Marked Fur Murder (37 page)

Fimsby's face hardened. “Fine. In the end, it doesn't matter what I say, does it? I'm only human. I can't generate terajoules of energy with a wave of my hand, or drop the ambient temperature a hundred degrees on a whim. You're going to do whatever you want to anyway, and to hell with insignificant human customs like the police or courts. If you can ignore natural laws, why should you pay any attention to ours?”

And there it was. The Unktehila in the room, so to speak. When it comes to deception, violence, and manipulation, you don't have to go looking for mythological monsters; the human race makes its own all the time.

Ben leaned forward. Suddenly I could smell ozone in the air. “You did it. You really did it.
You killed my sister
.”

“You have no idea what you
are,
” Fimsby hissed. “It's not just your potential for destruction, which God knows is immense. No, it's the very fact of your
existence
. You invalidate the idea of science itself. You should be impossible, yet here you sit; mocking everything I know to be true, revealing that the world as I know it is an illusion, an ill-fitting suit of rational clothing hung on a ravening beast of chaos. There is nothing you can do to me worse than you have already done.”

“You're wrong,” Ben said. “About everything. No, the universe isn't the clockwork mechanism you thought it was. It's big and messy and confusing and contradictory. So what? People—and yeah, I count myself among them—are made to deal with messy and confusing and contradictory. We try, we screw up, we figure things out and move on. It's not reliable or predictable or even consistent, but there's this terrific concept built in. It's a term engineers like to use, but it's popular with chefs, too:
forgiveness
. You'd probably call it chaos, but I like to think of it as freedom. It's what lets you make mistakes. Making mistakes is how you learn, and learning is how you stop making mistakes and get it right. That's what Anna was trying to do, and that's what she thought you were helping her with.”

Fimsby shook his head. “When somebody like you makes a mistake, people die. Maybe by the
thousands
.”

“Or maybe they don't,” Ben said. “Maybe they get saved by the thousands. Maybe somebody like me pushes a hurricane away from landfall, or convinces a tornado to go around that trailer park. That must have crossed your mind.”

Fimsby's voice was unrepentant. “I couldn't take the chance.”

“No? Well, life
is
chance, Doctor. Just because you don't know the outcome doesn't mean you refuse to roll the dice. And even if they aren't as reliable as mathematics or chemistry or physics, there are still some things worth gambling on.”

Ben looked over at me. I blushed. I never blush.

“Thunderbirds are a lot more human than you seem to think,” Ben said. “You assume we're just going to pass judgment on you because we can. Because we think we're above you. Well, I don't feel entitled to pass judgment on anyone except maybe another chef, and even then I'll give them a lot of leeway. I may have a supernatural heritage, but I have a human one, too. You might be a murderer, but I'm not. I'm nobody's executioner.”

“Speak for yourself,” Teresa said coldly. And I do mean coldly; the temperature was dropping like umbrella prices in a drought. “You've as much as admitted your guilt, which is all the proof I need. But Ben's right: We're not the monsters here. So I'm going to give you more than you gave Anna: a choice.”

“Which is?” he asked.

“Turn yourself in to the authorities and confess.”

“And if I don't?”

Teresa smiled. It was a very wintry smile. “Then I'd advise you to spend the rest of your life in a submarine at the bottom of the ocean, because that's about the only place I won't be able to find you.”

Fimsby just sat there, his shoulders slumped. And—eventually—he nodded.

I pulled out my phone. I already had officer Forrester on speed-dial.

 

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
THREE

Fimsby had used a gas-powered needleless syringe to inject the drug into Anna when they were both in the water. He'd concealed the injector inside a pool noodle, one of those floating Styrofoam tubes people use as flotation devices. A playful poke with the end of a fluorescent orange toy had been easy to get away with, and the injector used an orifice only 0.18 millimeter in diameter to deliver the paralytic to her subcutaneous tissue in a fraction of a second. Once the drug went to work he just had to make sure she was facedown, then toss the hair dryer in.

To his credit, Fimsby didn't make any outrageous claims about supernatural beings to the police. He knew how that would sound, and there was no way for him to prove his allegations—Ben and Teresa certainly weren't going to help him. He told Forrester he'd killed Anna over a lovers' quarrel—believable, considering the public fight the Metcalfes had that night—and in a way, it was even true. All scholars have a deep love of the subjects they study, and Fimsby had studied weather. He'd stared deep into the eyes of storms, admired the elegance of snowfall and the passionate fury of lightning. In his mind, Anna had taken all that away from him—so he'd taken her life in return. As is often the case in love gone wrong, at least one of the parties involved did nothing other than exist, and wound up being punished for it.

Love beats death. But death usually gets a few nasty punches in first.

“I'm proud of you,” I told Ben. We were curled up together on the couch in my office, Whiskey at our feet. Tango was prowling around somewhere outside. “You proved him wrong, you know. You didn't just talk the talk, you walked the walk. You are one talking walker.”

“Thanks. You have no idea how hard that was—really, I just wanted to toss him into the sky and drop him from about a thousand feet. Maybe hit him with a few thunderbolts on the way down.”

I snuggled into his shoulder. “But you didn't. You did the right thing, and he'll still pay. Not a lot of weather in prison.”

“Oh, I don't know.” Ben's voice was hard. “I have the feeling every single hour he gets in the yard will be subject to sudden, unseasonable downpours.”

I didn't answer that. He was still angry, and had every right to be. He'd let it go in his own time.

“It's been a rough morning,” I said. “Still planning on going to school?”

“Yeah, I think so. Feels like the right thing to do, you know? Anna did her best to learn about her abilities, and I should do the same. She just picked the wrong person to confide in.”

I nodded. “And you're sure Teresa is the right one?”

