Changeling Detective Agency - Shadows In The Starlight Part 19

Damian ambled in and regarded her handiwork. "I'm tempted to make some comment about needing to see the big picture."

"Fortunately, you're man enough to resist temptation.""Not that I've noticed. Okay, what now?"

"Watch. And try not to talk too much. It's hard to hold onto the image if I get distracted."

Gwen took a deep breath and called to mind the man she'd pulled from Irena's memory. The translucent image began to take shape as Gwen projected it powerfully onto the papered wall.

"Holy s.h.i.t," Damian murmured. To Gwen's relief, he sounded impressed, not freaked out. "I get it. It's like one of those lame light projectors teachers used back in the day."

"Less taking, more drawing."

He picked up a pencil and started to trace the image. By the time the vision faded, he had a reasonably good sketch. He stepped back, pursed his lips, and considered.

"Not exactly wallet-size."

"I know a RISD student who can scale it down for me."

"Sounds like a plan. In the meanwhile, I'll take a look at the books, see if I can find this guy's mug shot."

"Are you sure that's a good idea? Showing up on the weekend is the sort of thing that'll put you on Walsh's radar."

His face hardened. "Do you want to catch this guy, or not?"

"But Quaid-"

"He'd be there, too, if he could. So would you, if you were still on the job."

Since Gwen couldn't argue with that, she gave Damian a see-you-later wave and reached for her cell phone. She'd switched it off to avoid interruption. During that brief blackout, she'd missed three calls, all from the same number.

Harley Faden answered on the first ring.

"Where the h.e.l.l have you been)" he demanded "And I'm not talking about your physical location. I don't know what parts of cybers.p.a.ce you visited, but something really big and ugly followed you home."

"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"I found those sonograms for you, and tried to send you a scanned copy. No can do-there's spyware on your computer, and fairly sophisticated stuff. When I send you something, it tries to follow the path back to me. Wait a minute."

Gwen heard a brief clicking of keys, and he let out a low whistle. "It did better than just try-it got past my first firewall. Hang on."

This time the clatter of his keyboard went on for several moments.

"Ha! Got the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d nailed down-nope, there it goes. Holy s.h.i.t, Gwen! Seriously, where have you been recently?"

"Online? Nowhere exotic."

"Well, whatever you've been doing has attracted some high-powered attention."Gwen thought back to Winston's, and the pictures taken of everyone who came to the club. Someone had used those pictures to identify and locate everyone who'd been there the night of the raid. Yeah, someone on the sidelines of her game definitely had some megageeks on the payroll. It was disturbing to know that these guys were still working even though Edmonson was out of the picture.

"Got any advice?" she asked.

"Give me your address. Real world, not e-mail. I'll come right over with a software program that'll hunt down and kill most spy-ware. Once your system is clean, we can go over my reports."

She gave him the address and hung up, then carefully took down the life-size sketch and rolled it up. She left a message on the phone machine of the art student who did an occasional odd job for her, telling him to pick up the scroll at the gate and have the eight-by-ten version back as soon as he could possibly swing it.

She left the scroll where she'd said it would be and opened the gate for Harley's little red two-seater.

Harley was one of those people whose voice didn't match the visual. His nasal, slightly whiny voice suggested a geek stereotype-a scrawny, twentysomething, low-budget Bill Gates. In the flesh, he resembled an out-of-shape lineman, from the big cubic-zirconium studs in his ears to the flabby remnants of once-heroic biceps to the belly that hung over his belt and stretched the faded Patriots jersey to the limits of the fabric's tensile strength. His head was bald, his black beard was sprinkled with gray, and rumor had it he'd worked in military intelligence toward the end of Vietnam.

Apart from the inherent oxymoron in "military intelligence," Gwen was willing to buy that. Harley definitely knew his s.h.i.t. The fact that he was also a church-lady gossip with less moral backbone than your average squid made tabloid reporting a natural career choice.

She hopped into his car and rode up to the garage with him. He inserted a disc into her laptop's drive and tapped a few keys. While his spyware hunted down invaders on Gwen's computer, he spread a series of seven fuzzy black-and-white pictures on the desk.

"These are the sonograms for Erin Westland, Helene Tremaine, and Vivian Meekins. These were taken over a period of three years, but they're all the same person."

Gwen squinted at the blur, trying to make sense of it. "How can you tell?"

"How can you miss it? Look here; see these three small blobs, with the tubes running down from them?

Those are the ovary triplets. Same in all seven ultrasounds."

"So they're the same person."

"I'll go you one better," said Harley. He gathered up the photos, fanned them like a deck of cards, and brandished them with a read-'em-and-weep flourish. "These are all the same pregnancy."

"How can you tell?"

"What's the first thing new parents look for?"

"How the h.e.l.l should I know?" A terrible thought occurred to her. "Sweet Jesus! Don't tell me you've reproduced."

"Ha. Much laughter on my part. C'mon-ten fingers and ten toes? It's a cultural cliche, chickie. If you look very, very closely, you'll see that this little dude has an extra digit. Check the piggies on thisshot-it's the one with the best angle."

Gwen took one of the pictures and studied the blurred squiggle that looked more like a chicken embryo than a future child. Sure enough, there was an extra tiny stub on one of the little feet.

