In Plain Sight

9 The Visitors

It was such a nice day that Alex decided he would walk all the way to his office. The fact that when he got there, he needed to tell the lovely and worried Evelyn Rockwell that her brother was, in all likelihood, dead, had nothing to do with it whatever. Danny had been right, of course — there was still a very slim chance that Thomas was alive, but that felt like false hope.

He had to tell Evelyn the truth.

Alex stuck out his arm to hail a cab, but the park was only a block away and that gave him an idea. Right by the entrance to the park stood a public phone booth, so he crossed the street to it and dialed Evelyn’s number.

“Hello,” she said after four rings.

“Evelyn, this is Alex Lockerby. I have some information about your brother. How soon can you meet me by the carousel in Central Park?”

“Um. About twenty minutes, I guess.”

“Fine. I’ll wait for you there.”

Evelyn promised to hurry and hung up. Alex strolled across the park to where the carousel stood. He bought a bag of hot peanuts from a vendor, then picked a bench a little way away. The ride was noisy enough that anyone walking by wouldn’t be able to overhear them.

Alex took out the pack of Bert’s cigarettes and checked them. Only five left. With a sigh, he lit one, then amused himself, pitching an occasional peanut to the squirrels while he waited. He had just got down to the bottom of the bag when Evelyn hurried up. She was dressed in a dark green skirt and matching jacket over a white blouse, and her makeup was perfect. She flashed him an earnest smile that made him a little lightheaded.

“I came as soon as I could,” she said, sitting down next to him. “What news do you have?”

Alex’s good mood evaporated and he wadded up what remained of the bag of nuts.

“I’m sorry, Evelyn,” he said in the gentlest voice he could muster. “I believe that Thomas is dead.”

He was expecting hysterics, but Evelyn simply pulled an embroidered handkerchief from her clutch and dabbed at her eyes.

“I knew it might be something like that,” she said, her voice full of emotion. Alex offered her a precious cigarette from Burt’s dwindling pack and she took one. Her hand trembled as she lit it. “Can you tell me what happened?” she asked, her voice weak.

“I don’t know,” Alex said. “My finding rune couldn’t locate him. Now that could just mean that he’s left the city. On the other hand, it’s clear that someone wanted something from him, that’s why they tore up his apartment. I think they were looking for this,” he said, taking the blue leather book out of his jacket pocket.

“What’s this?” Evelyn asked, taking the book and flipping through its pages.

“This is a runewright’s Lore book,” Alex explained. “If your brother had gone on the run, he’d have taken this with him.”

“I don’t understand,” Evelyn said, her voice breaking. “Why would anyone kill Thomas for this?”

Alex took the book back and flipped through to the six special runes in the back.

“Have you ever seen anything like these before?” he asked. Evelyn looked at the pages as Alex turned them, then shook her head.

“Is this what Thomas was working on?”

“I think so,” Alex said. “These rune constructs are more complex than anything I’ve ever seen.”

“What are they? Are they valuable? Is that why someone wants them? Is that why Thomas…” Her voice trailed off and she suppressed a sob.

“They might be extremely valuable to the right person,” he said, and shrugged. “We runewrights usually keep our constructs secret, but Thomas may have discovered something that would be more valuable if he sold it.” He paged to the finding rune. “This is the one he spent the most time working on. It’s a finding rune. I have one that looks very similar, but I’ve never seen one laid out this way.”

“What was Thomas looking for?”

“I don’t know.” Alex shook his head.

“What about these others?” she said, flipping the pages. “What are they for? Is it possible they go together?”

Alex furrowed his brow. He hadn’t thought of that. He wondered why Evelyn had.

“I just want to know what happened to my brother,” she said in response to his questioning look.

Alex pointed to the page where she had turned. “This is some variant of a life rune,” he said. “Runewrights power our constructs when we write them. The longer we spend making the rune, the more power it has. With this,” he indicated the rune, “we can power our constructs instantly with our own life energy. It can make even a simple rune incredibly powerful. It can also shave years off your life in a matter of seconds.”

“Do you do that?” she asked, her eyes full of concern.

“No,” he said. “It’s extremely dangerous.”

“What about this one?” Evelyn said, turning another page.

“I don’t know,” Alex said, flipping through them. “I’ve never see that one, or this, or this.” He turned to a construct that looked like a roadmap of some crooked European city. “I think this one is a protection rune, but I have no idea what it protects from.”

Evelyn stared at the book, turning the pages back and forth until she lowered her head and pushed the cover closed.

“I don’t know what any of this means, Alex,” she said. “All I know is that my brother is gone, most likely dead.”

“I am sorry,” Alex said. “If you come with me to my office, I’ll refund the rest of your money since I only needed the one day and the finding rune.”

