Mark Chadbourn - The Burning Man

‘Explain that,’ Nelson said.

‘I couldn’t explain what you had the first time. Maybe this is what really happened.’

‘Shit,’ Tombstone hissed. ‘This is fucked-up. The digital signature was right before and it still is now.’

Neither Nelson nor Tombstone was prepared to voice the questions running through their heads.

‘He’s still a terrorist, right?’ Tombstone said eventually.

‘Except Homeland Security don’t want him. Tried to pull the files, but all the intelligence community are tied up with whatever’s going on in China.’

‘What about that sword? We can hold him on hidden weapons-’

‘Bit big to hide,’ Church said. ‘It’s a sword.’

‘Don’t get smart.’ Nelson studied Church. ‘You’re involved in all this. The sword, the birds, the homicides — it’s all too much of a coincidence.’

‘There aren’t any coincidences,’ Church said.

Tombstone answered a ringing phone, and when he was done he said to Nelson, ‘Another one. In a car outside the Guggenheim. Throat torn out, only partially eaten, perp was probably disturbed. Guess that clears him.’ He nodded towards Church.

Nelson slipped on his jacket. ‘We’ll take him with us. He’s involved. I want him knee-deep in it, see how he reacts.’

Church protested, acutely aware of being dragged further and further away from the hunt for the Second Key. But at least out of the precinct he might have a chance to escape and double back to free Shavi and Tom. ‘Okay. I’ll do what I can to help.’

As Nelson and Tombstone led Church out of the room, he saw a detective with a sly face talking hastily to Oakes, the Homeland Security Action Man. A moment later Oakes had summoned Nelson over and was forcefully questioning him.

‘Oakes is coming with us,’ Nelson said when he returned.

‘He doesn’t trust us?’ Tombstone said. ‘I thought Homeland Security had walked away from this.’

‘Reckons he’s the only one who can keep an eye on sword-boy.’ He turned to Church. ‘He’s going to be on you like slime on a toad. Me, I reckon you were better off with us.’

Frank Lloyd Wright’s distinctive inverted ziggurat that housed the Guggenheim Museum loomed up pure and white in the darkness. In front of it, a car was surrounded by yellow police tape, the doors flung open so that it resembled a bird about to take flight. Crime lab cameras flashed, the white glare turning the arterial spray across the windscreen into a Rorschach blot that haunted Church with hidden meaning.

As the traffic rolled by feet away, Nelson escorted Church to see the victim. It was a man, early thirties, long blond hair, tattoos.

‘Know him?’

Church shook his head, the iron smell of the blood and the exposed flesh making him queasy. He felt the looming presence of Oakes at his back and the psychological pressure of the spiders.

Oakes grabbed Church roughly by the shoulders. ‘What have you got to do with this?’

Church threw him off. ‘You and your little spider-buddies don’t like it when you don’t know what’s going on, do you?’

Rage bloomed in Oakes’s face, and Nelson was forced to intervene. ‘Leave him.’ He held Oakes’s gaze, underlining who now had the authority.

Tombstone approached, examining his BlackBerry. ‘The CMU downloaded the feed from the camera.’ He nodded towards a red light high up a lamp post across the street. ‘We’ve got him leaving the vehicle, but still no ID. This is what disturbed him.’

The BlackBerry’s screen showed a car swerving to avoid the victim’s fishtailed vehicle, slowing as it passed, and a teenage boy leaning out of the rear window to shout abuse. Instantly, the wild-haired killer leaped out of the passenger side of the victim’s car and chased the disappearing vehicle until he moved out of range of the camera.

‘Got a short fuse if the kid pissed him off,’ Tombstone noted.

‘What kid?’ Oakes said.

‘The one hanging out the back window.’

‘I didn’t see a kid.’

Tombstone patiently rewound the footage and indicated the boy.

‘What are you talking about?’ Oakes said. ‘I don’t see any kid.’

Tombstone and Nelson eyed him with an expression reserved for complete idiots. Uncomfortable, Oakes shuffled off to talk to the members of the crime lab. Tombstone whistled. Nelson tapped his foot. They shared a quick conspiratorial grin.

Church was turning back to the car when a realisation struck him with astonishing lucidity. Oakes really didn’t see the boy on the CCTV footage. There were only two people in the world that the Void and its servants the spiders couldn’t see: the two Keys.

‘Show me again,’ he said, unable to hide his eagerness.

Nelson’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded to Tombstone to replay the footage. The boy had blond hair and a strong, honest face. The car was being driven by a large man with a wide-brimmed hat, but Church couldn’t make out his features, and there was somebody else in the back. But those two didn’t matter. The boy was the Key.

‘Can you trace that car?’ he asked.

‘Why would we want to trace the car?’ Nelson said.

‘I think it might be something to do with the homicide.’

Tombstone tapped his head. ‘That’s, what, intuition? Or is the word … insanity?’

Nelson didn’t respond. ‘Jude Law here knows something.’

Tombstone shrugged, and returned to the footage to get the licence plate number.

Accompanied by the constant crackle of the police radio, they drove south, past steaming manhole covers turning the after-hours people into ghosts, surrounded by the slow, constant movement of the sleepless city.

At one point, Nelson’s phone bleeped with an incoming text. Tombstone eyed him with weary sympathy. ‘Gina?’

‘Yeah. Guess I’ll have some time on my hands this weekend.’ Church sensed sadness, but Nelson’s face gave nothing away. ‘You got a girl, Jude Law?’

‘Yeah …’ The hesitancy in Church’s voice was as clear to Nelson as it was to him.

‘I know how it is.’ Nelson looked out of the side window thoughtfully. ‘I know how it is.’

They ended their journey near Washington Square Park in the Village. The smart buildings of New York University surrounded the large open space, the arch in the centre glowing spectrally in the gloom. Oakes pulled up behind them, watching every movement with an unblinking stare.

The owner of the car from the CCTV footage was a twenty-one-year-old Latino with an asymmetric haircut wearing sunglasses despite the hour. He was thin and small and clearly not the person who had been driving the car.

A hint of unease troubling his usually implacable face, Nelson returned after questioning him and two others from the video store where he worked. ‘Guy says the car hasn’t been out tonight. Engine’s cold. Confirmed by two witnesses.’

‘Lying?’ Tombstone asked hopefully.

‘Don’t think so.’

Church instantly knew the recording on Tombstone’s BlackBerry would no longer show the car, or the boy hanging out of the rear window. The notion struck Nelson and Tombstone at the same time.

‘Getting a little creeped-out now, Jude Law,’ Nelson said. ‘Time to start putting my mind at rest.’

‘I can’t,’ Church said.

‘Don’t talk to him,’ Oakes interjected. ‘He’ll only lie.’

‘Agent Oakes, do you have a take on this?’ Nelson asked pointedly.

‘There’s some glitch in the system, that’s all. Recordings don’t change. Just focus on the crime, Detective. You have a serial killer. Catch him.’

‘A serial killer who doesn’t fit any FBI profile. Three random homicides in rapid succession by a cannibalistic sociopath. Doesn’t happen.’