Spitting Image (4 page)

He seemed surprised by the offer. “I doubt the thought had occurred. This is something that my clan would have wanted to do quietly, secretly. We live by secrecy. It’s our strength.”

That begged the question: why was he volunteering this information?

“So if you’re not here to negotiate, then what?”

“I don’t agree with the way this has been done,” he replied. “Our business has always been information. That’s acceptable to me. We trade in it, and it’s the most legitimate use of our talent. But there are those who have taken advantage of our gifts as burglars, assassins, every manner of fraud. It’s a stain on the clan’s honor, and I’d prefer to see it erased.”

Maybe. Maybe there was more to it.

The question was: did I believe him?

Well, I had noticed something odd about Sarah’s behavior, and if he were telling the truth, it would explain that. And if she were in danger, I’d have to take even the threat of that seriously.

The best thing to do, if he was telling the truth, was to find out as much about the enemy as possible. And while he might lie, he might not, and once I had his information, I could try and verify it. Then I’d have a better idea if I could trust him.

“Are there any limits on how much your clan can alter their appearance?” I asked, “Could you be taller? Heavier? Female?”

“In theory, any of those,” he replied. “Mass, however, is mass. I can be taller, but I’d have to stretch myself. I could look fatter or thinner, but only by compressing or expanding myself. But there are limits to that. I can’t stretch myself out flat and slip under a door. I could look like a woman, but I wouldn’t be one. We can change the look, but not the hormones, or the internal organs. I could be a very convincing woman, but I couldn’t bear a child.”

“How about race?”

He shrugged. “A bit darker, a bit lighter. It’s just shifting pigment. The extremes are hard, but that’s all.”

“And you could imitate a specific individual?” I asked. “I mean, very convincingly?”

“The look is easy. The voice is easy. We develop the talent for those early. Mannerisms are harder, but we do tend to be good actors. The more we’ve observed the target, the better a job we could do. And if the look is right, it’s not that hard to put off questions. People will believe excuses. Sorry, I’m just tired, preoccupied, not myself.” He smiled. “I do quite like ‘I’m just not myself,’ I have to admit.”

It was a smile I wanted to drive a fist into. Oh, it was charming, but the amusement he seemed to feel at doing his dirty deeds in somebody else’s skin really rubbed me the wrong way. It made me wonder how many men had paid the price for something that one of these doppelgangers had done. If, as he said, they worked as spies, I’m sure men were imprisoned or divorced or executed for the things done under their identities.

I’m no saint, and I’ve tried to dodge the consequences of my own misdeeds when I could, but I never actually tried to get some other poor bastard hanged for them.

Rather than knock those perfect teeth out of line, I returned the smile. “Well, thanks for the information. Any way I could get in contact, find out Sarah’s still healthy?” I didn’t say “alive.” I didn’t even want to think about that question.

“Right now, I’m not sure where she is, or even who is holding her,” he said. “But I’ll do my best to find out. In the meantime, don’t trust anyone who shows up looking like her.”

He pushed himself forward off the wall, nodded and touched his index finger to his forehead in that annoying faux salute that some people think is charming and roguish. I’ve been a charming rogue for centuries and it just irritates the hell out of me. I offered a hand for him to shake.

He took it after pausing a moment with a surprised look. Like he wasn’t used to shaking hands. Maybe they didn’t do that in his circles.

I looked him in the eye as I grasped his hand. “Is there any way I can contact you if I need to talk to you?”

“Take my card,” he said, handing me one. “And remember, anyone you meet might not be who you think they are. You’ll be watched. Don’t change your routine, don’t do anything that would tip them off that you know something’s wrong. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know anything.”

I walked back to my car, drove home slowly, thinking.

This was a lot to take in. I turned it over in my mind, processing it, waiting for the buzz of thoughts in my head to slow down enough to make sense of.

Did I believe him? Well, it was far fetched, but so was a lot of what I’d dealt with. And it did explain some odd things about Sarah’s behavior. And the price for not believing him and being wrong was high, whereas investigating a bogus tip was pretty low risk.

