City of the Snakes (13 page)

“Tell me,” I grunt without slowing.

“It was booked under the name of Al Jeery,” he says quickly, “but I’m sure he has nothing to do with this. I know Al and he’s not the sort who—”

“Enough!” I come to a stop. So they—whoever
they
are—used my name, just in case memory failed me. The extra touch was unnecessary. An insult.

I study Terry Archer. He knows me as Al Jeery but doesn’t recognize me in my Paucar Wami guise. I want to keep it that way. “I’ll check on Jeery,” I
growl. “If he’s innocent, he has nothing to fear. If he isn’t, I’ll deal with him.” Archer nods, terror in his eyes. “And don’t tip him off in advance.”

“I won’t!” Archer gasps. “I swear!”

We reach 812 and Archer passes a golden card through the computerized slot. A light blinks twice. He produces another card—also gold, but with red stripes in the upper left corner—and swipes that as well. “I double-coded it, to be extra safe,” he says smugly. With a beep the door opens and we enter, lights coming on automatically. A flat-screen TV on the wall broadcasts a message. “Welcome to the Skylight, Mr. Jeery. We hope you enjoy your stay.”

On the bed, a naked woman lies facedown, hands tied together over her head, a gag in her mouth. Her back has been cut to shreds and a rough circle can be glimpsed through the dried blood, several straight lines running from its rim, representing the rays of the sun.

“This happened before,” Archer says, closing the door. “Nine or ten years ago, two women were killed in exactly the same—”

“I know,” I stop him, moving closer to the bed, studying the floor for clues. “I want the room dusted. The woman too. A full examination. Call Alex Sines at the Fridge. Tell him to come in person. I want him to report directly to me.”

“What about Mr. Tasso?” Archer inquires.

“If Tasso wanted to be personally involved,” I bark, “he wouldn’t have sent you to me.”

Archer cringes at my tone and says no more.

I carefully tilt the dead woman’s head to one side and study her face, emotionlessly taking in the familiar contours and eyes, noting how relaxed she looks in death. I bet Sines finds strong drugs in her system when he slices her open. Nobody dies serenely when in pain. She must have been doped out of her senses.

“Know her?” I ask Archer, gently lowering the head. Al Jeery wants to close her eyelids. Paucar Wami sneers at the sentimental touch.

“No,” he says shakily.

“I do.” Standing, I unroll the plastic gloves and pocket them. “
Ama Situwa
,” I sigh, not loud enough for Archer to hear, then make a quick exit, to retire for the night and consider what the hell this means.

A
ma Situwa. Ayuamarcan. Lost to the world ten years ago. Returns

(
how?
)

and gets killed in the Skylight

(
why?
)

in room 812. Not much of a biography. No hints of who she was or how she lived. Was there a specific reason she was chosen to die instead of anyone else I know? And is the corpse
really
Ama Situwa? I still don’t buy into this resurrection business, though it’s getting harder to discredit. She could be someone who merely looked like the woman I remember. An elaborate red herring.

Sines will be able to help on that front. He’ll take fingerprints, dental impressions and DNA samples. Check them against the records. I’m sure there are no files on Ama Situwa—the
villacs
did a thorough job of removing all traces of the Ayuamarcans—but if this is another woman, we might strike it lucky.

I doze off while sitting next to my tiny living room window, contemplating the various twists and possibilities. I dream of room 812 in the Skylight and the three women who’ve been murdered there, Nicola Hornyak, Ellen Fraser and

(
until proven otherwise
)

Ama Situwa. In my dreams I’m present at the executions, which blend
together into one nightmarish scene of perpetual murder. I stand by the foot of the bed as Nicola’s tied down. I hear Ellen scream. She calls my name and I reach to help, but I’m powerless. A large woman—Valerie Thomas, one of the
villacs’
tools—pushes me away and laughs. A blind priest wraps his arms around me and holds me as Priscilla Perdue carves a symbol into Ama Situwa’s back, her knife impossibly large, the blood impossibly red. As it pools on the floor, faces form—Capac Raimi’s, Leonora Shankar’s, mine. No, not mine… my father’s. The real Paucar Wami smiles at me and murmurs, “Reasons for a refund, hmm, Al m’boy?”

