The Burning Man

6

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.