But how to investigate? If she had a double, a convincing one, then casual acquaintances wouldn’t know she was missing. She might not have missed a day of work, or had a long absence from her apartment. I could talk to people close to her, see if anybody had noticed her acting strange, but that was hard to judge.

And someone close to her could easily be a double and report back that I was suspicious.

So, could I meet possibly fake Sarah and try to pry a bit? Or would she pick up on it? What could I say or ask that only she would know? That somebody who could pose as a policeman or me or her mother couldn’t have gotten out of her?

I got back to my apartment. I started pacing. It annoyed the cat, but sometimes it helped me to think.

So, how to look for Sarah when all the usual ways to find somebody were out. And that person may not even be missing, and if she were, people would have seen her around anyway, so they wouldn’t know she was missing or believe she was if I told them. And my asking would seem suspicious, which would be very bad if she really did disappear or turn up–

I stopped. I felt like my heart was a lead weight in my chest, sinking down, dragging me toward hell. I couldn’t breathe. Just the idea of finishing that thought filled me with dread.

I forced myself to concentrate. Pulled in a big breath, blew it out. Come on, I told myself, focus. I’d seen horrible things before. You can’t help anybody if you freeze up.

If I started asking strange questions, and Sarah’s...body was found later, it would look bad for me. In fact, if I got too close, the easy out for her captors could be dumping her body and watching me go to jail. They could look like anybody. Do it, and walk away. They could even get what they were after if they posed as forensics techs and needed a sample from me to match to evidence found at the scene.

I had to force myself to breathe again.

It’s no good to shrink from the idea of what could happen. I had to consider the worst they could do, prepare for that. And from here, it looked like their worst was pretty bad. Maybe they’d shrink from murder, but maybe they wouldn’t. They’d already stooped to kidnapping, if Caruthers could be believed.

If that was his real name.

Not much point in investigating him. It was Sneaky Spy Trick 101 to give me some info and see what I did with it. That would tip them off that I was suspicious.

Damn it.

So. How to find Sarah without actually doing any legwork that might tip my hand. That wasn’t tricky or anything.

Short of a crystal ball or divining with sheep entrails–

Divining.

Sarah’s uncle Bob might be able to help. I’d met him last winter when she and I needed a place to hide. His off-grid house up in the White Mountains had been just the place.

While we were talking last winter, he claimed he could dowse for water. When he’d been in the Army, they’d tried to recruit him for a special project. He went into Special Forces, and Intelligence had wanted men who could find rebels or hidden weapons or downed pilots or whatever.

It sounded like New Age superstitious bullshit, but what I can do sounds like New Age superstitious bullshit. And I’d met people who could teleport and now some more who could shapeshift, so I wasn’t going to dismiss the idea that Bob might have some ability that seemed supernatural at first glance.

I picked up the phone and dialed his number. He answered on the third ring.

“Sean?”

“Hi Bob,” I said. “How’s things?”

“Can’t complain. House is patched up. Things are quiet. You’ll have to come up here some time soon. What’s going on with you?”

I blew out a breath. I thought of how to explain everything that was happening without breaking into a hysterical cackle. “Things are...complicated. I have a question. It relates to things you did in the Army.” Give him a chance to decide if he wanted to talk, or felt safe to talk before I asked directly.

“Go ahead.”

“With the things you tried, could you dowse for a person? Find somebody who’s gone missing?”

“In theory,” he replied. “You missing somebody?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I got no place else to be,” he said.

So I told him my long story.

BOB’S HOUSE UP IN the Great North Woods was about a three hour drive from Philips Mills. I got there late afternoon.

Bob answered the door in his summer dress uniform: tee-shirt, sandals and cargo shorts. He looked good. His beard might have had a bit more grey in it, as did the long hair pulled back into a ponytail, but he didn’t seem to have lost any muscle.

A patch covered his left eye. I felt a twinge of guilt about that. He’d been tortured by people who were looking for me and Sarah. So that was kinda my fault. But he got captured because he tipped off the wrong people while checking up on me, so he figured it was kinda his fault. I had gone in and rescued him, patched up some other injuries, but I couldn’t fix the eye. He chose to be grateful for the rescue instead of resentful about the loss, but I couldn’t help but feel like he gave me too much credit.

