thing’s politically sensitive and you know what that means around here.”

“It means I had to leave a hot date halfway through my first beer. What’s the big political issue, if a low-level public servant can be allowed to know?”

The captain ignored her tone in a practiced way. “Sotheby’s is about to hold a huge auction of Native American art.”

“Go ahead, say ‘Indian.’ You know you want to.”

“Masks, dolls, baskets, stuff like that.” He went on as though she hadn’t interrupted. “Worth a fortune. Not everyone’s happy.”

“Meaning, my people want their shit back?”

“Some tribe’s filed a lawsuit. Only covers a few of the pieces, though. They’ve been withdrawn but the rest of the auction’s going ahead.”

“Oh, don’t tell me. You think some Indian offed this girl to stop the auction? Tell me she was scalped. With a tomahawk.”

“She wasn’t. And I don’t know what happened. But if it was some museum up in Harlem I’d send a black cop. That’s the way it is in this city.”

“Yeah, okay, I know.” It was true. Ethnic politics in New York were so fraught and so Byzantine that when she was in a good mood
Charlotte stood back and laughed. All these gate-crashers getting up in each other’s grilles. Really, she didn’t mind catching this case. Her date hadn’t been that hot. He’d actually tried to talk her out of the beer and into a Cosmo. And this killing would be a relief from the domestics and the drug-relateds. Her objection had been pro forma, just making the point. You had to do that in this Department: woman or man, red, white, black, brown, or Chinese. You had to keep everyone on notice that you knew what time it was.

“You’ll be the lead,” the captain said. “Framingham’s with you. You have Ostrander and Sun. For legwork, canvasses, take who you need from the One-Nine, that’s the precinct up there. It’s high profile so you can have detectives, unies, whatever. But Hamilton? Any Native American suspects, witnesses, any connection at all, you handle it.”

“Oh, Jeez. Even the bullshit ones?”

“When the case is cleared it’ll be in your column. But yes, I pulled you in on this because you’re Native—”

“Say ‘Indian.’”

“Because you’re Native, and unless you want to file a racial profiling grievance, that’s the angle you’re going to play.”

“All right,” she said. “I’m going. But Captain? Tell me this: What if it was Martians? Who’d you send then?”

Friedman smiled wearily. “Framingham, of course.”

Here, now, in Sotheby’s storeroom, Framingham was drooling over the paranormal possibilities. The savagery of the attack, the silence, the stealthy killer no one had seen come or go: all this pointed to only one thing as far as he was concerned. It was a wonder the wingnut ever cleared any cases, since the perps they dealt with were generally not vampires, werewolves, ghosts, leprechauns, or aliens. Unless you counted Mexicans without papers as aliens. Or, as
Charlotte had once pointed out to Framingham, “From my point of view, white people.”

Snapping on her latex gloves, Charlotte deliberately shut out Framingham’s mutterings and silenced Uncle James, too. Uncle James was wrong. Charlotte had been born in New York City. Her people lived in the center of the state, but the land where she belonged—the land she belonged to—was here.

And Framingham, he was a damn good detail man, seeing what was really there even if he was perpetually disappointed he couldn’t prove it had been dropped there by black helicopters. His current theory on this one had to do with a botched extraterrestrial dissection. Fine. If that’s what allowed him to spot every paper clip, phone call, and pinprick, go with God.

Charlotte herself did it differently. She operated on instinct and always had, on the Job and in her life. Her grandmother had been a seer, a healer, in the tribe, and Uncle James always said the same power was in Charlotte, too. She thought that was probably baloney but she couldn’t help admitting she had moments of clarity, of being sure of something she had no way to prove. Her spine and fingertips would tingle, colors would snap to a knife-edge sharpness, and she’d just know.

Sometimes, not always, it happened on a case, though she had no way to know why or when that feeling would kick in. She’d been leery of letting anyone on the Job know until she discovered instinct, going with the gut, was a respected cop technique. She wasn’t the only cop to work that way and she didn’t have to admit to any Indian woo-woo to explain her high clearance rate—or to be admired for it.

Charlotte knelt beside the body. Methodically, she started to work. Her doubts quieted and backed away. The answer to her question rose up, as always, and always the same: she was on this Job
because what had happened here, the fear and blood and death, wasn’t caused by ectoplasm, aliens, or New York City. Someone—a person, with a reason, with something inside him that told him he had the right—had done this to this woman. That was an everyday situation. Charlotte’s job was to make him pay.

L
ivia hadn’t spoken since Michael Bonnard had revealed the meaning of what Spencer saw in the park. She sat enthralled by the possibilities his words conjured.

Earlier, with Michael and Thomas banished to the kitchen, Livia and Spencer had sat in the parlor as Spencer’s strength returned. They’d discussed what to do if it turned out Spencer hadn’t been delirious and his vision was real. The Noantri had no Law regarding contact with other non-Unchanged humans. That would have been absurd, like Laws regarding behavior during a Martian invasion. It was explicitly written, however, that the Conclave must be informed of anything that could in any way impact the Community as a whole.

