Industrial Magic

The Usual Suspects

Instead of having Benicio follow us, I decided to ride with him and let Jaime follow us in her rental car. I had questions, not about why he'd betrayed Lucas, but about the investigation. When Lucas saw his father he'd be too upset to ask about the case, so I'd do it for him.

Benicio confirmed that the Cabals had resumed their investigation. After Joey Nast's death, they'd changed tactics. No longer content to follow the clues, they'd rounded up the usual suspects-anyone known to have a beef with the Cabals-and were trying to "extract" clues.

"Extract?" I said, the blood draining from my face. "You mean torture."

Benicio paused. "The Cabals do employ intense interrogation techniques. I would hesitate to use the word torture… But you must understand, Paige, the pressure that the Cabals are under. Not just the pressure, but the fear, the feelings of impotence. Do I think this is the best way to proceed? No. But I'd be hard-pressed to find members of my board who agree. The Nasts are in charge of the investigation now."

"Because of Joey."

"Correct." He gazed out the side window for a moment, then turned to me. "Until last month, the Nasts' New York office was in the World Trade Center."

"Did they lose-?"

"Twenty-seven people, out of a staff of thirty-five. The Cabals-we place ourselves above such things. We may kill one another but, as supernaturals, we have little to fear from the outside world. If we are attacked, we have the resources to strike back. But what happened last month…" He shook his head. "There's no revenge for that, and the Nasts are damned if they're going to be victimized again." He looked at me. "You can't concern yourself with our side of the investigation, Paige, because you can't stop it."

"I can if I find the killer."

He looked at me, then nodded.

I didn't lie to Lucas. As he so often reminds me, I'm horrible at it. The best I could do was omit damning details about my encounter with Benicio, and slant the story so he'd draw the conclusion that his father had expected Lucas and me to be together. Did he buy it? Probably not, but since I was obviously intent on brokering peace, Lucas decided not to stall the negotiations with a fresh injury complaint.

Once I'd secured Lucas's approval, I phoned down to Benicio in the lobby and invited him up. Since this was family business, I suggested Jaime take Troy and Morris to the hotel restaurant for coffee. Troy agreed, but Morris decided to wait in the hall.

Less than a minute after I hung up, Benicio rapped at the door. Lucas opened it. Before he could get in so much as a greeting, Lucas cut him short.

"Having renewed the investigation, Paige and I are committed to using all available resources. If you agree to communicate only for the purpose of sharing our findings, I will accept your calls. I trust that whatever leak led to the raid on Everett Weber's house has been repaired."

"You have my word-"

"Right now, I could have your blood oath and still not believe you. Perhaps instead you will take my word. If you lie to me again and another person dies because of it, we are through."

"Lucas, I want to explain-"

"Yes, I know you do, which leads me to my next request. I don't want to hear your explanation. I know perfectly well what happened. You made an executive decision. To your mind, Weber was obviously guilty and I was questioning that simply because it is my nature to question. Therefore, given the choice between indulging your son's quixotic whims and saving the Cabal from embarrassment, you chose the Cabal."

He paused. Benicio opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Lucas continued. "I would like copies of the crime-scene reports for Matthew Tucker and Joey Nast."

"Uh, yes, certainly. I'll courier them over right away."

"Thank you." Lucas walked to the door and opened it. "Good day."

"Are you angry with me?" I asked after Benicio left.

He blinked, his surprise at the question answering. "For what?"

"Bringing your father here."

Lucas shook his head and put his arms around my waist. "I needed to get those case files, but I have been, I'm afraid, avoiding making the call."

"How are you holding up?" I asked.

"Besides feeling like an idiot? After twenty-five years of experience, I consider myself a reasonably good judge of my father's capacity for deception, and yet I never once suspected he wasn't lobbying to get us an audience with Weber. I can't believe I was that stupid."

"Well, I certainly don't know him anywhere near as well as you do, but I never doubted his intentions, either. He knew you were upset about the raid, so naturally he'd want to get back in your good books by going to bat for you on Weber. It made sense to me."

"Thank you," he said, kissing the top of my head.

"I'm not just saying that to make you feel better."

A crooked smile. "I know. That's one thing I can count on, that you always tell me the truth. With my father, I know he's not the most trustworthy of men, but I-" He paused. "I can't help wanting a closer relationship, like we had when I was young. I feel like we should have that again and, somehow, that the onus for reestablishing it falls to me."

"It shouldn't."

"I know that. Yet sometimes… I know it must be difficult for him, being who he is. He doesn't have anyone he can trust, not even his family. He can barely stand to be in the same room as his wife. His relationship with their sons is almost as bad. I know that's at least partly, if not primarily, his own fault, yet sometimes, when I'm with him, I want to compensate for that."

He eased us down onto the sofa. "My father called me when I was on the plane to Chicago. We talked. Really talked. He didn't make a single reference to the Cabal or my future in it. He just wanted to talk about me, and about you and me, how we were doing, how happy he was to see me happy, and I thought-" Lucas shook his head. "I was an idiot."

"He's the idiot," I said, leaning over to kiss him. "And if he doesn't see what he's missing out on, then I'll take his share."

Someone rapped at the door.

"Whoops," I said. "Forgot Jaime. She probably wants to grab her stuff and take off."

I opened the door.

"So what's next on the agenda?" Jaime said as she walked in. "Lunch is out, I guess, but maybe I can grab take-out for us."

"That would be… very nice," I said. "But what about you? When's your next show?"

"Show? Oh, the tour. Right." She opened her purse, pulled out lipstick, and walked to the mirror. "Next stop Graceland. Well, Memphis actually, but I might as well just hold it at Graceland, 'cause half the people in the audience are going to ask me to summon Elvis. I just give them some song-and-dance about how he's up in heaven enjoying fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches and singing for God. Pisses him off to no end, but you gotta give the folks what they want, and no one cares what he's really doing."

