A Werewolf Among Us

ELEVEN: A Clever Enemy

St. Cyr bent over the corpse and examined it, then looked up at the others and said, "His neck's been broken. Unless I'm less observant than I think, it was done with a single blow. There's only one bruise, anyway." He looked back at the corpse and said, "How long has he been lying here?"

Jubal said, "I don't know."

Teddy said, "He must have entered with someone who had a key to the door, because the house computer does not have any record of his calling."

"Perhaps he had a key of his own," St. Cyr said. The corpse was lying face-down, and he turned it over so that he could feel inside of Salardi's pants pockets. "No key," he said.

"What would he be doing here?" Jubal asked.

"Perhaps he came to tell us something," Dane said. "Something that the killer didn't want us to know." He looked at St, Cyr, blinked, said, "Or does that sound too melodramatic?"

"Life is one big melodrama," St. Cyr said. "He might very well have had something I could use." He stood up and wiped his hands on his slacks as if he were dusting off the taint of death, although he knew it was not that easy to be rid of. "I understand he was a friend of yours, Dane."

Surprisingly, the boy did not attempt to deny it, "I spent days with him, recording interviews that would give me background on the Darmanian culture prior to man's settlement here."

St. Cyr said, "He could have come here with you."

Dane shook his head violently. "That's silly." He gestured to the body and said, "I liked Salardi, admired him. I never would have killed the man."

St, Cyr said, "The corpse is still very warm. Can you prove where you've been during the last hour?"

"In my room," Dane said. "Then I came down to the kitchen for a snack. I was there when the house computer asked for you. I thought that something unusual must be happening, and I was close enough to get here before you did."

Still a possibility.

Obviously.

"And you?" St. Cyr asked Jubal.

"I was in the kitchen too. Before that, I was working in the library, researching ancient Grecian patterns for a—"

"Can you prove it?"

"I was alone," Jubal said. He took a step toward St. Cyr, accidentally kicked the corpse in the shoulder, stepped back in horror. He said, "Look here, you don't still think it's one of the family responsible for all of this, do you?"

"If I do, do you want me to drop the case? I could pack up and get out tonight."

"No," Jubal said. "You've got to stay, especially after this."

"Then, yes, I still believe it has to be the family, one of you. Salardi was the only man outside of the family that was a possibility. He's dead and no longer in the running."

Jubal was clearly displeased, but he did not say anything more.

St. Cyr turned to Teddy and said, "Did you find him?"

"Yes, sir. I immediately notified the house computer through that robotic-link terminal in the wall, made a special request that you be summoned."

"You didn't touch anything?"

"I am aware of the dangers of obliterating evidence," the master unit said, as if St, Cyr had insulted it.

The cyberdetective looked at the two men and said, "Did either of you disturb anything in the foyer — after you came across Salardi?"

"We got here together," Jubal explained. "We checked the body to be certain he was beyond medical aid, but otherwise we were very circumspect."

'Teddy, I'd like you to go telephone the authorities; ask for Inspector Rainy, and tell him to get his ass out here on the double, along with two men to take up permanent residence if that is required."

"Yes, sir."

The master unit turned and floated quickly down the hall toward the nearest telephone. They stood silently in the foyer, waiting for it to return, not looking at each other, trying not to think about what had happened and what was going to happen when the police arrived. A few minutes later, Teddy returned. He said, "I'm sorry, Mr. St. Cyr, but the telephone does not seem to be working. I could not get a dial tone, and I had the house computer check out the mechanism, with negative results."

Without responding, St. Cyr, followed by the others, walked to the junction of the corridors, where a telephone rested on an ornate gold and white stand; he picked it up and listened to the silence for a long time, then hung up. He said, "Are all the phones in the house on this one line?"

"Yes," Teddy said.

"Isn't that odd?"

"No, sir. The house computer has a functional node that operates as a switchboard for all the extensions."

"You mean the phone is out of order?" Jubal asked. He looked as though he was ready to take on the president of the communications company. "That's unheard of!"

St. Cyr looked at the telephone and, as patiently as he could, explained: "Not out of order, Mr. Alderban. Someone has cut the lines."

No one had to be told what that meant.

St. Cyr turned to Teddy and said, "Is there a vehicle of any sort in the garage that could transport the entire family out of here?"

