Rogue Oracle Read online

  GALEN KNEW his time was running out. He could feel it in his bones and in the blood pulsing sluggishly to the surface of his skin. His skin twitched, attempting to assimilate the new material, the bones and organs of the NCTC analyst. Somewhere in his chest, an extra set of ribs ground and grated against his own. If he was still, he could nearly hear the sounds of the vertebrae in his spine scraping together, reorganizing …

  … if it weren’t for the voices in his head. It was like being in a subway tunnel, the voices tumbling over each other and echoing. The growl of the dog, Diana, meshed with Lockley’s thoughts about his next creation for a horror film. Lena’s voice was faint, barely a contralto whisper below them. He had to focus, focus hard to separate the voice of the analyst, Veriss, from the others. Veriss knew government investigators were closing in on him. They knew where he came from, who he’d been to see.

  And they also knew that he was dying.

  On some level, Galen had always known his time was measured. The doctors at Minsk said he was doomed like the others …

  … but he’d never really felt it. It seemed a certainty in the distant future, remote. Not like now. Now, he could feel it in his marrow. The children at Minsk had often spoken of what it felt like to have cancer, to know that one’s body was poisoned, devouring itself. They spoke of how the marrow in their bones ached, how the blood throbbed painfully through clusters of tumors, tumors growing a life of their own and chewing away at their bodies. They cried, wordlessly, when they could feel their organs dissolving, when they coughed up bits of liver and the bile stung their throats. They left bloody fingerprints behind when their own blood seeped through their skin, like stigmata.

  Galen never understood, before. Then, he thought himself invincible.

  Not now. Now, he understood. He could not escape his fate.

  But he would meet his fate on his own terms.

  Galen had ransacked the old man’s cache of disguises in the garage the day before, looking for anything he could use. Lockley’s voice was still strong enough in his head that he could manipulate the gum aspic jars, the brushes, the cosmetic paints. He knew what to take, stuffed the items in an old duffel bag. He found the old man’s passport and bottles of inks and solvents. He’d taken his time doctoring Lockley’s passport, changing the name to one of the many aliases he used, one of the aliases he’d reserved a plane ticket for. He’d left the picture intact. He knew he could wear the old man’s face. His own would be too disfigured to use for days.

  Now, he hurriedly pressed a skin of silicone over his warped features, to give some semblance of normalcy at a distance. It was the cast that Lockley had created of his own face, the mask destined for Halloween.

  Jamming one of the old man’s straw hats over his head and donning an oversize jacket from the closet, Galen stumbled to the back door. He needed to get away from the scene. He couldn’t take Veriss’s car … He knew that the men outside, dim as they were, would see him.

  He slipped out into the backyard, scaring away the birds at the bird feeder. They were like the birds of Chernobyl, he thought: wary of humans, sensing that invisible decay on him and fleeing. He cut through the neighbors’ well-trimmed yards, behind strings of laundry that flapped in the spring breeze like ghosts. His skin itched behind the mask, and he scanned the streets furtively. There must be some means of escape. A bus, a way to flag a taxi … ?

  His blurry vision snagged on something a half block away. A delivery truck. Resolutely, Galen limped toward it as fast as he could. He watched as the driver hopped out of the cab of the truck, staring at his clipboard. The driver opened the back door and rolled it up with a sound like a garage door opening. He scanned the stacked boxes for the one he wanted, the one corresponding to the address on his clipboard. He hopped up into the truck, muttering to himself. He began throwing boxes right and left, searching for the package. He dumped a small, heavy one at the mouth of the truck, discarding it.

  Absorbed in his work, the delivery driver didn’t notice Galen creeping up the bumper of the truck. Galen advanced upon him, picking up the cast-aside box and swinging it as hard as he could.

  The only thing the driver saw before he was knocked unconscious was the address on the package. He slumped over the towers of boxes in the back, blood oozing from a gash on his forehead.

  Galen clambered out of the back of the truck. He reeled the back door down, crossed to the cab to climb into the driver’s seat. The driver had left the engine running.

  Galen peered through the windshield at the road ahead, smiling beneath the silicone skin. He wouldn’t run from his fate. He’d run right into her arms: home.