"What is he really doing?" I asked.

"Sorry, kids, that's the X-rated show. Let's just say he's happy. Where was I? Right, Memphis. I don't do my Elvis schtick until Halloween, which means I have six days to myself. I'm supposed to be rehearsing but, hell, like I couldn't do that shit in my sleep."

"So instead, you're…?"

"Taking some much-needed downtime and building up good karma credits helping you guys. I figure I'll hang around here, and if you need a necro, I'm ready and willing."

"That's very generous," Lucas said. "But we probably won't need-"

"Sure you will," Jaime cut in. "Every murder case needs a necro. And if you want someone to make phone calls or run errands, I'm your gal Friday."

Lucas and I exchanged a look. I could understand Jaime wanting a few days off. She'd looked exhausted yesterday, and although she'd bounced back, these spurts of energy seemed forced, as if she was running in high gear to keep from collapsing.

"So, what are you guys-" Jaime began, then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and stopped mid-sentence. She yanked the clip from her hair and tried gathering it again, but her hands trembled so badly she couldn't keep it together long enough to get the hair clip on. She crammed the clip into her pocket. "Can I borrow your brush, Paige?"

"Urn, sure, it's right-"

She was already in the bathroom. Lucas lowered his head to whisper something to me, but Jaime popped out of the bathroom, wielding the hairbrush with harsh strokes.

"So where are we at? Any fresh leads?"

Lucas glanced at me. I shrugged discreetly. If Jaime was offering to help with the investigation, I saw no reason to refuse, and no reason not to fill her in.

"Lucas was checking Weber's phone records. Since that's how Esus said he was making contact with the killer, it seemed a good place to start." I looked at Lucas. "Please, tell me it was a good place to start."

"It wasn't a bad place to start, though I'd hesitate to call my findings overwhelmingly encouraging. Once I applied the approximate time range, I came up with a reasonably definitive list of five phone calls. The last two took place in the past week, presumably after the killer took a hard look at the second list and decided to expand his criteria. Both calls came after the killings began. The first, received on the eighth, came from Louisiana, where he was likely preparing for his attack on Holden. The second came the following day, from California, presumably arranging to pick up the final list. Both calls were made from pay phones."

"And the earlier calls? Before the attacks? Tell me they all came from the same place."

"From the same region, though, again, all from pay phones. The first was made in Dayton, Ohio, the second in Covington, Kentucky, and the third near Columbus, Indiana. Triangulate those points on a map and in the middle you'll find Cincinnati."

"So he's from Cincinnati?" Jaime said.

"It's reasonable to assume he was residing there, at least briefly, before the killings began. By making the calls from three smaller cities, it would appear he was avoiding a deliberate link with Cincinnati."

"So should we head up to Cincinnati? Start asking around the supernatural community?"

"There isn't a supernatural community in Cincinnati." I glanced at Lucas. "Is there?"

"While there may be a few supernaturals living in the region, there is no 'community' to speak of. The Nasts recently considered locating a satellite office there for that very reason." He caught my frown and explained. "Cabals prefer to expand into virgin territory, where they don't have many resident supernaturals to contend with."

"So there's nobody in Cincinnati to ask." Jaime sighed. "Shit. It couldn't be that easy, could it?"

"There's still the motivation lead," I said. "Esus thinks we're looking for a supernatural with a vendetta against the Cabals. The only other reasonable motivation is money. Pay me a billion bucks and I'll stop killing your kids. But the Cabals haven't received any blackmail notes." I paused. "Unless they have and they're just not telling us. Damn, I hate this."

"I feel reasonably safe in saying that no extortion attempts have been made," Lucas said. "Now that one of Thomas Nast's grandsons is dead, a killer with any knowledge of Cabals would know he can't buy his way out of this. As Esus said, it's personal."

"Then, when you put the clues together, we have a serious lead here. Adult male, living in the Cincinnati area, has reason to want revenge on the Cabals-not one, but all the Cabals. There can't be many supernaturals who fulfill that criteria."

"So we just ask the Cabals-" Jaime looked over at Lucas. "It's not that easy, either, is it?"

"Probably not," he said. "I'm afraid that if I give the Cabals too much information, we'll have a repeat of the Weber incident."

"Or a sudden epidemic afflicting male supernaturals living in Ohio," I said.

"Precisely. We'll start instead by canvassing my contacts. If a supernatural has reason to be this angry at the Cabals, someone must have heard of it."

"There's nothing we outsiders like better than gossip about the big bad Cabals," Jaime said. "I could make a few calls of my own."

"Excellent idea," Lucas said. "First, though, let me talk to a local contact. He publishes an underground anti-Cabal newsletter, and he's always my best source of Cabal rumor."

"He lives in Miami and puts out an anti-Cabal newsletter?" I said. "He'd better hope your father never finds out."

"My father knows all about Raoul. In such matters he follows Sun Tzu's maxim about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer."

"Uh-huh," I said. "Okay, well, is this Raoul someone I can meet?"

"He's a shaman, not a sorcerer, so he'll have no aversion to discussing matters with a witch. In addition, we may be able to find some, uh, interesting reading material in his bookstore."

"Spells?"

A tiny smile. "Yes, spells. Remember, though, that by bringing you to the source of the spells, any that you care to acquire must be purchased by me, and therefore count toward my accumulated total option choices."

I grinned. "You got it."

"Spells don't help me," Jaime said. "But I could use a book to read. Mind if I tag along?"

That was fine with us, so we grabbed our things and left.