Skin of the Wolf (8 page)

I
n the electric silence that filled the parlor, Spencer assessed his own strength. Though a good night’s sleep would be optimal, he judged himself capable of activity, and if ever a situation called for uncommon effort, this was the one.

“Very well,” he said. “Michael, come with me, we’ll find you something to wear. Livia, you’ll go to your friend?”

“Yes. Maybe when we find out what really happened it’ll turn out to have nothing to do with Edward.”

Michael responded with a small smile but said nothing.

“I’ll come, if I may,” Thomas said. “Maybe there’s something I can do. Some comfort I can offer.”

Spencer had his own ideas about the nature of the comfort found in the words of a priest, but this was not the time. The goodbyes were fast, Livia and Thomas out the door in moments. Up in the dressing room Spencer located a Norwegian ski sweater large enough for Michael. (“From the days before parkas,” he said. “One would wear a thermal-knit union suit and two additional wool sweaters under this. It’s considerably older than you are.”) Socks were simple, and a wool cap, and since Michael’s pants, shoes, and coat had been hastily donned in the park and had made it home with
them he was garbed and ready to leave within minutes of Livia and Thomas.

“Spencer, what are you doing?” Michael asked as Spencer reached for his raincoat on a hanger in the front closet.

“I can hardly go out in my winter coat. It’s drenched in blood.”

“You’re not going out at all.”

“Don’t be absurd. I told you, I have certain capabilities that could make me useful to you.”

“An hour ago you were unconscious on the couch. Edward’s a dangerous man. This isn’t your problem.”

“You’re not focusing, Michael. There is very little your dangerous brother can do to me that cannot be undone.”

“He turns into a wolf, Spencer! He’s tasted your blood.”

“Yes.” Spencer smiled, shooing Michael out the front door and locking it behind them. “I wonder if he liked it?”

F
or the second time that night Livia hurried to a door, leaving Thomas to pay the cab. The no-standing zone at the curb held a police van and two dark cars. Estelle Warner stood in Sotheby’s lobby, Katherine Cochran beside her.

“Oh, Livia, thank you for coming!” Katherine hugged her as soon as she and Thomas had stepped in from the cold. “This is so horrible.”

Livia gave Estelle a brief hug, also. She hardly knew the woman, but Estelle had lost a colleague, maybe a friend. Estelle, so effortlessly elegant just a few hours before, now looked harried and drained. She wore no makeup and strands of gray hair floated about her face from a loosely pinned twist. “I’m so sorry,” Livia told her.

“Thank you, my dear. You really didn’t have to come, though. Katherine and I will be here quite some time, I’m afraid, evaluating the pieces, as soon as the police”—her voice wavered—“release the crime scene.”

“I thought I might be able to offer moral support. And make the coffee. Estelle Warner, Katherine Cochran, this is Father Thomas Kelly, a dear friend of mine. My dinner date, Katherine. He wanted to come, too, to see if he could help.”

“Thank you, Father,” Katherine said. “That’s very kind of you.”

“I’m not sure what I can do,” Thomas said. “Besides offer a prayer for the poor girl’s soul. And help make the coffee.”

“A prayer might be in order,” Estelle said. “I admit to feeling ghoulish heading upstairs to examine the treasures so soon after what happened to her.”

“You have to do that,” Katherine said stoutly. “Time will matter. If blood gets a chance to dry on a piece— Oh, my God, that does sound awful. Estelle, could this really have been someone who works here? Someone she knew?”

“It’s a horrible thought. But it’s hard to imagine how anyone without a key card could have gotten in after hours, and Security performs quite a sweep at the end of the day to make sure no stragglers are trying to stay behind. And the police did another sweep as soon as they got here. They’ve been in every room, every closet. One of the detectives does think someone could have come in from the café, the rooftop terrace. Maybe snuck in when the door was propped open when the staff was clearing up out there after we closed. The café doesn’t use the terrace in the winter but they keep it swept.”

“Could that have happened? How could someone have gotten onto the terrace?”

“I don’t know. The next closest building is across the street and their roof is much higher. The other detective rolled her eyes when that one insisted—and I quote—‘Someone, or some
thing
, could have made that jump.’”

“What did he mean?”

“Spiderman? I have no idea, but she certainly seemed to dismiss it.”

“Well, if it was someone with a key card, they’ll be able to find
out who, won’t they? And even if it was an employee who came in during working hours so he didn’t have to use his card, it’s still a limited pool.”

