License to Ensorcell (30 page)

“Everyone looks so respectable.” Ari sounded disappointed. “I’m surprised.”

True enough, most of the people in attendance wore casual but clean and up-to-date clothing. I noticed that a lot of them had gray hair, and among the men were a sizable number of gray beards, too, but on the whole the crowd could have been waiting to get into a day baseball game. I glanced around and saw a TV news truck parked across the street from the lake. The reporter and the cameraman were leaning against the truck and sipping coffee with a disappointed air.

“Those reports of crazed hippies in San Francisco have been greatly exaggerated,” I said. “That all ended thirty years ago.”

Signs there were in profusion, though, most of them carrying some version of the message: “Keep our portals in the park.” I even spotted a couple of retro peace symbols. A youngish woman in a gray tweed skirt and turquoise silk blouse trotted up to us and held out a flyer printed on pink paper.

“Would you like one?” she said politely.

“Yes, thanks.” I took it and noted the headline, “MILITARY SPENDING OUT OF CONTROL.”

“You know, I never even knew this pillar thing was here,” she said. “But I don’t see why the army should get to have it.”

She trotted off again. Just when I was about to pronounce the demonstration boring, four beaten-up old cars drove up and parked right out in the middle of the street, where they blocked the westbound traffic. A swarm of young men dressed in black, with their faces half-covered with bandannas and ski masks, emerged and headed for the lake. As they walked, they chanted, “No army no,” at the top of their lungs.

“Time to leave, Ari,” I shouted over the noise. “The anarchists have arrived.”

The speaker with the portable bullhorn asked the lads in black to be quiet, but they drowned him out with random catcalls and began to push their way into the crowd. The TV reporter and cameraman put down their coffee and grabbed their equipment. Ari tapped my arm to get my attention, then jerked his head in the direction of Transverse and our car. I let him lead me away just as the demonstrators started booing the anarchists. The formerly peaceful crowd started to seethe like a pot of boiling water. Out in the street car horns blared as the two-way traffic tried to make its way around the abandoned cars.

We’d gone maybe a hundred yards when the chanting died away. I paused and looked back. A phalanx of gray-haired men had surrounded the anarchists and were marching in lockstep toward the sidewalk, slowly, deliberately, and smiling all the while. One step at a time they backed the lads in black right up to the edge of the street. Inside this human corral the anarchists pushed this way and that, but they were too disorganized to mount an effective countermove. On the lake side of the human clot, other people hurried to join the grays, as I began calling them. They all stood quietly, saying nothing, merely thickening the lines around the disruption so that none of the anarchists could break through.

I glanced at Ari and saw him watching with a half-smile, partly surprise, partly admiration.

“Years of practice!” I told him.

In the distance off to the west I heard police sirens coming. The anarchists made a break for their cars, pushing toward the street side of the human corral. The demonstrators stepped away and let them go. By the time the police arrived, the lads in black had taken refuge inside their cars. They might have just driven away if the police had only left well enough alone.

Four squad cars in all pulled up. The police had a bullhorn of their own, and they used it to demand the crowd disperse. Apparently the organizers hadn’t bothered to get a permit. Most of the demonstrators did as they were asked, fading into the shrubbery or striding around the lake to the sidewalk. The anarchists clambered out of their cars and began shouting at the cops.

As we hurried away down Kennedy Drive, I glanced back again to see the cops shoving a couple of the guys in black up against a squad car while the other anarchists jeered and swore. A shower of rocks sailed through the air. I stopped looking. I knew that I’d see the violence on the TV news, while the peaceful demonstration would go unremarked. We reached our car safely, but even though we’d left the trouble behind, Ari insisted I roll up the window and lock the door on my side. We could still hear shouting, horns honking, and the police bullhorn.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Ari said. “Those older men, that is. I’ve seen far too many of the other sort.”

“I’ll bet. Those guys were good, all right. Old hippies, probably. Aunt Eileen told me that there used to be people called monitors for the big marches. They knew how to keep things under control.”

“I can’t imagine your aunt marching in the streets.”