Erin Westland had been pregnant for almost four years. Which meant, among other things, that Kyle Radcliff was not Patrick's father.

An hour later, Gwen was sitting in Kyle's downtown office and none too happy about being there. Sure, he was a son of a b.i.t.c.h, but she wouldn't wish the news she carried on any living soul.

"Did you find them?" he demanded.

"I've learned a few things," she said cautiously, "but mostly everything I've found just leads to more questions."

"Great. That's just great." He slumped into his chair and gave her a resigned look. "What do you need to know?"

Gwen settled down in one of the wing chairs opposite his desk. "For starters, does Patrick have an extra toe on one foot?"

He looked startled. "No. He was perfectly normal. In fact, he was a beautiful baby."

"Were you right there in the room when he was born?"

He shook his head. "I know that's the fashion these days, but neither Erin nor I wanted that. As I've said before, she was very private about certain things. She just wanted the midwife, no one else."

Gwen made a mental note to place another call to Vermont and steeled herself for the hard part.

"Tell me about Erin's s.e.x life. Leave out the boring parts, which would be anything including you."

He let out a short bitter laugh. "So, you did manage to find out a thing or two about Erin."

"You knew she was fooling around?"

"She was a s.l.u.t," he said flatly. A bitter smile stretched his lips. "Well, what do you know. I finally figured out what you two have in common."

Gwen folded her arms. "Real nice. You're talking about the mother of your child, right?"

"As far as I know," he said glumly.

"You have any reason to doubt paternity?"

"I always a.s.sumed Patrick was my son, even though he looks so much like Erin. Now I'm not so sure."

"When did you find out she was involved with other men?"

His jaw clenched so hard that a muscle twitched alongside his mouth. "Yesterday," he admitted.

"I'm going to need a name." Something flickered in his eyes that prompted her to add, "Or a list."

"I can do better than that. I can get you pictures."He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a manila envelope, which he threw into Gwen's lap.

She slid out a sheaf of eight-by-ten prints and began to leaf through them. The pictures caught Erin in a wide variety of compromising positions-the girl was nothing if not flexible-with several attractive partners. Gwen shuffled through them until one caught her attention. He was young, blond, and very familiar.

Gwen knew this man-or more accurately, this changeling-as Adrian Archer.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

The rest of the weekend pa.s.sed quickly. Gwen left a message at Extreme for Adrian Archer, making it plain he needed to call her immediately. She called Jason and left a message warning him about the spyware that had shown up on her computer and letting him know there was a good chance his system had also been infected.

She stuffed three twenties into an envelope to mail to the artist who'd scaled down the sketch. It was a quick job, but he'd faithfully translated the big sketch, and even added some depth and shadow without changing the subject's appearance. Gwen fed the original into her scanner and sent a copy to Tamar. By sunset, the nun's contacts would have it all over the streets.

After a brief hesitation, she dialed Ian's number. She had a lot of b.a.l.l.s in the air right now, but Ian was right-she needed to explore and master her "Qualities" as soon as possible.

For the first time she was actually looking forward to it. After all, look at how successful she'd been with Irena. Granted, she'd scared the c.r.a.p out of the poor kid, but the end result was a d.a.m.n good lead on the girl's former captor and her friends' current location.

Ian answered on the first ring. "Ready to resume the lesson?"

"As a matter of fact, that's why I called. Can you come over again tonight?"

"Let's see-moonrise is around seven tonight. I can meet you in the same place, shortly before."

"I'll be there."

She hung up and dialed Marcy's work number. Jeff Monroe answered with a crisp, "District attorney's office, Ms. Barlett's line."

"Hey, there. Is your boss around?"

"Gwen," he said, suddenly sounding much more tentative. "I've been meaning to call you."

Her brow furrowed. "Problem?"

"I'm... not sure."

"Just spit it out," she said impatiently.

"Not easily done during work hours," he said softly. "And speaking of which, I was late to work the night after our date. Marcy wasn't very happy with me.""What? You want me to put in a good word for you with the boss?"

"No!" he said sharply. In a lower voice, he added, "I don't think the a.s.sistant DA needs to know I was sleeping with her best friend."

She still wasn't following, but she did catch his use of past tense, as in was sleeping.

d.a.m.n. A good man was hard to find, and vice versa.

"I get it," she said, letting him off the hook easy. "One of those office-politics, conflict-of-interest things."

"I really can't talk about it right now. I'll call you."

The phone went dead. Gwen shook her head in bemus.e.m.e.nt and dialed the number again. Jeff reprised his spiel.

"Marcy?" she requested.

"Oh. Sorry. I'll put you through."

Marcy answered her phone in the same brisk tone her a.s.sistant had used.

"Not much news on the investigation yet," Gwen said. "I'm just calling to see how you're doing."

"No news," Marcy said slowly. "But you have no reason to think they might be..."

"None," Gwen a.s.sured her. "But I've got to tell you, Kyle's luck with women went straight downhill after you showed him the door."

"You know, that should brighten my mood considerably. The fact that it doesn't worries me a little."

"No s.h.i.t. What's going on?"

Marcy sighed. "Kyle's not the only one who's having problems at home. Trudy has been... I'm not sure how to put this."