As I’m trying to think of a reply, Wami’s face explodes in a geyser of blood that splatters the walls and ceiling. The blood covers me. It’s hot. I scream. And suddenly
I’m
lying on the bed and a
villac
is carving the flesh of my back to pieces. Incredible pain. He’s chanting. I’m screaming. Nicola, Ellen and Ama Situwa stand in a semicircle in front of me, naked, making love, laughing at my misfortune. The carving lasts an eternity.

“Flesh of Dreams,” the priest sings, and the women echo him. I cover my ears with my hands (not thinking to attack my tormentors with them), but the sounds penetrate the bloodstained flesh and bones. High-pitched, shrill, driving me to the verge of madness. I open my mouth to shriek. Blood gushes. And still the ringing of the women’s voices… ringing…

My eyes snap open but the noise follows me out of my dream. Heart racing, I look for blind priests, then realize it’s only my phone. Letting out a shaky breath, I wipe the last images of the nightmare from my thoughts and dig my cell out of a pocket. “Hello?” I answer, checking my watch. 04:19.

“Jeery? It’s Dr. Sines.”

I sit up. “What’s wrong?”

“Your corpse—the woman in the Skylight.”

“What about her?”

“She vanished.”

For a moment I think I’m still dreaming, but that impression is short-lived. “Where are you?” I ask.

“The Fridge.”

“I’ll be right over.”

As I slip on my shoes, I think I hear someone whisper, “Flesh of Dreams.” But it’s only a residue of the nightmare.

“How the fuck could she disappear?” I roar, punching the door of Sines’s office and kicking a spare chair out of my way. I’ve been here ten minutes and my rage has increased with every passing second. The doctor sits at his desk, impassive, waiting for my fury to pass. If he’s afraid of me, he masks it well.

“Tell me again what happened,” I snarl, leaning on the desk, putting my face close to his, watching for the slightest trace of a lie.

“I’ve told you three times already,” he says, meeting my gaze without blinking.

“So tell me a fourth!”

“You think it will help?”

“Start talking or
I’ll
help
you
through the fucking window.”

Sines sneers. “Quit chewing the scenery. It doesn’t become you.”

“You think this is a joke?” I yell. “You think this is a fucking—”

“Sit down. Stop shouting. Take deep breaths. Hold your hands out until they stop shaking. Then I’ll tell you again—for the last time,” he adds pointedly.

I want to rip out his eyes, but that wouldn’t do any good, so I pick up the chair, sit and breathe. Eventually my teeth stop chattering and the veil of rage lifts. “I’m sorry I shouted.”

Sines nods. “Better.” He launches into his story, keeping it brief. “I oversaw the initial examination of the corpse in the Skylight, as you requested. Made sure the area was dusted for prints and that nothing was disturbed.”

“Did you dust the body?”

“Yes, but only to check for obvious, clumsy traces of her killer. There weren’t any. I was saving the in-depth study for when I got back to the Fridge. Once I’d done all I could in the Skylight, I had her transferred to a gurney, then downstairs to the hearse.”

“Why a hearse?” I interrupt. “Why not an ambulance?”

He withers me with a smile. “Ambulances are for hospitals, where they treat the living. This is a morgue. We don’t have much use for resuscitative—”

“OK,” I snap. “I only asked.”

“As I was saying,” he continues, running an arrogant hand through his hair, “we transferred the body to the hearse. I was with it the entire time. We collapsed the legs of the gurney, slid it inside, strapped it down, locked the doors. The driver and I got in and set off. We made good time. Opened the doors when we got here, slid the gurney out, and the body wasn’t there.” He coughs. “I can’t explain how, but it vanished in transit.”

“Just like that?” I snort.

He glares at me. “I know how it sounds, but there’s no way it could have fallen out or been abducted. We were with it the whole way. You can check the hearse, but I assure you there are no false panels or gaping holes in the floor.”

“Bodies don’t vanish into thin air,” I remark icily.

