Night Shifters (82 page)

“News on the body?” Kyrie asked.

“Well . . . yeah, kind of. But . . . the thing is . . .” He cleared his throat. “I got a phone call, from our medical examiner who was examining the . . . er . . . prophylactics they found in the planters.”

Kyrie rolled her eyes. “You can say condoms, Rafiel. I know the word.” An impish grin. “I’ve heard it a time or two.”

A sound very much like a raspberry from the other end of the phone. “The medical examiner called it prophylactics. Of course, he also called the stuff inside genetic material, which he says exactly matches that of the first two vics.”

“What, both of them?” Tom asked, sounding absolutely shocked.

“Well . . . no, one each. And no, there is no indication . . . I mean . . . the condoms were definitely used for . . . er . . . heterosexual sex. I mean . . . there were vaginal . . . secretions . . .” He paused in what seemed to Tom like an excess of embarrassment, like he had suddenly choked on it and couldn’t go on. Tom grinned and waited, and eventually, after a noisy throat clearing, Rafiel came back on. “So it would seem that the male employees are not in fact a problem . . . though I can tell you, one of them, who apparently lives nearby and who dropped by to see if we needed him to show us or tell us anything, is definitely a shifter. His name is John Wagner. College student. Nice guy. Body builder. Works here part-time. I don’t know what his shifted form is, but he . . . well . . . I’m fairly sure he doesn’t have vaginal secretions.”

“Unless his shifted form is as a woman,” Tom said, wryly.

“Uh . . . I don’t think so. You know, the other thing, the other part of the exam . . . of the . . .”

“Condoms,” Kyrie said.

“Yeah. The other part of it is that it showed . . . well . . . The medical examiner thought this was from salve or cream, possibly a traditional medicinal one and that it should be easy to trace because of the exotic ingredient, but I’m not so sure. You see, there were . . . other cells on the sample. On the outside . . . They appear to be . . . Sharkskin cells. The examiner also thinks, possibly, because that was the shark tank, it might be someone who handles the sharks on a regular basis, although I don’t even want to think what he imagines the handlers do with the sharks to get the cells in that particular region of their bodies.”

Kyrie shrugged. “I bet you he thinks it’s poor hygiene. And it might be.”

“Oh, yes,” Rafiel said. “It might be. On the other hand . . .”

“On the other hand, it could be something completely different,” Kyrie said.

“Like someone who turns into a shark and back,” Tom said. Because there was the very definite feel that the shift was never as complete as it seemed in either direction. More than once, Tom had shaken out his boots to find dragon scales inside them, even though he’d never worn them while a dragon and usually stepped well away from them before he shifted. And sometimes, when he washed his hair in the shower, one or two green and gold scales fell out.

“Yeah,” Rafiel said. “That’s what I’m very much afraid it is.”

“In which case,” Tom said, listening to Rafiel munch, “it’s not so much a matter of maliciously pushing her—we’ll assume her, since Old Joe said so—victims into the tank. It’s more like your buying your doughnuts. A little snack to see her through the night.”

The munching stopped. “Ew. Not like my doughnuts.”

“Well, of course not,” Tom hastened to say. “Unless you eat cannibal doughnuts.” And then seized with sudden inspiration, “You know, Kyrie, we could do those next year for Halloween. Fill them with raspberry, or something, and put names on them . . . you know, like Joe or Mike, and call them cannibal doughnuts.”

“Sure, we could,” Kyrie said. “If our objective were to totally gross out and drive away our clientele. Besides, we can’t do doughnuts properly. Not without a dedicated fryer.”

“Maybe there will be enough money by the fall to buy another fryer,” Tom said.

“Uh,” Rafiel interrupted, “before you guys start arguing domestic arrangements, the other thing is, that I tried to find Old Joe, because, you know, since he was right about the last corpse—by the way, the name was Joseph Buckley; he was a software salesman—I thought he might be able to give me details and pinpoint who the woman might be he was talking about. But I can’t find him anywhere.”

Tom sighed. “He’s very, very good at hiding. I think he’s been doing it for centuries. If he’s right about having been alive since before horses . . .”

