Night Shifters (91 page)

“What do you mean ‘violate it’?” For just a moment, Mr. Lung’s urbane mask seemed to slip. He set his mouth into what would have been a grin, except that it displayed far more of his small, sharp teeth than any natural grin could display. “He wouldn’t dare.”

Kyrie could swear she saw an extra pair of nictitating eyelids close, then open from the side, but she knew it couldn’t be true. She looked away from him, hastily. “I don’t know,” she said. “I know the following: he’s a sadist. He’s not as much in control of himself as he thinks he is. He seems to have decided he likes me, or at least is not willing to hurt me, for now. And he’s looking for a scapegoat for the deaths that brought him here.”

“He should be more concerned,” the dragon said, “with the other deaths. The ones that originally got you involved.”

“Yes,” Kyrie said. “But he doesn’t seem concerned with searching out the true culprits or investigating anything. He wants to protect himself, and get out of here with his . . . reputation undiminished.” Mentally she added to herself that at least she hoped he wanted to get out of there. The idea that he had a thing for her and that he might stick around to make himself agreeable to her was driving her insane. In the long list of suitors she’d rejected, Dante Dire was something she’d never met. Something she didn’t need.

She started telling the dragon about her encounters with Dire and more, about what she sensed and feared from the creature. When she was done, Mr. Lung swept the cabbage into a mound, and looked at her over it. “So, you fear he might inadvertently kill the young dragon? While baiting him?” He looked skeptical. “We are not that frail, Ms. Smith. Nor that easy to kill.”

“No,” she said. “That is not what I fear at all. What I fear . . .” She shook her head. “You know Tom, such as he is.” She smiled a little. “Hatred of authority and all, he insists on looking after those he thinks he’s obliged to protect. To . . . to keep them from harm. As such, he’s . . . well . . . he doesn’t want me hurt. And he doesn’t want Rafiel hurt, nor Keith, nor anyone in the diner. That girl reporter getting killed just outside the diner scared him. He thinks it’s up to him to save us all. And I’m very afraid he’s about to do something stupid.”

Mr. Lung was quiet a long time. When he spoke, it was in measured tones. “I would say he will do something stupid. That sense that he must do something he’s completely unprepared to do . . . I’ve seen it before. He will get hurt.”

“Yes,” Kyrie said, feeling a great wave of relief at being understood. “That’s what I thought. He will get hurt.”

“No,” Mr. Lung said, with great decision, his face setting suddenly in sharp lines and angles. “No. Himself would not want him hurt. I will do what it takes. What is your plan?”

“Right,” Rafiel said over the phone as he drove away from the doughnut shop where he had dropped off Lei Lani. “And I want you to check the backgrounds of the aquarium employees,” and to McKnight’s protests answered, “No, nothing special, okay? Just basically their resume. But check with the places where they’re supposed to have studied and all.”

“You . . . suspect one of them is an impostor?” McKnight asked.

“I don’t know what I suspect,” Rafiel said. “I just want to check it out.”

“Oh,” McKnight said. “Now?”

“Now would be good,” Rafiel said, as sternly as he could. “Call me as soon as you have anything.”

He hung up before McKnight could formulate an answer, and set a course towards the laboratory to drop off the petroleum jelly. He was fairly sure the petroleum jelly would have sharkskin in it. He was also fairly sure that the skin had come from the scrapings in that baggie Lei had on her desk. It had taken all of Rafiel’s self-control—plus some—to avoid giving away how obvious all this was. Except that he could feel a theory assembling, like an itch at the back of his brain. If he had to bet, he would bet that Lei Lani was the shark shifter. And he would bet she took her dates to the aquarium and then . . . made a snack out of them.

The problem was, even if it proved that she hadn’t gone to the University of Hawaii, even if it could be proven that she wasn’t who she said she was . . . how could he be sure she was a shark shifter? And even if he were sure she was a shark shifter, how could he be sure that she was committing these heinous crimes? Or that she was committing them on purpose? Or that she knew what she was doing?

In a normal crime, you knew. And if you didn’t know—if you weren’t absolutely sure that the criminal knew right from wrong, or that he was in full possession of his faculties, you had the courts. Rafiel’s job was supposed to be to provide a case to the courts. Not constituting himself judge, jury and executioner. That would make him no better than Dire.