“She was just a kid at the time, but the older O’Briens were all involved in the peace movement. A lot of Catholic families were.”

More sirens wailed, these coming from the east. We watched a shiny black police van rush by, most likely crammed with cops in riot gear. The anarchists had gotten what they wanted: a full-scale incident.

“Once this current case is over,” I said to Ari, “I’ll have to investigate those guys in black. I wonder if they’ve got full-blown Chaos affiliations.”

“I should think it’s obvious they do. They are anarchists, after all.”

“Yeah, but the question of who’s affiliated with what is never that simple. Look at those cops. They’re part of an institution that’s just as obviously aligned with Order, right? So what did they do? Waded right in and ended up causing a Chaotic situation.”

“Well, you have a point in this particular case. An excess of zeal on their part. But the police have the right to break up an illegal demonstration.”

“Illegal? In the States we have the right to peaceful assembly. We also pay for this park with taxes. You could argue that the demand for a permit is what’s illegal here.”

Ari drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while he considered. For a moment I thought he was going to argue further, but he shrugged and glanced my way with a carefully neutral expression.

“Where to?” Ari said. “You can’t work here.”

“That’s for sure. Okay, take Transverse out of the park. I’ve got an idea.”

I gave Ari directions to the Sea Cliff neighborhood, which borders on Land’s End at the northwestern edge of the city. If I could pinpoint where Sneezy lived, I figured, the police could lay a trap for Doyle.

We drove out Thirtieth Avenue to Lake, then wound along the twisting, terraced stretch of that street, lined with big homes on thick green lawns that must have cost a small fortune in water bills. This little enclave caters to the well-heeled bourgeoisie, successful orthodontists and the like, rather than the really rich. If ostentation can be quiet, then Sea Cliff has quiet ostentation down pat. We ended up on Sea Cliff Avenue itself, which marked the edge of things urban. Ari parked in a small lot the city had provided for those who came for the view.

Since I’d run into Doyle’s shield earlier, I decided to get out of the car. The metal frame would impede me enough, I figured, to make breaking through his defenses more difficult. I walked over to a chain-link safety fence that blocked access to the dangerously uneven cliff top and the straight drop down to the ocean. Even the weeds on the other side of the fence looked trimmed and well-watered.

The big houses, some starkly modern, some a vaguely Mediterranean style, all of them smooth with stucco walls and big flat windows, sprawled up the hill behind us. Ari joined me and stood gaping at the view. We’d come west beyond the Golden Gate Bridge and were overlooking an inlet of the ocean, a dark winter blue, not the bay, although the Marin headlands lay shadowed by fog to the north. I pointed out the bridge itself off to the east, wreathed in sea mist. A pair of brown pelicans flew by, skimming the water far below our man-made perch.

“This really is an amazing city,” Ari said. “You turn the corner of a city block, and you’re faced with raw nature.”

“California’s all like that,” I said. “It grew out of the wilderness, and one of these days it’ll fade back into it, too. Human things do that. We’re all only temporary, humans and our cities both.”

“Oh, yes. Not that we like thinking about it, but living in the Middle East you can’t escape it. Jerusalem may be five thousand years old, but all around it are the ruins of places that would be even older—if they still existed.”

While I got ready to work, he leaned against the hood of the car and looked back at the view of the bridge and the misty bay beyond. I steadied my mind and did SM: I—first for Doyle, then Johnson. I picked them up easily because they were distracted, arguing again, nattering back and forth like whiny children.

“Ari,” I said. “They’re not far from here.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Can you give me a direction?”

“Let me try for Sneezy.”

As soon as I started the Search Mode: Personnel, I knew. I picked up nothing, not fear, not nerves, not her mind, nothing. My throat suddenly ached like the worst case of strep in the world.

“The bastard!” I croaked. “He strangled her.”

Ari swore in Hebrew and clicked on his phone. As soon as I broke off my attempt to reach her, the pain in my throat disappeared. I’d picked up a time-stream scar, but most likely a very short-lived one. Although Ari still held his phone, he’d not dialed it. He stood with his head cocked, listening to some distant sound. In a moment I heard it too: police sirens, coming closer. His phone rang with mangled Bach.