Livia said nothing and carefully avoided looking at Thomas. Katherine seemed to be trying to contain the horror of what had happened, to make it a kind of puzzle, a tragic one to be sure, but one that could be solved. Katherine asked, “Was she seeing anyone at work?”

Estelle pursed her lips. “She’s dated in-house, yes. Though I don’t really know who. The police asked if anyone stood out, but they don’t, to me. I think partly I have trouble imagining that anyone I actually know might have done something like this.”

“I— This is all just so awful,” Katherine said. “Father, could you lead us in a prayer? It might help.” Katherine smiled weakly. “I mean, I know it will help me, and I hope it will help her.”

They bowed their heads and Thomas began. “Eternal rest, oh Father, grant your daughter . . .” The guard, seeing them, removed his hat and bowed his head, also. The prayer was a short one. When it was over, the silence echoed.

Then the elevator door opened, an oddly mundane event. A tall woman in jeans, leather jacket, and boots strode into the lobby, followed by a smaller, wiry man whose bright eyes threw curious glances everywhere. “Dr. Warner?” The woman spoke to Estelle. “Crime Scene’s done. They’ll be coming down in a minute. The room’s yours.”

“Thank you, Detective Hamilton. Detectives Hamilton and Framingham, this is Dr. Cochran, Dr. Pietro, and Father Kelly. They’re going to help me with the evaluations.”

Detective Hamilton, the woman, surveyed the three of them. “Did any of you know the victim?”

Before anyone could speak the other detective said, “Hey!” Without thinking they turned to him. He snapped their photos on his cell phone and grinned.

“Thank you,” Detective Hamilton said calmly to the group. “Those will help in the investigation. Now, about the victim?”

Katherine frowned, then answered, “I met her. With Livia—Dr. Pietro. This afternoon. I don’t know anything about her, though.”

“Dr. Pietro?”

“Just that one time.”

“Father? Did you know her?”

“No.”

Detective Framingham nodded happily, as though some suspicion had just been confirmed.

Hamilton turned to Estelle. “Dr. Warner, let me ask you this. The mask in the box—it’s the most valuable piece up there, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It’s the first ever to come to market. Masks like that were rumored to exist but no one’s seen one in hundreds of years. Why do you ask?”

“Everything else that’s damaged seems to be as a result of the struggle, but it looked to me like that box was opened on purpose and set carefully down. As though someone—either the victim or the killer—was examining it.”

“Brittany may have been looking at it, giving it a final cleaning before . . . we’re supposed to install it tomorrow.” She paused, then said, “Detective, I feel duty-bound to tell you there’s been some dispute at the conference about the mask’s authenticity.”

“Is that a fact? It’s a fake?”

“Absolutely not. Its provenance—its history—is inarguable. But because it’s so rare . . . I don’t know what that could possibly have to do with this but I thought you should know.”

Hamilton nodded. “All right. We might be calling you. Any of you. No one was planning to leave town anytime soon, right?” She swept her gaze over each of them in turn. Livia met her sharp dark eyes, and was surprised to see within them an acuity she recognized. Although rare, the heightened sensitivity commonplace to Noantri did appear occasionally among the Unchanged. In reality it was the senses responding to air currents, to odors, to the way light fell; but in the Unchanged it was most often both incomplete and unexplained. Generally they either considered it some mystical gift of intuition, or shook off its messages because nothing it told them made sense. She saw it now in this detective, and wondered, what did she make of it?

“Good,” Hamilton said, though none of them had spoken. “Matt, you want to get their contact info?”

Framingham collected phone numbers while Hamilton walked through the high-ceilinged lobby, looking up and around. Without a glance at her partner—but perfectly timed with the completion of his task—Hamilton reached the door. Before the guard could come open it for her she’d pushed out, her long black braid swinging down her back. Framingham followed.

Everyone was silent, watching the pair get into their car and peel away, Hamilton at the wheel.

“I suppose delicacy isn’t necessarily a job requirement for a detective,” Katherine offered.

“You should have been here earlier. She’s Lenape, she announced as soon as she walked in. Given this case to demonstrate the NYPD’s cultural sensitivity. She found that funny.”

“Well, it’s not very color-blind of them.”

“The opposite. They’re afraid what—what happened here, was politically motivated. An attempt by one or another of the tribes to stop the auctions.”

“Oh, my God! Is that possible?”

Estelle paused. “A sale like this always gets a lot of attention. You know the Hopis sued to remove their items, and now they’re in court with the individual owners. There weren’t any other lawsuits, and as I told you, many of these pieces are orphaned, but all it would take is one unhinged militant, I suppose.”