No . . . he needed to go and talk to someone. He looked at the clock on the dashboard. Middle of the day. Normally both Kyrie and Tom would be at home and awake. He wasn’t sure how the strange schedule was affecting things. He also knew they wouldn’t be home. Rafiel had left their key with his father, who said his uncle would have the bathroom repaired in the next two or three days. But for now, Kyrie and Tom would be at the bed-and-breakfast. Or at least one of them would be. Almost for sure.

Rafiel parked in the back of The George. A quick look inside revealed Anthony at the grill, which meant Tom at least was off. The tables seemed to be attended to by Conan and Keith. That meant . . . maybe both Tom and Kyrie were off.

Turning away from The George, Rafiel crossed the parking lot, went up the broad stone steps flanked by sickly-looking stone lions—or perhaps dogs—and up to the front door of the bed-and-breakfast. The sign on the door said do come in, and Rafiel did. In response to a light tinkle from the bell affixed to the back of the front door, the kindly-looking, middle-aged proprietress came from the back of the house, wearing a frilly apron and smelling vaguely of vanilla.

“Hi,” Rafiel said. “I’m here to see my friends, Mr. Ormson and Ms. Smith?”
And don’t I sound like I have a truly interesting social life, the way I keep visiting Tom and Kyrie in their room.
He felt himself blush but smiled at the woman.

“Oh, sure. Just a moment,” she said, heading to the antique mahogany desk in the middle of the room. “I’ll just give them a ring to make sure they are decent and want to see you.” Her smile somehow managed to soften the implication that he was an interloper or trying to disturb their privacy under false pretenses. She pressed some buttons, put the phone to her ear. “Mind you, I think only Mr. Ormson is in. Ms. Smith—” She stopped abruptly and her voice changed to the mad cheerfulness that people reserve for barely awakened males and slightly dangerous dogs, “Oh, hi, Mr. Ormson! Your friend, Mr.—” a pleading look at Rafiel.

“Trall.”

“Mr. Trall is here. He would like to see you. Is it okay if I send him up?”

A series of rasps answered her and she said, “All righty, then. I’ll send him up.” And then, in her normal voice, to Rafiel. “He says to go on up. You know where the room is, I presume?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve been there before,” Rafiel said.
Not that it would surprise anyone at the station to hear this. They would think that, at one stroke—so to put it—both my aloofness to my dates and my odd changes of clothes midday are explained.
The idea amused him, but it still made him blush, which he was fairly sure made him look very guilty.

He more or less ran up the stairs, all the way to the top floor, where he knocked lightly on Tom’s door. There was the sound of steps approaching the door, and then a disheveled, unshaven Tom, in his underwear—and had Kyrie bought him jockey shorts with little dragons on them? Either that or Tom’s sense of humor was worse than Rafiel had anticipated—holding a flailing kitten in one hand, opened the door.

“Hi,” Rafiel said, walking in. “Sorry to disturb you. I can see I woke you.”

“’Sokay,” Tom mumbled, followed by something that might have been “Never mind.” He closed the door and set the orange furball gently on the floor. “’Scuse me a moment?”

Rafiel nodded and Tom ducked into the bathroom and closed the door. Rafiel heard flushing and the shower running, then splashing of water. In what seemed like less than three minutes—spent mostly in pulling Not Dinner off Rafiel’s pants, which he seemed to believe were the climbing part of a jungle gym—Tom opened the door again and emerged, wrapped in a white robe, with his hair in a towel.

“Nice turban,” Rafiel said.

Tom glowered in response. He had shaving things out on the marble-topped vanity. A spray-on shaving cream can, and one of those razors that seemed to come with an ever-increasing number of blades. Even so, it all looked very Tom-like and unnecessarily difficult to Rafiel who, knowing Tom, was only surprised he didn’t shave with a straight razor and use a brush to apply lather to his face. “I use an electric razor,” he blurted out.

