Gumshoe Gorilla (48 page)

"Sounds like we have company," I said.

I got up, and Drew followed me into the next room. It was a hotel suite, full of reporters, all of them snapping pictures. A group of them spotted Drew and rushed over to us.

"Did you know the victim?" one of them asked.

"How do you feel about his brutal murder?"

"Is it true that he was secretly dating Cherry Chang?"

Beyond the reporters, I could make out a corner of the bed. The sheets were stained red, and I could see a motionless foot.

Drew saw it too. I saw the look of terror on his face. He shoved his way through the reporters and stood next to the bed, shaking.

I managed to follow. The bed was covered in blood. It had soaked through the sheets and was dripping down onto the carpet with a sound like a slowly ticking clock. A man lay on his back. His face had been badly bruised, and something had cut through his throat, severing a major artery.

"It's... it's not Daniel," Drew said.

He sounded more surprised than relieved. He'd also morphed into his older persona. Pity. The kid version is easier to handle.

"No," I said. "It's Eddie."

All around us, the flashbulbs kept going off.

"How... how did this happen?" Drew asked.

I looked at the scene. It was fresh material, not one of Drew's usual repeating nightmares. I lifted the corpse's arm and checked his watch.

"It hasn't," I said, showing Drew the date on the watch. "Not yet."

Prophetic dreams, they can be a real bitch.

"The twenty-eighth," Drew muttered. "That's only two days away."

"We'd better get cracking then."

Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice. Far off, but getting closer. I checked my own watch. We were almost out of time.

"And speaking of the future," I said, "you might want to wake up about now. Linda's coming back to the room in under two minutes."

I woke up suddenly, sweating and out of breath. I looked around the room, trying to get my bearings. A hotel. I was in bed. Eddie.

Oh yeah.

I gave him a shove.

"Huh?"

"Get dressed, Linda's on her way up."

Eddie sat up and rubbed his eyes. I jumped out of bed and pulled on my jeans, fumbled with the buttons on my shirt. Why did there have to be so many? I glanced over at Eddie.

He was standing up and stretching.

"Could you hurry?" I said.

He picked up his clothes with the calm air of somebody who had been in this situation before, and walked into the bathroom.

"Just tell her I'm in the shower," he said, and then closed the door behind him.

Damn. Wish I'd thought of that.

I was just pulling on my shoes when there was a knock on the connecting room door. I tied them quickly and then sprinted over open the door.

"Oh, hi Linda. Done already?"

"Already?" she said, walking past me into the room. "It's half past six in the morning."

"Really?" I said, raising my wrist to look at my watch... which was currently lying on the floor next to the bed. I stuck my hand in my pocket. "I must have lost track of the time."

She looked at me suspiciously. I was all too aware that my trigger happy blush reflex was going off again.

Daniel and Jen followed her into the room. They seemed excited about something. Jen handed me a bag with a couple bagels in it.

"We stopped for breakfast after we wrapped up surveillance," she said. "Oh, and then we solved the case. Mind if I brew some tea?"

She went to the coffee maker, pulled out the reservoir, and headed towards the bathroom to fill it up.

"Uh, Eddie's in there," I said. "And did you say that you solved the case?"

"As usual, she's exaggerating," Linda said, sitting down on the unmade bed. "But we did make an important connection. We think we know what the blackmailer is after."

"Really?"

"Yeah!" Daniel said, bubbling over with excitement. "See, I was talking with this guy named Dimitri last night, and..."

Daniel started to tell the story, with Jen and Linda interrupting every few seconds. They got as far as the part where they'd made the connection to Trent Reed, and then Eddie finished his shower and emerged from the bathroom. So they started the whole presentation all over again, for his benefit. I watched Eddie, standing there in a towel while the three of them competed for his attention, trying to explain what had happened last night. A couple of times he looked over and tried to catch my eye.

What had happened last night? I was kind of wondering that myself. I guess it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Eddie was accustomed to trading on his looks, and he must have pegged me as someone that could help him get out of this jam.

Either that, or I was an acceptable substitute for television.

My compatriots finished laying out their whole theory of the crime. As near as I could understand it, they were convinced that someone was using Eddie to set up evidence of an affair between him and this Baptist guy, Trent Reed. There was a lot of conjecture in their story, but the theory did fit the facts pretty damn tightly. It explained why the blackmailer had Eddie running around to hotel rooms all over the country, and it explained all those crazy instructions about opening doors and making phone calls and such. Of course, it left one important question unanswered.