“Shapeshifters, Spencer?” Livia had said. “What could fall more squarely into that?”

“You’re right, of course,” Spencer had replied. “And yet . . . Livia, our Laws require us to remain hidden. Perhaps the laws of Michael’s people do the same. He showed himself only in a desperate attempt to save my life. To do so may be punishable. If I’d broken a Law for
him, I’d hope not to be—what do they say?—thrown under the bus for my act.”

“Spencer, you’re suggesting we break a Law right now. He saw you start to heal. Instead of vanishing before he knows you’re gone, you want to get him in here and reveal who we are.”

“Who I am. I shan’t unmask you—there’s no need.”

“Of course there is. If we do this I’m not going to—as they say—leave you twisting in the wind.”

“They still say that? How colorful. I believe I first heard that phrase some three hundred years since. Livia, in addition to my fears for Michael among his own people, my worry is that the excited reaction this news will provoke among ours will somehow cause it to spread beyond the Conclave. Noantri eager to Unveil may try to make common cause with those of Michael’s people who hope to do the same, if such exist. Or worse: it’s not impossible that certain Noantri would be only too willing to throw Michael’s people under the bus to prove to the Unchanged what good, human citizens the Noantri can be.”

Livia sighed. “I think, in this case, the expression you want is ‘throw them to the wolves.’”

“Possibly, but under the circumstances . . .”

“I agree. All right. Let’s talk to him. We can always disappear and Cloak, if we have to. He can say he met vampires, as people have from time to time, and he’ll just be thought insane.”

That had been their conversation. The story they’d just heard from Michael Bonnard was astonishing, but no more so than their own. What, she wondered, was to be done with this knowledge now?

Michael might be asking himself that, also—how could he not be?—but he slowly began untangling himself from the blanket.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll come back, I promise I will, and we’ll talk, we’ll give all this the attention it deserves. But I’ve got to find Edward. I’m—”

His words were cut off by the ringing of Livia’s cell phone.

“Livia, it’s Katherine.” The voice was tight, distraught. “I’m sorry about the hour. Something terrible’s happened.”

T
homas listened as Livia relayed Katherine Cochran’s news. The story struck him with a horror he saw echoed on Michael Bonnard’s face, and even on Spencer George’s. In addition, Thomas felt a despair that shamed him even as he recognized it. A young woman had died violently. Livia and Katherine had known her, albeit briefly; Katherine’s friend Estelle had been her employer. As a priest it was Thomas’s duty to offer solace. He wouldn’t shirk that duty; he suggested immediately he go with Livia to Sotheby’s, to join Katherine and Estelle. But oh! he was so bad at this. Clumsy, cliché-ridden banalities were all he could seem to muster at times of grief. His own faith ran deep—deeper, he’d discovered in the last few months, than he’d known—but he had no talent for pastoral counseling.

And that was under normal circumstances. This situation, if Michael Bonnard was correct, was far from normal.

“Blood was everywhere,” Livia had said. “She didn’t scream—the guard says he’d have heard it, that he was on his way there on his regular rounds and she was still alive when he found her, though just barely. They think it must have been an ex-boyfriend, or a stalker, someone so insane . . .”

Bonnard spoke. “She was killed in the holding room? Where they keep the pieces for the auctions?” Thomas saw a darkness in his eyes that seemed to go beyond exhaustion and pain.

“But nothing was taken. At least, Estelle doesn’t think so. The room’s a mess, boxes all over the floor, but they seem to have been knocked down during the struggle. It’s not clear what’s damaged, though there’s blood on some of the pieces. That’s why she asked Katherine to come. Because she was the consultant on these sales so she knows the art. They want to complete an inventory and examine the pieces, get them to conservation as soon as possible if they need that.”

“The Ohtahyohnee?” Bonnard asked. “It’s still there?”

“Yes. The box was open, and on the floor. She must have been examining it one more time before the sale.”

“No,” Bonnard said tightly. “Edward was.”

“Michael?” Spencer asked. “What are you saying? Your brother did this?”

“I understand now,” Bonnard said. “His rage. The reason he’d Shifted. The reason he’s in New York at all. And—oh, Jesus!—and the sense I had that he’d already made a kill before he found us in the park.”

“The mask?” Livia asked. “He killed her for the mask? But if he came for that, why did he leave it?”

“Because it’s fake.”

Bonnard seemed to expect this news to come as a surprise, but no eyebrows were raised except Spencer’s. “You were disappointed in it,” Spencer said. “Is that why?”

“Yes.” Bonnard ran his hand over his head. “Those masks. There were never many. Twelve at any one time, throughout the Eastern nations. At war or at peace. The masks were beyond all that. Four
eagles, four deer, and four wolves. A new one was only made if one was damaged and couldn’t be used.”

“Used?” Spencer seemed to get it at the same time Thomas did. “These masks are for the Shifting ceremony?”