“No.” She looked up with intensity in her eyes. “I want to know what happened to my brother. I want you to find the person who killed him. If they killed him for these drawings, you need to figure them out, Alex.” She shoved the book back into his hands. “You need to find whoever did this and give my brother and me some peace.”

Tears were streaming down her face now, ruining her makeup. Alex had an overwhelming urge to put his arm around her and hold her close, to tell her it would be okay.

“You sure you want that?” he said instead. “I might spend a lot of time spinning my wheels and not find anything.”

“I’ve got some money my parents left me,” she said. “This is what I want.”

Alex couldn’t really blame her. Her brother was all the family she had, and someone had taken him away. Just like Father Harry.

“All right,” Alex said, looking her square in the eyes. “I’ll find out what I can, but no promises.”

“That’s good enough,” Evelyn said.

He waited while she fixed her makeup with the aid of a tiny mirror from her purse, then walked her out of the park to get a cab. He pulled the blue book out of his pocket as she rode away, wondering how he would find out who killed Thomas. Runewrights were secretive about their runes, especially new ones. It was unlikely that Thomas mentioned it casually to a friend.

Maybe he had a partner, someone who worked on developing these constructs with him? But a partner would already know the runes, he wouldn’t have to search for them in Thomas’ apartment.

Alex shook his head and put the book back in his pocket. He’d have to spend some time studying it later. Right now he had other things to worry about. As soon as Danny got him the warehouse manifest, he’d be traipsing all over town looking for Pemberton’s murderer. Until then, however, he had time to call in a few favors and hopefully find out something about the elusive Charles Beaumont.

He thought about that on the crawler ride to his office. If Sister Gwen had been right that Beaumont was a thief, he couldn’t be the kind of penny-ante thief that would sell pocket watches to a hock-shop. His clothes were too good for that. Beaumont was a man of means. Not rich, or maybe rich and frugal, but either way it made him an entirely different class of thief than some pickpocket or street thug. Alex was looking for a man who stole from rich people and that made him either a stockbroker or a cat burglar.

If he actually is a thief.

Alex pushed that thought aside. If Beaumont was a cat burglar, that made him one of the rarest types of thieves. Few people plied that trade — the stakes were too high. Rich people had safes and guard dogs and, on occasion, armed security. Beaumont’s thefts might be easy to find, but anything about him personally would be rare as hen’s teeth.

He’d look into it, but first he had to see if Danny had any word on the warehouse manifest. As much as Alex wanted to find Beaumont and track Father Harry’s killer, his first loyalty had to be to Danny, not to mention keeping himself out of jail.

“Morning, Leslie,” he said, entering his office. She sat behind her desk reading the paper. He expected a sardonic comment from her on his lateness but instead her face was serious. She nodded toward the inner office and mouthed the word Feds.

Alex groaned. He pulled Thomas’ Lore book out of his pocket and placed it on her desk with a nod. She immediately picked it up and put it in her lap.

“Any messages?” Alex said, more loudly than usual.

“Nothing,” Leslie said, just as loud. “There are some gentlemen in your office.”

“Okay, I’m expecting a call from Danny. Just take a message.”

Alex straightened his jacket and took a deep breath. Feds in his office were never a good thing. At best they mucked about with his investigations and at worst they kept trying to put him in jail for getting in their way. Of course they never told him that he’d gotten in their way until after the fact. He plastered a smile on his face and opened the door.

Two men waited for him, and neither of them could rightly be called gentlemen. The elder of the two looked like a G.I. recruitment poster, square jaw, flat nose, blue eyes, and perfectly slicked dark hair. He wore a blue wool suit with a gray vest, and his shoes were well-polished. He sat in one of the chairs in front of Alex’s desk with a fedora in his lap that exactly matched his suit and a leather briefcase on the floor by his side.

The younger man stood behind Alex’s desk, looking through the appointment book. He was average in height with wavy blond hair and blue eyes in a handsome face. His suit was gray but not so well-tailored. Alex could see the bulge of his pistol under his right arm.

Lefty.

“Something I can help you find?” Alex asked the younger man. He favored Alex with a sneer and moved around to stand behind the dark-haired man.

“Mr. Lockerby,” the other man said, standing. “I’m Agent Davis.” He stuck out his hand and Alex shook it. “This is my nosy partner, Agent Warner.” Alex nodded at the younger man, but didn’t offer his hand.

“What can I do for you, Agent Davis?” he said, sitting behind his desk. “May I ask what agency you’re actually with?”

Davis reached into his jacket and produced a large wallet containing a badge with the letters FBI clearly printed on it.