"We have a small bus, for excursions," Teddy said. "It is more than adequate." He was calm, rational, even-voiced. St. Cyr wished that he had to deal solely with machines; he could already see how the family was going to react to the news that they would cut and run.

"We'll leave in the bus," the cyberdetective said.

"Leave?" Jubal asked. But he was not disagreeing particularly; he was beyond that, but he was perplexed.

"We can only assume that the killer has cut off our ties with the outside world in order to make his final moves without fear of police intervention."

"Tonight?" Dane asked.

"It looks that way."

"But if we run—" Jubal began.

"At least we'll be alive tomorrow," St. Cyr finished. "Let's go get Tina and Alicia."

"And Hirschel," Jubal said.

"Yes, and Hirschel."

"Wait a minute," Dane said. His voice was high-pitched, excited, as it had been when they were with Norya. "If we split up, we could get everyone together much faster. I'll go tell Tina what's happening. Father, you go see that mother knows—"

"Forget that," St. Cyr said.

"What?"

"We stay together from now on. It'll take us longer to get ready, but we'll all be safer in the end."

Dane said, "Are you afraid that one of us might be attacked?" His voice contained no sarcasm, just an edge of fear.

"Or that one of you might attack someone else," St. Cyr said. The fear he thought he heard in Dane Alderban's voice could as easily have been faked. "I don't trust anyone in this household. The sooner each of you gets that through his head — and the sooner all of you become as cynical as I am — the less chance there is that the killer can get away with a fifth murder."

He turned and walked down the main corridor toward the elevator, conscious that they were behind him. He fought an urge to whirl about and see what they were doing, what expressions marked their faces. As long as two or more were at his back, he was safe. He just had to remember never to turn his back on a man alone — or a woman alone, for that matter.

Fifteen minutes later, Teddy led the way across the garage floor to the ten-seat bus that was parked in the last stall. The family trailed after him, more willing to evacuate the mansion than St. Cyr had imagined they would be. Only Tina had questioned the wisdom of packing them all in one bus when the killer might be one of their number, and only Tina had not been completely satisfied with his arguments for this course of action. She had said, "Bullshit."

At the bus, St. Cyr stopped them with one word and, remaining slightly separated from them, his own pistol in the chamois shoulder holster under his bandaged arm, said, "Do those of you issued the narcotic-dart pistols still have them?"

Dane, Tina and Jubal said that they did.

St. Cyr turned to Hirschel and said, "What have you got?"

The hunter took a nasty-looking projectile pistol from a holster under his jacket. The weapon had a short snout, a thick trunk where a large number of rounds were stored, a butt sculpted to fit Hirschel's hand. "It'll stop a boar, and it'll make confetti of a man."

The statement seemed to make Alicia Alderban ill, though the others did not evidence any reluctance to witness such a thing.

"Anything else?" St. Cyr asked him.

Hirschel smiled slightly and pulled a knife from his waistband. "It's good for close work, hand-to-hand combat. But it's also balanced well enough for throwing."

"Fine," St. Cyr said. "You all came prepared. Now if you'll just hand over the narcotic-dart guns, the projectile pistol and the knife, we can leave."

Jubal's face flushed, and he stepped toward St. Cyr with his blocky fists bunched at his sides again, the same pose he had assumed the first time the cyberdetective had implied that the murderer might be a member of his family. "What in the hell is this, Sc Cyr? Do you want to leave all of us defenseless? You've already told us that—"

"Jubal," St. Cyr said, cutting him short, "I think you're one of the most short-sighted sonsofbitches I've ever met."

The old man stopped and stared at the detective as if St. Cyr were some new, alien species. He was clearly not accustomed to being spoken to like that, without deference and respect. He had just walked into a brick wall.

"I think you've had money too long," St. Cyr went on. "You've always had life easy, never had to really compete, and now a few important parts of your brain seem to have atrophied."

It felt good, awfully good.

Emotional indulgence.

Until this moment, the cyberdetective had not realized fully how much the household had weighted him down, how depressed he was by the emotional barrenness of this old man. He looked at Tina and realized that her death would be taken as lightly as the others, absorbed by the family — a few tears shed, a few minutes of loss, and then back to the canvas or the typewriter or the guitar, back to the art. Somehow, that was more evil than the killer, more despicable than bloody murder.