“But you don’t sound like you think so.”

“There’s still the question of how he’d have gotten in. And wouldn’t he have taken as much as he could carry, if the point was to return the objects to the tribes? There were no threats, nothing seems gone, and no one’s taken responsibility. I think it’s doubtful.”

“Do the detectives agree?”

“She does. She thinks the idea’s laughable. She asked a few questions about the pieces, and I had to give them the owners’ names in case any of them have enemies. But she seems to be going with the stalker/spurned lover theory.” Estelle paused. “Now, the other detective, he’s a little odd. He thinks a political killing’s still on the table, and ties in with someone getting in through the terrace. They were both very focused, though, when they got upstairs. And she, Detective Hamilton, she’s the one who told me I didn’t have to identify Brittany because Harold already had, and they’ll have forensics—fingerprints, dental records, that sort of thing. So I’m grateful. They’d . . . moved the body by the time they asked me to come up and see if anything was missing.”

“And nothing is?”

“Not that I could see. Detective Hamilton sneered her way
through the holding room. As though any piece we have here is already, I don’t know, ruined.”

The elevator opened again and three blood-smeared, Tyvek-suited men came out, laughing at something. Carrying boxes and backpacks, they quickly tried to make their faces solemn when they saw the group in the lobby. One of them said, “You can go up now.” A blast of cold air blew in through the doors as they wrestled their gear out.

“Well,” Estelle said, watching through the glass until they’d loaded their van. “I guess I’d better get started. Katherine?”

“Of course.”

“Livia and Father Kelly, you really don’t have to come.”

“I don’t know these pieces, particularly, but I’m an art historian,” Livia said. “I may be able to help.”

Thomas said, “And I make good coffee.”

Together, they walked to the elevator.

M
ichael? I personally am finding this situation a touch absurd,” Spencer said quietly, “but may I ask why you’re grinning like a baboon?”

Under his breath, Michael answered, “A vampire and a werewolf walk into a bar? Come on, Spencer, the possibilities are endless.” He started to laugh, but took a deep breath and calmed himself. Spencer understood: pain, exhaustion, and worry had brought Michael to the edge. Spencer wanted to put an arm around his shoulders, to squeeze his hand, to do something to let him know he wasn’t alone. He did not. Spencer had lived nearly five centuries as a homosexual. In some times and some societies, that identity was accepted, even celebrated. He’d spent some marvelous years in Shogun-era Japan, for example, and a few lovely decades in Constantinople around the time this new America was shrugging off British rule. Ah, the perfumed flowers, ah, the water flowing in the secluded gardens! In other places at other times, though—most of them, if truth be told—his desires had been as necessarily hidden as his Noantri identity, each revealed only when he sensed he was among his own.

In the cab on the way uptown, Spencer had asked Michael, “I felt this too delicate a question to bring up in the presence of the
others—as much for Father Kelly’s sake as yours—but I shall ask it now: Is your choice of romantic partners among your brother’s complaints against you?”

“It never has been, but he hasn’t met you yet. Seriously, no. Edward’s straight himself, but he’s radically old-school. Pre-contact good, post-contact bad, no discussion. Pre-contact, a man like me would’ve had a place in the tribe. Two, actually—among the warriors, and among the women. Though when they found out I can’t cook they’d have chased me back to the battlefield.”

“I’d have taught you.”

“Thanks. No, my being gay has never been a problem for Edward, but my being with white men has. It’s just more proof that I’m throwing away my heritage. Accepting the identity the white world forced on us.”

“Have you ever felt that you are? Accepting that false identity?”

Michael gave Spencer a searching look. “Boy, is that a question for a long evening by the fire.”

He fell silent, and Spencer did the same, watching the city streets roll by, people wrapped in scarves and hunched into coats hurrying through the dark.

“Spencer.” A new tone rang in Michael’s voice.

“Yes?”

Michael threw a glance at the cabdriver, who was absorbed in the upbeat music from the radio. “You said you’d have taught me to cook. You could have, couldn’t you? Pre-contact. You could have been there. You could’ve come with Champlain, with the Jesuits. When our nations and our cultures were whole. You’d have seen us, known us. Spencer, my God, were you—?”