“Nathan here,” Ari said, then paused, listening. “What’s the location on that?” Another long pause. “I’ll meet you there.” He put the phone away, then turned to me. “A dead woman in a house on Lake Street. Strangled in her bed. Her housecleaner found her when she came to work.”

“Why does Sanchez think this murder’s related to the others? I mean, I know it is, but how does he know?”

“The killer left a silver bullet on the pillow beside her.”

“The bastard!” I would have said more, but fury made it impossible.

We drove over to the house that had formerly belonged to Sneezy, a two story pale pink stucco number on the flat just at the edge of the neighborhood. It sat behind the long lawn I’d seen in my earlier scan. Even without the address we would have known it by the bevy of squad cars parked in front. As I looked around at the other houses on the street, all of them two and three stories of smoothly painted stucco, with heavy doors and gated entranceways, I thought of fortresses, but I saw women behind windows, half-hidden by drapes, peering out at this disruption in their privileged midst. I could feel their fear without even trying.

We found a parking spot about halfway down the block. I stayed in the car and let Ari go alone to speak with Sanchez. I was remembering Y’s casual remark about our policy, to leave criminals to the local police if at all possible. Well, it wasn’t possible, not anymore. I had wanted to obey the policy, to leave Johnson and Doyle to the police—I included Ari in that category—and put all my energy into finding my brother. But Doyle and Johnson had just added another of my fellow citizens to their list of victims: first Mary Rose, then the driver of the carjacked truck, next the obstetrics nurse, and now Sneezy, who had taken Doyle into her home and her bed only to end up strangled.

Although I couldn’t have given a rational reason, I knew that Doyle had killed her. Sometimes, like Jerry, I do just “know” things, usually things I wish I didn’t. Johnson also remained dangerous. He might decide he needed to lay down another false clue by killing someone equally innocent. Since I’d tested the strength of his talents, I knew that the police alone would never catch him—not without me.

Ari returned in about fifteen minutes. Sanchez had everything well in hand, he told me.

“The housecleaner’s hysterical, of course,” Ari said. “She apparently had been in the house for some time before she discovered the body.”

“Poor woman! That would creep most people out, all right, to find out you’d been busily cleaning away with a corpse in another room. Did Sanchez tell you anything about the victim?”

“A divorcee in her late forties with plenty of money, apparently. The housecleaner told him that the dead woman had been lonely but recently had found a boyfriend.”

“Doyle,” I said. “I wish I could prove that for a court of law.”

“The fingerprints will, eventually. Forensics is dusting down the room. They’ll match up with those they obtained from the windmill.” Ari leaned forward and put the car key in the ignition. “Shall we go?”

“In a minute. I want to risk an LDRS first.”

Even if Johnson or Doyle did pinpoint my location, the knowledge would do them no good, because we’d be leaving. I sat in the backseat with my pad and crayons and thought about our pair of killers. Johnson came in loud and clear.

Fear—not mine, his—a stomach-wrenching panic slammed into my mind. My hand grabbed a crayon and swept a gray line halfway across the page. A black scribble, next, and rage poured over me, a waterfall torrent so strong that my hand spasmed. He hated Doyle, raged and hated because his former partner had brought him to the place where the terror lived.

I turned the page and went on drawing, lots of green, tangled branches, the blue car speeding off. All at once I felt Johnson sense my probe. I wrested away my end of the connection, but he tried to follow. I began to count down from a hundred in threes. By the time I reached thirty-seven, he’d given up.

I got into the front seat and handed the drawings to Ari.

“I think Doyle’s driving away in this one,” I said. “The picture represents something Johnson saw, not something Johnson did.”

Ari looked at it, then punched in a number on the car’s phone.

“Nathan from Interpol,” Ari said. “Our government contact has given us a partial license plate on the blue sedan.” He paused. “Right. That’s the first car Johnson was spotted driving, but we think Doyle has it now.”