Tom, in the process of swathing his face in shaving cream, so that he looked like a turbaned Santa Claus, gave Rafiel a questioning look, then shrugged. “You’re light-haired,” he said, speaking in a weirdly stilted manner, almost not moving his lips—probably to avoid getting shaving cream in his mouth. He rinsed his hands. “To get my beard properly shaved, I need to grind the electric razor into my skin, and then I end up with burns. Besides,” he shrugged, “when I started shaving, I was homeless. They have hand razors in those little kits shelters give away as charity. Electric razors not so much.”

The idea that Tom had been homeless for years seemed insane, Rafiel thought, as Tom shaved a strip of cream off his face, rinsed the razor and looked at him. He had unearthly blue eyes, very intense in color. They looked like nothing so much as the blue on the type of pioneer enamelware often sold at touristy shops. It was disturbing to find himself under scrutiny by those sharp, bright eyes.

“Talk,” Tom said.

“Hey, I’m supposed to say that,” Rafiel said. “I’m the policeman.”

He sat down on the one loveseat from which he had an unimpeded view of the bathroom. Tom, who had shaved another strip of cream and beard, shrugged. “If you didn’t have something to talk about you wouldn’t be here waking me.”

“Well,” Rafiel said. “I do need to talk to someone and you and Kyrie”—he shrugged—“are practically the only friends I have. At least the only friends I have that I’m not related to. And that I can . . . you know . . . be frank with.”

“Right.”

“But it’s not like I know anything. It’s more like I need to figure things out.” Not Dinner, having ascended the heights of Rafiel’s lap, was climbing under Rafiel’s shirt. “What’s he—?”

“Notty does that,” Tom said, in a resigned tone. “Crawl under your clothes, I mean. He’s a baby. Cold.”

“I suppose,” Rafiel said, though frankly, if he was going to have a feline getting in his clothes, he’d much rather—by far—it were Kyrie. “All right. Well, these are my suspicions.” He proceeded to lay out the case against Lei Lani, such as he could make it out. Her half-truths, her exaggerations. As he was talking, the phone rang.

“Boss?” McKnight’s voice.

“Yes?”

“That woman, Lei Lani?”

“Yes?”

“She doesn’t seem to have graduated from the University of Hawaii. The aquarium there never heard of her, either.”

“I see,” Rafiel said. “Do a full records search, would you?” he said and hung up before McKnight could protest. He related the knowledge to Tom, who raised his eyebrows.

“But the fact she didn’t attend the University of Hawaii,” Tom said, as the blade went swish-swish across his face, rinse-rinse under the faucet, and then swish against his face again, “doesn’t mean that she is a shark shifter.”

“No,” Rafiel said. “And that’s what’s making me uncomfortable. Look . . . I wish I could smell her out, but I can’t. John Wagner says that aquatic shifters have pheromones you can only detect in water, which makes sense, of course, except that it makes it really hard to figure out who they are.”

“Yeah,” Tom said, rinsing the razor and setting it aside and then rinsing his face and drying it. He removed the towel from his hair, and started brushing the hair out vigorously. “The thing is—”

“The thing is that she might just have been taking boyfriends there, and when her boyfriends were found dead in the aquarium, she panicked and decided to put the guilt on someone else. It’s entirely possible,” he said, “that someone else is a shifter—shark or otherwise, and responsible for getting the victims in the tank once Ms. Lani is done with them. For all I know, the Japanese spider crab shifter—if there really is one—shoves people in the tank because he disapproves of fornication in the aquarium.”

“Wouldn’t the Japanese spider crab have done that before?” Tom said. “I mean, from what you said, he’s been at the aquarium for years, right?”

“But we don’t know that Ms. Lani or someone like her has been having fun at the aquarium for that long,” Rafiel said. “This could be a response to something perceived as a new wave of immorality.”

“I guess,” Tom said nodding. “Which, of course, leaves us up a creek without a paddle, because we can’t prove that Lei Lani is a shifter. And even if we could, how could we prove that she’s the one getting them in the shark tank?” He crossed the room to where his tote bag was open on the floor, and retrieved underwear, jeans and a red T-shirt, then retreated with them all to the bathroom, closing the door till the barest crack remained open to allow the sound through. “I mean, the victims are dead. They can’t exactly tell us what went on.”