St. Cyr said, "I told you the killer was here, among us. I haven't the faintest notion, yet, who he is. But I'm not taking any chances that he'll be on that bus, jammed in with the rest of us, with a weapon in his hand. I feel as if I'm on the verge of figuring out this whole damned thing, that it could break any time now. But until it does, until I can positively nail someone with it, we're taking every possible precaution. Now, please, hand over your weapons."

They complied with his demand.

The old man handed his gun over last, reluctantly. He watched as St. Cyr located a large piece of buffing cloth in the car-washing supplies cabinet and bundled the artillery together. He said, "I hope you'll remember that I'm still your employer, Mr. St. Cyr. I hired you; I pay you; and I can let you go."

"Bullshit," St. Cyr said.

"Fantastic!" Tina chimed in, grinning. "You're actually getting emotional; you actually sound like a human being; Baker."

"Scared," he said. "That's all."

"That's human enough," she said.

He smiled, nodded and said, "Let's get aboard. The sooner we're among other people, the better I'll feel."

The others trooped in ahead of him, providing him an opportunity to massage his bandaged shoulder, which had begun to throb painfully. He should have obtained a booster shot of pain-killer from the autodoc before they left, but he hadn't felt that there was time for that.

Teddy was the last in the bus; he swung into his niche beside the seat designed for a human driver. By-passing the wheel, he plucked several control leads from beneath the dash and plugged them into his gleaming body trunk.

St. Cyr sat in the last seat in the bus, a position from which he could observe everyone else. He touched his shoulder, pressed down on the bandages and realized that was no good. He was just going to have to be stoical about it.

Up front, Teddy's head swiveled on his body trunk and faced the rear of the bus, an unnecessary gesture, since the robot had no face except for the soft green sight receptors. He said, "Mr. St. Cyr, something has happened to the power cell."

"For the bus?"

"Yes. I am not even recording a trickle charge on the meter."

"Check it out"

The master unit detached itself from the control cables, opened the door and exited the bus. It opened a panel on St. Cyr's side of the vehicle, took one look in the small cavity that housed the compact drive system, closed the panel and came back into the bus. "The power cell is gone, Mr. St. Cyr."

"Gone?" He felt ponderously slow, as if he were reacting to the world at quarter speed, a man moving through syrup.

"Someone removed it."

Wearily, St. Cyr rose and herded them out of the bus again. No one objected, not even Jubal. Apparently some of his own fear had finally filtered down to them.

"We'll go in two groundcars," he told them. "Three of us in each, Teddy driving the first car. We keep the vehicles close together and keep an especially good eye on each other."

Perhaps the other power cells are also gone.

St. Cyr nodded to himself and directed Teddy to look into all the other vehicles. "All empty, Mr. St. Cyr," he reported as he floated back to them. "Someone's removed all the power cells."

St. Cyr looked at the others and smiled grimly. He was feeling grim; the smile was no stage piece. "One of you is certainly a clever bastard, always a step or two ahead of me."

"I'm frightened," Alicia said, moving closer to her husband. The old man put an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. St. Cyr could not help but wonder if that same arm had applied the pressure that broke Salardi's neck…

"What now?" Hirschel asked. He was the only one in high spirits.

"We're two hours or more from help, by car, but we have no cars. The telephones are out. The only thing we can do, until morning, is stay in the same room and keep watch in shifts, never more than three of us asleep at one time."

"Which room?" Hirschel asked.

"The kitchen, I believe. It doesn't have any windows."

Still somewhat angry at St. Cyr's put-down, Jubal said, "No windows? What does that matter?"

"I'm sure the killer is one of us," St. Cyr said. "But I'm still not ruling out other possibilities. Besides looking out for each of you, I don't want to have to guard the windows."

"Very good," Hirschel said, nodding his approval of the tactic.

St. Cyr had drawn his own pistol and was pointing it in their general direction. "Let's go."

Jubal said, "Is the gun really necessary?"

St. Cyr looked hard at the old man and, this time, did not attempt to conceal the pain that worried his shoulder like sharp teeth. Evenly, he repeated: "Let's go."

This time no one questioned his authority. They went up to the second level, where — if they survived — they would spend the remainder of the night.