  Home to Chernobyl.

  THE STEVES WERE GRILLING STEAKS OUT ON THE BALCONY, sending the sweet smell of charred meat drifting through the loft. Maggie sat beside the Cowboy, who was manning the grill, leaning on his knee and gazing up at him with adoring eyes. The Kahuna was proudly showing off his shiny new kegerator to Cassie. Apparently, the Kahuna was into home brewing. Tara had declined, but she didn’t feel as if a drink or two would hurt Cassie. The girl was well over the legal age, and nowhere near the legal limit.

  Tara’s phone rang at her hip. She stiffened, plucked it out of her pocket to look at the number.

  “Somebody wants to get ahold of you, real bad,” the Kahuna remarked, his moustache trimmed with beer foam. Her cell phone had been going off all afternoon.

  Tara stared at the farmhouse number, grimaced. “Yeah. Too bad I don’t want to talk to them.”

  Cassie hiccuped. “It’s okay. You can tell her that I’m safe. But tell her to stay the hell away.”

  Tara shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Besides which, I’m sure she already knows.” She cast Cassie a warning glare, and the phone quit ringing.

  Cassie turned to the Kahuna. “One of my crazy aunts.”

  “Oh,” said the Kahuna. He didn’t look like he was buying it.

  The phone began to ring again. Anger bubbled in Tara’s throat. Without looking at the number, she switched on the phone. “Listen, you bitch—”

  The Kahuna took a swig of his home brew. “Doesn’t sound like one of your favorite aunts.”

  “She’s not,” Cassie murmured.

  Static rattled at the other end of the line. “Tara?”

  Harry’s voice.

  Tara clapped a hand over her mouth. “Shit. Sorry, Harry. I thought you were … um, someone else.”

  “I don’t need to be an oracle to guess who. Listen, I’ve got a problem. That tip you gave me about Lockley panned out.”

  “Yeah?” Tara’s mouth went dry. “Is he all right?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. He’s gone, and there’s blood all over the house.”

  Tara rubbed her eyebrow. “Damn.”

  “Veriss was here. He’s also gone.” Harry blew out his breath, and she heard it as a burst of static. “I know it’s bad timing, but I need you here to look at this scene … It’s the only uncontaminated one we’ve got, and it’s a fucking mess.”

  Tara glanced over at Cassie, stomach churning. “I don’t know that it’s a good idea to leave her alone.”

  The Kahuna belched and rubbed his palm frond-printed belly. “We’ve got this shit under control.”

  From the grill, the Cowboy gave her the thumbs-up.

  Tara frowned. She looked at Cassie. The girl blinked into her beer. “Would you be gone long?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Tara said firmly.

  Cassie shook her head. “Harry needs you. Besides …” She glanced at the Steves. “I think the Steves are more than capable of keeping my crazy aunt at bay.”

  Tara’s mouth flattened. She was duty-bound to help Harry, and duty-bound to see to Cassie’s safety. “I know, but …”

  The Cowboy brought the steaks in on a platter, Maggie trotting behind him. He looked Tara in the eye. “You go on. We’ll save you a steak for your dinner when you come back.” He looked down at Maggie’s big b
rown eyes. “Assuming this one doesn’t eat it first.”

  He fished the Bronco keys out of his pocket, tossed them to Tara. Tara caught them with her free hand and stared at the key ring. From the ring dangled a silver star inscribed in a circle, shaped like the Lone Ranger’s badge.

  Or the pentacles in the Six of Pentacles card.

  Tara bit her lip. She had to trust the cards, and by extension, trust the Steves to keep Cassie safe in this odd little fortress of weapons, beer, and steak. It was as far as theoretically possible from the Pythia’s stronghold of feminine power.

  And Tara thought that was a good thing.

  “NICE WHEELS.”

  Harry strode down Lockley’s driveway, nodding approvingly at Tara’s parking job. She’d managed to get the big Bronco wedged into the crowded driveway without hitting anything. Tara hopped down out of the tank, had to lean hard against the creaky door to get it to shut.