He looked down at me from his six and a half feet and took my hand in a vast, calloused grip, thumping me on the shoulder with his left hand. It was OK, I heal fast.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“Worried. But I’m coping,” I replied.

“Come on in,” he said. “Let’s see what we can do.”

He led me to the kitchen table. I saw it was covered with maps.

“Have you done this kind of thing before?”

“Sort of,” he replied. “I’ve dowsed for odd things, and found them. The intelligence community wanted me to dowse for rebels or weapons, but that’s not easy to do if I don’t have a connection to them. I’ve found personal items for people. I’m hoping to reverse the process here.”

“OK,” I said. “I brought some things she left at my apartment.”

I opened the box of Sarah’s things. Bob looked them over, picking them up, feeling them, turning them over. Most were simple and practical. A toothbrush. A hairbrush. He stopped, holding up a necklace.

“She leaves jewelry behind?” he asked.

“I think she took it off the last time she took a shower,” I said.

“And forgot to put it back on?”

I shrugged. The last time she’d been in the shower, she’d been...distracted. But I really didn’t want to tell Bob about that.

“This is good,” he said. “You’re sure this is hers, right?” He didn’t actually accuse me of having squads of strange women who left things at my place, but there was a cold glint in his one good eye.

“Absolutely.”

“OK,” he said. “Then I can work with this. And these.” He pulled a few strands of blonde hair from her brush. He wrapped the hairs around the necklace, just where the chain met the pendant. “Hold this in your left hand and think of her. Think of the necklace on her. How it looked. Imagine the metal warmed by her skin.”

I did as he asked. I thought back to the first time I met her, how I’d noticed the necklace hanging just above the button of her blouse, almost at the shadow between her breasts.

“Now hand it to me,” he said. “But keep the image of her wearing this in your mind.”

He held the chain, let the pendant hang. He concentrated for a moment, then opened a road atlas of New England to the big area map at the front of the book. He began to swing the necklace in small, gentle circles, sweeping it across the map. His eye closed as he slowed his breathing, subtly shifting the motion of the pendant as it swayed over the map.

After a few minutes, his hand seemed drawn back to one area. He swung the necklace over that section again, but from a different angle. After several more passes, he opened his eye, looked at the area to which the necklace appeared to gravitate. He flipped through the atlas, opening it to the smaller scale map of that region and repeated the process.

I watched in silence, holding the image of Sarah, and of the necklace against the soft, white skin of her throat, as Bob narrowed his search. Eventually, he went to his computer, pulled up a satellite view of the area and zoomed in further, printing out a section and bringing it to the table.

He repeated his actions with the necklace, zeroing in on a single point.

He set down the necklace, let out a long breath and shook himself. Then he peered at the map.

“There’s a cabin here. Isolated. The only access by a single, long gravel drive about a half mile off a paved road. The kind of thing a rich man builds out in the middle of nowhere when he wants to get away from things. Or when he wants to do things away from prying eyes. If I’m right, she’s there.”

I nodded. That was the kind of place where she could easily be held captive. Far from any help even if she did escape. Out of range of inconvenient eyes and ears.

There was also plenty of space to hide a body, but I didn’t dwell on that.

“How sure are you?” I asked.

“I’ve never done it this way before, but I know what it feels like when I find something, and I stand by this.”

“It’s our best lead,” I said. “Unless you can think of a way to confirm it.”

“Not without boots on the ground, as they say.”

“That’s never very comforting to the guy wearing the boots.”

He cracked a grim smile. “It’s the part we’re good at. The smart one is a prisoner right now, so let’s not try to be too clever here.”

“What do you think?”

“We can park my truck here.” He pointed to a spot where Route 16 followed the Androscoggin River. “They might know your car, but there’s no reason for them to know my vehicle. People park here all the time to launch canoes, so a truck parked there with nobody around won’t look suspicious. Then we work our way through the woods to the cabin and scout it out. If she’s there, we go get her.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.

“You got that cannon of yours in case they don’t like the idea of us going and getting her?”

“I brought it in case my natural charm wasn’t enough.”

“I always wondered why you feel like you need such a large caliber pistol,” he replied. “But now I understand.”