“Yeah. Probably. Anyway . . . I can’t figure out where he’s gone, so if you hear something let me know.”

And then he hung up, leaving them in the storage room, staring at each other.

“I wonder if John Wagner is a member of the Rodent Liberation Front,” Tom said, biting the corner of his lip, in the way he did when he was thinking of something unpleasant. “I think he’s one of our regulars. I remember the description, and also processing credit card bills for John Wagner.”

Kyrie nodded. “Yeah, he is. He usually comes in for breakfast on Wednesday. And he’s very fond of sweet bread, you know, Hawaiian bread. He always asks for a toast of that. Something about growing up in Hawaii.”

“Interesting.”

“Why interesting?” Kyrie asked.

“Because . . . if I remember correctly—and mind you, this is me remembering some cheap book or other that I read at some shelter for runaway teens, years ago—but if I remember correctly, Hawaii is the only place that has legends of shark shifters.” He frowned. “Well, the Japanese might too. But Japanese shifter legends are very difficult to understand. I mean . . . they’re not Western in structure. So even though I was very interested in all stories about shapeshifters, I don’t think I remember any Japanese ones.”

Kyrie nodded, but she felt her forehead wrinkle. “You know . . .” she said. “I . . . I don’t know. I can’t understand why I never smelled John Wagner. I mean, I serve him every week. You’d think I’d have sniffed him out.”

Tom frowned. “Rafiel and I were talking about that, because of sniffing out Khaki Guy, you know. Both of us tried and neither of us could get a scent, but really . . . it’s so cold, and then, the thing is . . . I’ve been homeless, but I washed. At least once a day. He clearly doesn’t. There were smells, you know, of food and stuff, which I’m sure he’s dropped on his clothes. And there was a smell of tobacco, too, and it was really hard to make out his smell amid all those, much less in the cold. So we don’t know if he’s a shifter, or just paranoid about shelters and closed-in situations. Which lots of people are, for reasons that have nothing to do with being shifters.”

“Obviously,” Kyrie said. “But John Wagner washes. I’m sure of it. He usually looks squeaky clean.”

“Yes, but then when does he come in? Early early morning, right, before six a.m.? Before we quit. And I bet you he works days. So at six a.m. or before that, he’s freshly washed, and probably has deodorant and aftershave on. Mix that with the smells of the diner—from fries to eggs and bacon—and you’d need to be looking for the smell of shifter to identify him. Or any other shifter.”

“Yeah,” Kyrie said. She nodded. “Well, I’m going to be looking for it, from now on. In just about everyone. Rodent Liberation Front and Ancient Ones and triads!” she said in a tone of great exasperation.

“Oh, my,” Tom said, and smiled apologetically.

The aquarium was probably noisier than when it was open to the public, Rafiel thought, as he stood back, watching the frantic activity around him. People were snapping shots of the tank area and McKnight, with remarkable efficiency, probably born of the fact that Rafiel was frowning vaguely in his direction, was directing three people—three of Goldport’s part-time officers, more used to breaking up drunken brawls among students than to doing crime scene processing—in combing through everything around there, including the planters by the side of shark tank.

And Rafiel, having quietly gotten away from the thick of things, had managed to sidle up to John Wagner, who was leaning against the far wall, under the plaque that explained the sharks’ habits—unpleasant—and habitats—more extensive than Rafiel was comfortable thinking about.

He was a young guy, light-haired. Probably in his twenties, and he looked like he devoted serious time to body building. His file, as well as the brief conversation that Rafiel had had with him, indicated that Wagner was in college. Rafiel wondered what he majored in. Perhaps physical education or sports medicine?

Rafiel leaned beside him, casually. He noted that the man gave him a brief, amused, sidelong glance, and he returned a friendly smile. “So,” he said, trying desperately to sound as if he was just making casual conversation, “you work out?”

The amused glance took him in again, and a lip curled ironically on the side. “A bit,” the young man said. “Now and then.”

And then Rafiel decided to go for broke, with the type of question that, should his interlocutor refuse to understand it or to respond, could be passed off as a joke of some sort—and which would certainly sound like a joke to anyone overhearing it. “In human form?” He had figured that Wagner’s was the shifter-smell all around the shark area.