  “Thanks. It belongs to the Steves. The guys you sent for Cassie.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Harry said. He was dressed in a wrinkly, white Tyvek suit. In the sunset, his shadow was long across the pavement. “They’re good guys. A little obsessive about beer, but they take work pretty damn seriously.”

  Tara squinted into the sun at him. “You know them?”

  “I ran into them working a case a couple of months back about chupacabras …” Harry pinched the bridge of his nose when Tara opened her mouth to ask. She was envisioning a story in which Harry was bouncing along in the back of the Bronco in Texas, somewhere, chasing mutants. “Don’t ask. They’re trustworthy guys, though. Besides, they’re the only Marshals I could find who were willing to take in a dog and a cat.”

  “You owe me that story.” Her eyebrow crawled up her forehead.

  “I promise that I will tell you the story of the Steves and the chupacabras. Honest.” Harry made the Cub Scout three-finger swearing gesture. “But I need you to tell me a story about this crime scene, first.” His gaze flitted back to the house with the blinds pulled tight across the windows.

  “I’ll spin the best yarn I can.” Tara gestured at his suit with her chin. “What’s with the gear?”

  “We don’t want to contaminate the scene. Or get contaminated by it.” He said it in a low voice that wouldn’t carry to the neighbors’ open windows.

  “You found radiation in there?”

  “Trace amounts. Nothing serious. But nothing you want to handle and then go licking your fingers.” Harry handed Tara a white Tyvek suit of her own. She unzipped it and stepped into the oversize suit, wiggling her shoes into the feet. She felt like a child wearing oversize footie pajamas that her grandmother insisted she’d grow into.

  Tara glanced at the cars at the curb. “I thought the Marshals were guarding Lockley, whether he wanted it or not.”

  “Yeah. That didn’t go so well. Lockley refused to let them in, though they did manage to ring his doorbell a couple of times a day to make sure that he was all right. Last time they checked on him was this morning. They said the old man sounded like he was working on a bad cold for the past couple of days. They saw Veriss go in late this morning, but he never came out. There are signs of forced entry in the back.”

  Tara stared at the façade of the house, zipping up the suit to her chin while Harry fitted a hood and respirator over her head. Everything looked normal. She could understand why the Marshals would think Lockley was simply inside, sleeping off a bad cold. “You mind if I go in and walk around?” Her voice was muffled by the plastic.

  “Have at it.” Harry’s cell phone rang, somewhere under his suit. “Shit.” He began unzipping his suit to try and get at the phone.

  Tara walked up the front step to the house, peered in through the screen door. The screen was thick enough and the foyer in sufficient shadow to obscure the figures milling inside. Veriss would have come here, and he would not have been able to see much inside.

  She opened the door, and a wall of cold hit her. Her brow furrowed. The air conditioner was freezing. Too cold, even for summer. Around her, crime scene technicians crawled over the carpet. Flashbulbs flickered in the gloom like lightning. Tara reached for the light switch inside the door. Didn’t work. She looked up at the foyer light fixture. Maybe the bulb was burned out, and Lockley couldn’t reach it from his wheelchair to change it.

  Tara reached up with a gloved hand, pulled away the clip-on plastic shade. The bulb was loose, turned easily in its socket, and produced a blinding brightness.

  “I think there may be prints on this bulb,” Tara said to a hovering evidence technician, who scurried away to find a dusting kit.

  Tara crossed through the living room. Something was missing. The dog. She stopped a technician taking pictures of the living room.

  “Did anybody find a dog here?”

  The hooded head shook. Under the visor, Tara recognized Anderson. “No. We found dog dishes, leashes, but no dog.” The flashbulb strobed again. “We found parts of the dog, though … fur and some teeth.”

  “Where?”

  “Back there. You can’t miss it.”

  Tara turned down the hallway. Through her respirator, she could smell the metallic scent of blood. Red was smeared on the wall, and she followed the direction of the smear to the bedroom.

  This place. She knew that this was where the assailant had killed Lockley. The bedclothes were rumpled, not smoothed back, as they had been at Lena’s house. That was entirely too much activity for a partially paralyzed man. A stain blossomed across the old man’s bed, rust-colored with age. A nightstand drawer was open beside the bed.