Spencer shook his head. “I’m sorry. No. First: my affection for Father Kelly notwithstanding, I’d have gone nowhere with the Jesuits.
Second, though it’s true I’ve traveled extensively, the appeal of a continent as rife with physical privation as this one was reported to have been was lost on me. It’s said there were Noantri among the earliest Europeans to arrive, but I was not one. I’d never touched toe to American soil until last October, a few weeks before you and I met.”

The taxi slowed and rolled tentatively to the curb at a desolate Washington Heights corner. The driver turned to announce, “GPS says we’re here. You sure this is where you want to be?” Spencer, peering out at the closed auto body shops, the shuttered check-cashing storefront, and the one open bodega, thought the question entirely reasonable and the answer “No.” Michael, however, paid the fare without a word and got out. Spencer sighed and followed. A few steps along the side street brought them to a steel door beside a window lit with Budweiser neon. Without hesitation Michael pulled the door open and stepped inside.

Now that door swung shut behind them, cutting off the icy air and replacing it with warmth and the aroma of beer, whiskey, and something that smelled distressingly like the lavatory in the rear, where a good many drunks probably missed their target. And sweat, as many discrete strands as there were people in the room—eighteen, perhaps twenty—plus, Spencer thought, two or three who’d recently left. How much of this was Michael also picking up? How lupine were his senses, and how different in his human and Shifted states? Michael used reading glasses, which had struck Spencer as odd for a man in his thirties; but wouldn’t vision be a wolf’s weakest sense, far outweighed by hearing and smell? Michael was a lover of nature, as well, a passion not shared by Spencer, and up until tonight ascribed by Spencer to Michael’s reservation childhood and the culture of his people. Which might still be true, but an entirely new dimension of that affinity had now been revealed. And
Michael loved music: classical, which Spencer also enjoyed (sometimes remembering his own first reactions to pieces now revered but startlingly avant-garde when he’d heard them premiered in some palace or drawing room); and jazz, to which Spencer was allowing himself to be introduced. At the clubs Michael favored, he preferred the quiet styles to the brass-heavy larger ensembles. Spencer didn’t love loud brass or powerful percussion himself, a distaste shared by many Noantri because of the acuteness of their hearing. Were Michael’s reasons the same? And though it was true Michael couldn’t cook, he did have a discerning appreciation, possibly based in his olfactory sense, of fine cuisine—and a trencherman’s appetite.

A few heads turned when the door opened. A jukebox was playing a sad ballad, of the style Spencer had come to learn was “country.” Some nods and lifted beer bottles of recognition came Michael’s way, some skeptically raised eyebrows were directed at Spencer. Many of the faces, both men and women, shared Michael’s sharp nose, his high cheekbones. Others Spencer might have passed on the street and thought black or white; at the table in the back was a man he’d have sworn was Asian. But this place—inexplicably called “Stonehenge”—was, Michael had assured him, an Indian bar.

Michael greeted the bartender with a casual offhandedness that impressed Spencer, suiting as it did neither the pain he must be in nor the gravity of his brother’s presumed crime.

“Must I drink this?” Spencer asked
sotto voce
, taking the bottle of Budweiser Michael handed him. “Or is it merely a prop?”

Michael grinned without answering and headed toward the back table, where he nodded Spencer to a chair. They both sat. Michael took a long pull on his beer.

“Hey, Doc,” said the oldest of the men there. Lines webbed his dark face and he wore his gray hair loose and long.

“Pete.” Michael responded to the greeting, then pointed his beer bottle at the other two men in turn. “Harry. Lou. This is Spencer. So far he only knows me. I thought it was time I brought him here to meet some real Indians.”

Spencer settled back in his vinyl-covered chair and said, “Pleased to meet you, gentlemen.”

At his words, the man called Harry snickered, while Lou, the Asian-featured one, rolled his eyes.

“Shit, listen to you,” Pete said, pulling on his beer. “You come to invade us again?”

Spencer shook his head. “That didn’t work out very well the first time.”

“For us. You made out like bandits. Hell, you
were
bandits.”

All three men laughed, though without rancor; even Michael smiled. Michael drank some beer and said, “I’m looking for my brother.”

Pete nodded, and Lou said, “He was here, yeah.”

“Tonight?”

“No. Three days ago. Maybe four.”

“Do you know where he’s staying?”

“Didn’t say.”

Pete said, “Last time he was down he went to Donna’s.”

“She keeps that place open through the winter?” Michael asked. “I didn’t know that.”

“There are Indians stupid enough to stay on, even in February.” Pete indicated the group of them. “Englishmen, too, I guess.”

Spencer raised his bottle in acknowledgment and took a drink.