“Hell, no. Like you said, she doesn't know nearly as much as she claims. But she
does
know more than me, and she's willing to share. There's more to it than that, though.” He shifted position so he could look me in the eye. “She's right about us Thunderbirds having enemies, she just got the details wrong. If our people are coming back to the world, we're going to need to band together. That means leadership, that means planning—or the next Fimsby that comes along might take out more of us. Might even be working for some three-letter government agency.”

“Okay, valid concern. If, you know, anyone can actually convince a bureaucrat of the existence of the supernatural.”

He shrugged. “I don't know. But better to be united and informed than alone and ignorant. The next Thunderbird that suddenly wakes up to what they can do might not be as responsible with their powers as Anna was, and all it takes is one confused newbie to make all of us seem like monsters. We're going to have to do something about that.”

“So that's the new career you're training for? Finding and training fledgling Thunderbirds?”

“Something like that. We'll see how it goes. For now, I'm happy to spend my days cooking, my nights with you, and getting in touch with my roots when I have the time. Which, when you think about how time works in Thunderspace, is pretty much unlimited.”

“I think you mean feathers, not roots.”

“I think I mean I'm going to be too exhausted to come up with proper metaphors.”

I grinned and snuggled back under his arm. “Then that'll be my job. You whip up thunderstorms, I'll come up with clever ways to describe them.”

“I can't wait.”

“Metaphor Girl! With her lightning-quick wit, her thunderous vocabulary, and her whirlwind of meteorological references!”

Whiskey lifted his head. [You might want to add deluge of verbosity. In the interest of accuracy, you understand.]

I squinted at him. “Are you saying I talk too much?”

[Not at all. I'm saying that compared to you, a babbling brook only mutters sporadically.]

Ben laughed. “You're not exactly the speechless type yourself, Fido. And by the way, what the hell was that thing you turned yourself into that freaked Firstcharger out so badly?”

[It's a Hungarian breed called a komondor. Thickest, heaviest coat of fur of any canine breed.]

“Looked kind of like a four-legged, albino Rastafarian,” Ben said.

[They're sometimes called mop dogs because of their appearance. Those long cords are a kind of natural armor, protecting them from attackers like wolves. They can take up to two and a half days to dry after a bath.]

“Well, you definitely got a reaction out of her. Which was the plan, right?”

I shrugged. “Why would you think that? That would be mean and petty and pretty much impossible to prove.”

He laughed again. “Uh-huh. I think I should get going. I've got a little time between now and lunch, and I plan on packing a full day of instruction into it.”

I sighed and moved over to let him up. “Okay, okay. But if she works you too hard she'll have to answer to me.”

“Walk me to class?”

“Ooh. Only if I get to carry your books, too.”

Ben called Teresa on the way out the front door to let her know he was on his way. “Yeah, I'll meet you in the graveyard. What? Over by the statue of the bear. No, the
bear
. I can barely hear you, either. No,
barely,
not—never mind.” He disconnected with a grimace. “Damn phone isn't working. Lots of static, and now I'm not getting a signal at all.”

I frowned. “Weird. That's what happened last night, when I tried to call you about the serpent. I wonder if it caused it, somehow.”

[Entirely possible,] Whiskey said as we walked past the swimming pool. [Powerful spiritual entities have been known to interfere with electronic devices.]

“By accident or on purpose?” I asked.

[Both. But let's be alert; we're still uncertain what this Rainbow Serpent's intentions are.]

We entered the graveyard and almost immediately saw Eli, who flapped his way over to us and landed on his customary perch, a nearby headstone. “Well, it's about time. I thought I was going to have to wait all morning.”

“Had this little matter of sending a killer to jail,” I said. “What's up?'

“What's up,” Eli rasped, “is your cat. And what she's up
to
is making trouble. In
my
Crossroads.”

I've noticed that when there's a problem he wants me to solve, Eli usually refers to the Crossroads as the responsibility of yours truly. When he's genuinely annoyed, though, ownership reverts to him.

“
My
sweet little kitty?” I said. “Getting up to
no good
? Heavens to Betsy.”

“Heaven's not where she's headed if she keeps acting like this,” Eli growled.

“It can't be that bad,” Ben said. “What's she been doing, using a grave as a litter box?”

“No. She's laying siege to a portal. It's more psychological warfare than anything else, but she needs to stop.”

“Which portal?” I asked.

“The one to the snake afterlife.”

I frowned. “I'll take care of it.”

I pretty much had most of the major portals and their locations memorized. The one that led to the serpentine paradise was over by the north fence, an unassuming little brass plaque set flat into the ground. Tango was crouched directly in front of the grave, staring intently into empty air as if she were watching a mouse hole.

The hole she was so focused on only came into existence when someone—a skinny, scaly, legless someone—wanted to use it. Then a white oval opened in the earth, looking a lot like an eye, and a bright orange snake slithered out.

Well, attempted to, anyway. I'm pretty sure it wasn't expecting the black-and-white streak that pounced on its head with both paws. Those paws passed harmlessly through its immaterial body, true, but the experience still must have been disconcerting. The snake reacted by wriggling violently away, which led to a prolonged pouncing attack by Tango, who looked just about exactly like a cat trying to catch the little red dot of a laser pointer.

She stopped and abruptly began licking her paw. The snake had already disappeared into a clump of grass, no doubt extremely confused and more than a little traumatized.
What, I left heaven for this? I could be digesting a woodchuck right now!

“Tango,” I said. “What in the world do you think you're doing?”

[How terribly feline. When in doubt, terrorize something.]

I shook my head. “Tango, you can't just scare the crap out of a bunch of dead snakes as a form of therapy, or to attract the attention of a gigantic, weather-controlling Australian—wait, did I remember to bring my notebook with me? No, I left it in the office.”