  Here. Lockley had been going to bed, and the assailant had come down the hallway. She knew that an old shop man like Lockley would be armed. She knelt and sniffed the open drawer. She smelled gun oil, but saw no gun, smelled no residue of gunpowder.

  She let herself slip into the dream of the altercation as easily as she slipped into dreams of the Tarot. She imagined Lockley scrambling for his gun, but the assailant had come, anyway. Had killed Lockley in his bed. He’d probably fought off the dog to do so.

  But where were the bodies? Tara peered under the bed. The old man’s pajamas were wadded in a ball among the dust bunnies, and she saw the dog’s collar beside them, smeared in red.

  Why strip the man and the dog? It made no sense to peel them, unless he was going to eat them. Tara shuddered, remembering a case involving a flesh fetishist she’d worked many years ago. But fetishists and sadists were typically ruled by their passions. The sense she had of this killer, of the person in her dreams who fell from the Tower, was of a cold, organized killer. A broker of information. And there had been no forensic evidence of semen found at the scenes. He wasn’t doing this for thrills. He had a purpose.

  Tara straightened, trying to imagine what it would have been like to be the killer. He killed Lockley and the dog … and went to the bathroom to clean up. She paced down the hallway to the bathroom, peered inside.

  She sucked in a breath that pulled the plastic respirator close to her face. The bathroom was streaked with red, bloody towels congealing in the bottom of the tub like bandages on a clotting wound.

  “This is a fucking abattoir,” a technician muttered, shouldering past her with sample bottles.

  “Is it okay for me to touch?” Tara asked.

  “As long as you’ve got gloves,” she said.

  Tara stood, blinking, in the cold bathroom light. She saw rusty stains on the sink handles, on the grab bars and the bench in the bathtub. Leaning to peer into the bathtub, she saw the towels covered with dog fur. She picked up a sopping towel and turned it over. It was spangled with fragments of a transparent material, like shed reptile skin or mica.

  Her eyes flicked to something shiny in the soap dish. A pair of pliers from Lockley’s workshop lay in the dish, denting the soap. Surrounding the pink soap were ivory-white teeth. Some had to be human; they had dental fillings. But others … they looked long and sharp, like canines.

  She sat back on
her heels, understanding striking her like lightning. The confused jumble of chimeric DNA, Lockley’s clothes on the floor. The World card, and the Sacred Androgyne embracing Lena. The symbol of Chiron in Cassie’s charts, half man, half beast.

  This room wasn’t an abattoir.

  It was a womb. Their subject hadn’t eaten Lockley, the dog, and all the others. He’d absorbed them, taken them into himself. It was the only way to explain the lack of bodies. He’d not only taken their bodies, but their knowledge.

  He was more than they’d all expected. He was the Chimera the Pythia had warned her about, a creature who consumed his prey, becoming some fearsome amalgamation of those he’d destroyed. He was history moving through the modern era, relentlessly ingesting everything in his path. This man had absorbed Lockley, and Lena, and all the others. The Chimera was more than the sum total of all he’d taken.

  Her intuition of the truth crackled through her, from the hair at the back of her neck down her spine to her feet. She took a deep breath, grounding the awful truth of that knowledge.

  Tara backed out of the bathroom, sidestepped technicians coming down the hall. In the kitchen, she spotted Veriss’s glasses and notepad on the kitchen floor, being photographed by a tech. She asked permission to touch the notebook, flipped through it. Her mouth thinned, seeing the rudimentary list of questions produced by an inexperienced investigator. He’d come here to prove his own points. She scanned through his list of questions, pausing on one that he’d starred and underlined:

  Where are the reactor rods from Chernobyl? Do you know?

  Her brow wrinkled. Perhaps Veriss’s mathematical theories had led him to something solid. Too bad he hadn’t had the opportunity to ask the question.

  Tara’s gaze flickered to the empty wheelchair on the kitchen linoleum. Lockley had met his end in the bedroom. His wheelchair should be there. The killer had brought the wheelchair here. In the shade of the foyer, perhaps he’d been able to convince someone as naïve as Veriss to come in.

  And Veriss was gone. Dead, like the others, she was certain of it. Part of the Chimera.