"Who?" I asked. "Who would want to take out Reed this way?"

"I've got a hunch," Linda said. "There's a nasty power struggle going on between the Baptist News Network and the Christian Alliance."

"I've heard," I said. "It's been all over the news. More fallout from the Stonewall incident."

"Right. Reed is Stonewall's number two man, and he's been running the network ever since the good Reverend went to jail. Which means that the Christian Alliance would like nothing better than to see Reed caught up in a gay sex scandal right now. His support would collapse overnight, and the collateral damage would probably finish off BNN as well."

"Maybe," I agreed.

What she was saying made sense. But there was something tickling at the back of my brain, trying to get my attention.

"But there are a lot of other people who are ticked off at BNN," I said. "Any one of them could be behind this. The network has said some pretty ugly things about gays. And I believe they had a special on Wiccans last year called
The Whores of Satan.
"

"You watch their programs?" Jen asked.

"Once in a while," I admitted. "I like to keep an eye on what those guys are up to."

"I can see why. OK. So gay boys and witches. Who else is pissed at them?"

I tried to remember all the bits of nastiness that I'd seen on that network over the last couple of years.

"Uh... let me think. They've said some pretty mean things about Catholics. And they did a special on the Mormons a few months ago. The Cherokee, of course. The...."

I stopped. Somewhere, from the back of my brain, a fragment of a dream was trying to claw its way to the surface. A rattlesnake, saying that she wanted me on this case because she knew that I'd blow it.

Why would Ice put me on a case that she didn't want me to solve? She wouldn't... unless she was trying to protect someone.

"It's the Cherokee," I muttered. "The Nation. They set this up."

Jen and Linda looked at each other, then back at me.

"Uh... Parker?" Linda said. "You know something that the rest of us don't?"

"Not yet. Right now it's just a hunch. I'll need a few hours to check it out."

"A hunch?" Jen said, eyeing me suspiciously. "You've been having a lot of those lately."

"Yeah, must be all the fiber in my diet."

"But why would the Cherokee Nation go after Reed?" Jen asked.

"Their big case is up before the world court," I explained. "Stonewall was leading the political charge against them, rallying public opposition to a settlement. And Reed's taken over the job since Stonewall went to prison. Remove Reed --or better yet, remove BNN altogether-- and you knock the backbone out of the opposition."

I went over to the bed and grabbed my watch and the box with the kitten. The runt was still breathing. He rolled over and yawned. I guess vets don't know everything.

"Fine, go run down this hunch of yours, Parker," Linda said. "But I'm gonna check up on the Christian Alliance. I've still got some contacts from my days with Justin. I think I know the sort of people they'd use to set up something like this."

"And what about me?" Jen said.

"You fill in Skye and Charles," I responded, "and then stick with Eddie. After he checks out of the room, take him some place safe and keep an eye on him."

Jen looked less than thrilled with the assignment. She'd rather be in the thick of things. But we needed someone to babysit Eddie. I had this feeling that something bad was gonna happen to him.

The meeting broke up. Linda heading off to milk her contacts in the Christian Alliance. Eddie going into the bathroom to mousse his hair. Daniel following him to watch.

I took Jen aside.

"Be on your toes. And don't let Eddie out of your sight."

"Another hunch?" she asked.

"No. Just a sense of how all this will play out. If your theory is right, then sometime in the next few days the blackmailer is gonna leak a story about this supposed affair to the media."

"Yeah. So?"

"So, if you were the blackmailer, would you trust Eddie to keep his mouth shut? I mean, even if you told him what to say, how long do you think he could keep his story straight? How long before he slips up?"

"You're saying that..."

"I'm saying that the blackmailer isn't gonna want to have Eddie around to answer questions. Maybe Eddie is gonna have a little accident."

Jen raised an eyebrow.

"Or..." she said slowly, "...maybe this affair with Reed is supposed to end in a nasty lovers quarrel."

I thought about it. What better way to get the media interested in the story? Someone finds Eddie's nude body lying in a hotel room, murdered. Maybe an empty liquor bottle and some condom wrappers thrown in for ambiance. The press would go into a feeding frenzy, trying to find out who the killer-lover was. Reporters would fan out and find all those little pointers leading back to Trent Reed. It wasn't evidence that would hold up in court, but it didn't need to be. It would make one hell of a story.

"Just be careful," I said.

"I'll keep my eyes open."

"Good."

I walked over to Daniel. He was in the bathroom, talking hair care products with Eddie.

"You need a ride back to your car?" I asked.

"Oh, sure," Daniel said.