“We’re here for your help, Mr. Lockerby,” Davis said, returning his badge to his pocket. “We need your expertise. One of our investigations came across some rune lore that, well, we’ve just never seen before. We were hoping you could identify them, maybe tell us if anyone you know uses them?”

“I can take a look, sure,” Alex said, shrugging. “But I can’t help you with who might use them.”

The young Agent curled his lip, but Davis was unfazed.

“I understand your reluctance to involve a fellow runewright in an FBI matter, Mr. Lockerby, but I assure you, this is very serious.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you, Agent Davis,” Alex said. “I said I couldn’t. Runewrights are a secretive lot. We don’t share our Lore with each other.”

Davis seemed to consider that for a moment, then he nodded.

“All right.” He reached into the briefcase at his feet and pulled out a manila folder, tossing it onto the desk. “Anything you can tell us about these would be greatly appreciated.”

Alex opened the folder and felt his blood freeze. Years of poker had conditioned him to keep emotions off his face so he just stared at the six photographs the folder contained. Each picture was of a complex rune, drawn on a single sheet of plain paper. Alex didn’t have to examine them closely — he already knew them. All of them appeared in the last pages of Thomas Rockwell’s Lore book. He paged through the pictures slowly, giving himself time to think. Each rune was exactly the same as it appeared in the blue book. There was no way that was a coincidence. What was Thomas mixed up in that brought out the Feds?

“I recognize three of these,” he said, being careful not to tell an outright lie. He put down three of the pictures so Davis could see them. “This is some kind of finding rune, this is a heavily modified life rune, and this one is some kind of protection rune. They’re more complex than anything I’ve ever seen before. I’d have to study them to tell you more.”

“You sure there’s nothing else you can tell us?” Warner said, speaking for the first time. He had a midwestern accent, Iowa or Illinois. Alex smiled.

“I didn’t say that. Let’s take a closer look.” He rose and went to the filing cabinet behind his desk. He pulled out a multi-lamp like the one in his kit and clipped a ghostlight burner into it.

“What’s that?” Davis asked, a note of suspicion in his voice.

“Well,” Alex said, igniting the burner with the touch tip lighter on his desk. “These are just photographs of runes,” he said, indicating the six pictures. “I can’t really judge how the magic was laid down without seeing the originals.” He pulled a set of mustard-yellow spectacles from a case in the file cabinet and clipped them onto his nose. “This light will let me see if the camera picked up anything.” Davis and Warner exchanged nervous glances at that, but Alex continued as if he didn’t notice. “It’s a long shot, I know, but I wouldn’t want you boys to think I didn’t do a good job.”

Alex sat back down and held each picture in the light, scrutinizing it as carefully as he dared. The lines that made up the runes had been written in magical ink, so they glowed brightly, but they were the same lines visible under normal light. He hadn’t been lying about this being a long shot; magic auras like the ones these runes possessed required special cameras and special film to capture. Still, it made him look thorough.

As he paged through them, he noticed a small line of script on the bottom right of the pages the runes had been drawn on. Pulling out a magnifier from his desk, he scrutinized each one. All of them seemed to be written in some foreign language until he recognized a number at the end of one line. It was the number seven, but written backwards. The text wasn’t foreign, it had been written on the back side of each page. Whoever drew the runes had made the notes with the same pen and magical ink.

Wasteful.

Reading minuscule text backwards was hard, but after a few minutes of paging back and forth, he got it. Each note said the same thing followed by a page number.

Curiosity piqued, Alex decided to see if he could sneak some more information out of Davis and Warner. He laid the pictures out on his desk, then folded his hands in front of him.

“Agent Davis,” he asked. “What is the Archimedean Monograph?”

Davis about fell out of the chair and Warner looked like he wanted to go for his gun.

“Where did you hear that name?” Davis demanded, his calm, genial voice gone. Alex took off the spectacles and handed them to the FBI man.

“Right here,” he said, pointing to the photograph. He couldn’t see the writing without the spectacles, but Davis could, and he swore.

“How did you know to look for that?” Davis demanded.

“You asked me to,” Alex said, which was absolutely true.

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, scribbler,” Warner began, reaching into his coat. Alex tensed but didn’t drop his smile. He didn’t think Warner would shoot him right here in his own office, but the young man looked angry enough not to be rational.

“Warner!” a woman’s voice came from beyond the office door. It was cold and harsh and Warner froze with a guilty look on his face. “That will be quite enough,” the voice said, and the door opened. Agent Davis had regained his composure and he stood, making the chair available.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he said.

Alex didn’t know what to expect. From his position behind the desk, he couldn’t see the person standing just beyond the door. Then his breath froze in his chest as the most dangerous woman in New York walked into his office.