“Hey, Englishman, you like that?” Pete asked. “Bud?”

“In fact, no.”

“Doc, why are you making your friend drink that shit? Frankie,”
he called to the bartender. “Get this guy a Labatt’s. Doc’s a city Indian, forgot how to drink beer.”

“That’s why I come in here, Pete. To be reminded of the traditional ways.”

Spencer thought it an odd joke, but the other men laughed.

“You want one too, Doc?” the bartender called.

“No, I’m good.”

“No one’s good drinking that shit,” Pete said, a sentiment Spencer would not have expressed in that fashion but with which he couldn’t help but agree.

The bartender opened a bottle and set it on the bar. Michael started to get up for it but a woman with curly hair slipped down off a barstool and brought it to the table.

“Hey, Doc,” she said. She put the beer in front of Spencer, turned around a chair from the next table and sat. Harry scraped his chair along the floor to make room for her.

“Ivy. Spencer, this is Ivy Nell.”

Spencer and the woman acknowledged each other. She looked at Michael critically and said, “What the hell happened to your face? And what’s wrong with your arm?”

“I fell on the ice, got banged up.”

“Want me to look at it?”

“No, thanks. A friend took care of it already.”

Spencer wasn’t sure whether Ivy Nell, or any of the men, believed Michael’s story, but the subject was not pursued. Ivy Nell said, “I heard you say you’re looking for Eddie.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Didn’t know he was down.”

“I didn’t either. Heard from someone else.”

Ivy shook her head. “Such crap,” she said. “Your only family, and
you treat each other like this. I saw you at Midwinter. Nine days, you didn’t speak a word.”

“It’s Edward whose back is turned,” Michael said quietly.

“So what? He’s your brother! Find a way.”

Michael didn’t respond. None of the other men at the table said anything. The music on the jukebox changed, another mournful ballad following the first.

Ivy picked at the label on her beer bottle. Without looking up, she said, “He’s in trouble, Doc. I don’t think he knows it, but he is.”

Spencer wondered whether she referred to the killing at Sotheby’s. If so, how did she know? He didn’t react, though, remaining as impassive as the others.

Michael asked, “What kind of trouble?”

“He’s been hanging around with a white man. Braids, cowboy hat, turquoise. Feathers and shit. You saw him, Lou. Harry, you too.”

“Don’t know him, though,” Harry said. “Those guys from the Wannabe tribe, they all look alike.” He and Pete laughed.

But Lou nodded. “Yeah. Eddie was in here with him, September, October.”

“You know his name?” Michael asked.

Lou shook his head.

“No,” Ivy said, adding, “he calls himself ‘Abornazine.’”

Michael’s eyebrows rose.

Harry said, “What’s that mean?”

“The baby-naming websites will say ‘Keeper of the Flame,’” Michael said. “In Eastern Abenaki. But that confuses a couple of things. The real meaning is ‘random archer.’”

“That fits. If I saw that guy with a bow and arrow, I’d run.”

The men all laughed and Lou said, “Wonder what
he
thinks it means?”

“This guy . . .” Ivy, unsmiling, looked at Michael. “He’s bad news. He’s trouble.”

“What kind?” Michael asked.

“I don’t know. Big. Bigger than just Eddie. Lots of people . . . He needs to be stopped. Eddie’s not trying to stop him, though. He’s trying to help him.”

“Help him do what?”

Ivy paused. “I don’t know, Doc. I had a dream.”

It seemed to Spencer that all four men sharpened their attention, focused on Ivy Nell more closely.

“People running,” she said, gazing at the scarred tabletop. “Screaming. Through the trees, then in a city. Then eagles, wolves, deer, but crazy, like something was wrong with them. And then fire.”

The men all waited, but she didn’t go on.

Michael asked, “Edward was there?”

“He was . . . somewhere. You were, too. You and Eddie . . . it’s about you, but not about you. I don’t know. I don’t know what it means.”

Michael drank, looking across the room, to old black-and-white photos and a small drum that hung on the wall.

“You find that white wannabe,” Ivy said. “You find that Abornazine, you’ll find Eddie.” She looked up and held Michael’s gaze. “It’s important. Not just Eddie. And Doc? Soon. You need to find him soon. Whatever it is, if you don’t . . . You’ve got to stop them. Soon.”

“All right.” Michael pushed back his chair and stood. Spencer also rose. “Anyone sees him, will you call me?”

Pete said, “Sure thing, Doc.” The others nodded, and Spencer followed Michael to the door.