If he expected Wagner to be discomposed, he missed his mark. The smile only became a little broader, and he said, “Sure. The other one isn’t really conducive to it. Unless I wanted to work on my ear muscles. And then there’s all the drool.”

“What?” Rafiel asked, unable to help himself. He cast a quick glance at the other people in the room, who were all surrounding something and taking pictures of it.

Wagner cackled, in unbecoming satisfaction. He muttered something under his breath that sounded disturbingly like “dumb ass,” then added, “If you can smell me, what makes you think I can’t smell you?”

“Oh,” Rafiel said, now totally out of his depth. “Oh.” He turned around to look at Wagner fully. The young man was grinning at him.

“Do you . . . do you know many of your . . . of our kind?” Rafiel asked. He’d never before interviewed anyone fully aware of what he himself was.

Wagner shrugged. “A couple. A friend back home, and then one more in college.”

“Oh. What . . . are they?”

“Uh?”

“What forms do they take?” Rafiel said, his eye still on his subordinates and colleagues to make sure no one approached to hear this very strange conversation.

“Oh. My friend, Keith Kawamoto, back home was a bear. Which was very weird in Hawaii. Oh, sure, we had lots of fun roaming the beach late at night in our shifted forms. And he used to hang out in the Aiea Loop Trail. Weird-ass reports to everyone who would listen—and a lot of people who wouldn’t—by the tourists. But who is going to believe tourists talking about a bear and a dog walking along the beach at low tide? Or a bear just hanging out? There was some enquiry once, to see if a circus that was passing through had lost a trained bear, but that was about it.”

“And then here?”

Shrug. “There’s a guy in the dorms who turns into a unicorn. Weird-ass thing to turn into, and of course no one believes it even if they see him. Sometimes we get reports of a white horse hanging about, is about it. It’s assumed to be a prank.” He shrugged. “After I smelled him out, we became pretty good friends. I keep telling him he’s a unicorn so he can go in search of virgins, but he doesn’t look like he’ll ever have the courage, if you know what I mean.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Engineering student and a bit of a dumb ass, but a nice guy.”

His matter-of-fact approach to the situation and the way he seemed to have co-opted Rafiel as a buddy, whether Rafiel wanted to be one or not, were disconcerting enough that it took Rafiel a moment to collect himself. “So . . . you don’t . . . I mean . . . I’ve had reports from . . . from another shifter . . . of a spider-crab shifter here in the aquarium. So I take it that’s not true. I mean . . .”

“What? Because I didn’t include him in my count? Nah, I didn’t count him because I don’t really know him. I know of him, but I don’t know him. I think everyone in the aquarium—well, everyone who works here after-hours—has seen him. Weird-ass old Japanese guy, you know, all wrinkly and stuff. He looks like the Japanese guys in those reports they used to do where they found some old World War II soldier, who had been defending the same island in the Pacific for fifty years, ready to expel anyone who tried to land, only no one ever did.”

“Uh . . .” Rafiel said. “So, you’ve talked to him?”

Wagner shook his head. “Nah. He doesn’t talk to anyone. I don’t even know if he speaks English, or if he was brought here in crab form.” He shrugged. “I know he’s been here for about ten years. It must be weird, you know, to have a form where if you shift you have to be near or in water. I don’t know what I’d do if that were my problem. I mean, you can’t always control when you shift.”

Rafiel nodded. He couldn’t imagine it either.

“So no one has talked to him?”

“Not that I know. Of course, the other people don’t know he’s a shifter. Anyone who is not expecting it, and who sees a little old man climb the side of an aquarium and plop inside, and disappear, thinks they’re just seeing things, you know. So they talk about him as a ghost. If you go on-line, this aquarium is in Colorado’s list of most haunted places. Just because of the old Japanese man. And they’ve made up all sorts of weird-ass shit about him. You know, that he was eaten by sharks here or some shit like that.” He shrugged. “But as far as I know he’s never talked to anyone. He just sits there and watches.”