“I agree,” he sighs, “but as Sherlock Holmes was fond of saying, when all other probabilities have been eliminated, what remains, however improbable, is the real shit.”

“I don’t think he put it quite that way,” I smile.

“You could be right.” Sines stands and heads for the door. “Let’s go give the hearse the once-over. You won’t believe me until you’ve seen it for yourself. Who knows, you might find something I overlooked. To be honest,” he mutters with uncharacteristic humility, “I rather hope you do.”

The hearse is inviolate. No secret panels in the sides, a solid floor, reliable lock. I suggest someone might have forced the lock while the hearse was stopped at traffic lights. “Impossible,” Sines says. “Traffic’s nonexistent at four in the morning and we were in a hurry to get back, so we broke a few rules of the road and didn’t stop for any lights.”

“Somebody on the roof? They could have worked on the lock while you were driving, slid out the body and…” I stop, realizing how weak that sounds.

Sines shrugs. “I thought of that too. It makes more sense than the suggestion that the body simply vanished, but it fails to account for the alarm.” Sines closes the doors at the back of the hearse, locks them, then takes out a different key and tries to insert it into the lock. A siren blares, which the doctor quickly silences by hitting a button on the hearse’s key fob.

“We’ve had bodies stolen before,” he explains. “The alarms have been standard issue for twenty years. They’re updated annually to keep ahead of those with a talent for break-ins. To cling to the roof of a moving car, and not be seen, and unlock the doors without triggering the alarm…” He shakes his head.

I stare at the lock, then circle the hearse again, racking my brain for an explanation. Sines watches expressionlessly. When I return, he says, “Know what I’d recommend as a doctor?”

“What?”

“Go home. Sleep it off. The mystery will still be here in the morning. It won’t be any clearer, but you’ll be in better shape to deal with it.”

And since there’s nothing else I can do except stand here and go mad, I follow the good doctor’s advice.

Surprisingly, I sleep soundly, no nightmares, waking in the early afternoon on an excessively hot Sunday. Over a bowl of cereal, I reflect on my visits to the Skylight and Fridge, and where I go from here. The more I think about it, the more I’m drawn to the theory that Ama Situwa (or whoever was killed in the hotel) wasn’t a random plant. The previous women killed in 812 were both closely linked to me—my girlfriend and ex-wife—so I’m sure there’s a reason why this latest sacrificial lamb was chosen, other than the fact that we met briefly ten years ago.

To get to the heart of that reason, I’ll have to find out more about Ama Situwa. If the woman in 812 was a ringer, I’ll deal with that later. For the time being I’ll take the line that it was really Situwa.

It isn’t difficult deciding where to start. As an Ayuamarcan, her name will have been wiped from all city records and nobody will remember her. The only place I might find a history of her is in Party Central, in the personal files of the original keeper of the Ayuamarca secrets.

Ford Tasso isn’t surprised when I turn up demanding an audience, but he makes me wait almost an hour while he deals with more immediate problems. Somebody’s been hitting key members in the organization, business executives, generals in the Troops. The assassin strikes without warning and without fail. At first Tasso thought it was one of Davern’s men, but the Kluxers have also come under attack. Five of Davern’s closest aides have
been killed, including his best friend, Dan Kerrin. It seems there’s a third player in town, stirring things up, but nobody has a clue who it is.

Eventually I’m admitted. Tasso’s lying on a newly installed couch, an ice pack over his eyes, massaging the dead flesh of his right arm and shoulder. He looks fit for the grave. “I used to complain about the nursing home,” he groans as I take a seat. “Didn’t know how lucky I was. I’d give anything to go back.”

“What’s stopping you? You’ve given it your best shot, but you’re old and lame. Nobody would blame you if you called it a day.”

“
I’d
blame me,” he growls, removing the ice pack. “And less of the ‘old and lame’ shit.” His good eye is red and bleary. I doubt he’s slept more than a handful of hours since we last met. I don’t know what he’s running on. I guess he’s like the dinosaurs—too stupid to know when he should lie down and die. “I had Sines on the phone earlier, telling me what happened. Reckon he’s fucking with us?”