Bonnard nodded. “That was centuries ago, though. They were all thought to have been destroyed. The French, the Jesuits, they ignored them or incorporated them into Christian teachings, the way they did a lot of our stories. But the English burned them. Two were said to have been buried when the tribes that held them were on the verge of extermination, but none of the stories can pinpoint a location. Besides, they’re wood, so after hundreds of years in the earth, they’d be pulp by now. The idea that one had survived . . . That’s why I went to see it. Edward must have come for the same reason.”

“Michael, if they were destroyed long ago, what did your great-uncle—forgive me, your grandfather—use for your ceremony?”

“You don’t need a mask
per se
. The music, the dancing, the objects—as I said, the point is to create a specific emotional state. Different objects can do it in different combinations, using different songs, different dances. It’s not . . . The objects aren’t alive. They have power, but it’s not as straightforward—as cheap—as people imagine when they say that.”

“White people.”

“These days, some Indians, too. There’s a lot of tin-pot mysticism going around. Those masks”—Bonnard frowned, seemed to be looking for the words—“they were said to work better than other objects. Our stories say masks make the spirit world visible. If for ‘spirit world’ you read ‘any phenomena beyond our current knowledge’ and if ‘visible’ means ‘something we can understand,’ it makes sense even in terms of hard science. I told you, the Shift is more
difficult for me than for Edward? It took me longer to learn, too. Grandfather always said it would have been easier if he’d had one of the masks, though of course he’d never had one, never even seen one. But that’s the lore.”

“Why do they work better?”

“They’re . . . perfect. Within the context of what the artist was trying to accomplish, there were no missteps. If you understood the context, as anyone from any Eastern tribe would have, the mask would have . . . transported you. By the power of its artistic perfection. In a different context, with a different combination of prayers and dances, Beethoven’s late quartets or a Ming dynasty peach vase might be able to do the same thing.”

“Neuroaesthetics.” Livia spoke in a voice of soft wonder. “The brain’s response to art. The physical response, the neurological one. It’s a new field. The work is fascinating. In that context, what you’re saying makes sense. The mask—it’s a face. The cerebral cortex devotes more space, more physical space, to reading faces than to anything else. So more of the brain would be activated by a mask than by other objects. That must be part of what’s going on.”

Thomas thought about what she’d told him, how her own muscles twitched, her nerves fired, as she studied a work of art. It occurred to him that that might always have been true for her, might also be true for others, and that what her Noantri senses had given her was not that response, but the ability to perceive it.

Michael regarded Livia with a look that Thomas understood perfectly. He could tell how much he wanted to hear more, how urgently interested he was—and how an even more critical problem precluded the conversation he desperately wished they could have. Thomas had felt like that himself half the time, in Rome.

“I don’t understand,” Spencer said. “If this mask is fake, how could it have provoked your brother’s Shift? And how do you know it’s fake, by the way?”

“Edward doesn’t need the mask to Shift. He doesn’t need anything external. Neither do I. We’ve been taught and we’ve practiced. We can both bring it about. You saw me do it, Spencer.”

“So I did. But then—”

“Because it was fake. Any of the ritual objects should provoke a strong reaction in a Shifter. You vibrate with them, in a way.”

“And because you and your brother can become wolves—”

“No. Any Shifter will respond to any of the objects. It doesn’t have to be your animal-self, your clan, even your tribe. Even if you don’t know about yourself, don’t know what it is that compels you. A hundred times, I’ve gone to tribal museums. Hopi, or Navajo. Cree. Just to see who comes and stands in front of certain cases, how long they stay, if they seem to react. Hoping to find someone else like me. I can’t tell, though. I can’t.”

“That was how you knew the Ohtahyohnee wasn’t real.”

“It was beautiful,” Michael said sadly. “But I didn’t respond to it. I didn’t feel anything.”

“And your brother went to see the mask, and when it turned out to be inauthentic, he went mad with rage?”

“I don’t think that’s exactly what happened. If he’d just wanted to see it he could have walked in the front door, like I did. He keeps his hair long, he wears his medicine bag around his neck—my God, Sotheby’s would have fallen all over him. I don’t think he wanted to see it. I think he wanted to steal it.”

“But why?” Spencer asked. “For the value? I suppose seven million dollars could buy back a lot of Native land.”

“No. Edward doesn’t think like that. If he had it he’d hide it,
keep it in Indian hands. He wouldn’t sell it to someone who’d put it on display for the world to gawk at. I think he came down for that reason—to take it back—but if all he wanted was to keep it away from white people he’d have had a big laugh when he found out it wasn’t real. He’d think it was just hysterical that people would be making a label for the wall and getting all solemn about a replica. But if I’m right, he came to take it for a much bigger reason. He needed it.”

“For?”

“I think he must have found someone who can perform the Ceremony, or could, if he had the objects.”

“But you say Edward no longer needs the Ceremony.”

“An unawakened Shifter would, though. I think Edward’s been doing what I’ve been doing. Only he’s been successful. I think he’s identified another Shifter.”