A Werewolf Among Us Read online

  The elevator opened onto the garage, where a number of vehicles were parked in waist-high stalls. Teddy led them across the tile floor and through an irising door into the workshop where he crafted silverware.

  "The cabinet is over there," the master unit said, pointing.

  The white metal storage box measured approximately three feet high by four feet long, perhaps twelve inches deep. It was bolted to the stone wall, and it appeared to be more than averagely secure.

  Rainy crossed the room and climbed onto the work table below the cabinet, stood up, brushed his hands off and carefully examined the seams for chipped paint or the traces of a recent touch-up job. Satisfied that no one had forced the cabinet open, he said, "Okay, Teddy. Would you unlock it now, please."

  The master unit glided forth, levitated higher on his gravplates and unlocked the storage unit Rainy swung the door open and looked inside. Two dozen keys were pegged there, all made from the same blank but with differently serrated edges.

  "Which key?" Rainy asked.

  Teddy pointed to the right top corner peg.

  Rainy did not touch it. He said, "I'll send a man down to take prints from it later. But I don't really think we're going to have much luck with it."

  St. Cyr asked, "How does the emergency key cycle the door open in the absence of electrical power?"

  Teddy swiveled toward the cyberdetective and said, "It disconnects the automatic locking mechanism and reveals a wheel fronting a hydraulic jack that pumps up the door. One has only to turn the wheel half a dozen times to raise the door."

  "Perhaps that would be long enough to be discovered, enough time for the intended victim to sound an alarm," St. Cyr observed.

  "No, sir," Teddy said. "The hydraulic jack is essentially silent. And the intended — the intended victim might not be facing the door — or, for that matter, might not even be in the sitting room at all."

  Rainy climbed down from the work bench, dusted himself off and looked around the shop at the kilns, lathes, vices, drills, and benches with permanently fixed engraving tools. He looked at Teddy and said, "What's all this for?"

  Teddy explained the silver crafts that he and Jubal "collaborated" on, and he offered an example, a goblet that was only half-engraved. It was tall and slim and thus far decorated with a naked girl riding a tiger the whole way around the cup so that the tiger ended with his own tail draped through his mouth.

  St. Cyr said, "Do you have the tools here to make duplicates of these keys?"

  "Of course."

  "You make them yourself?"

  "Yes. It is highly unlikely that a key could be lost, and—"

  St. Cyr interrupted him. "When was the last time you had to machine a duplicate key?"

  "I've never needed to," Teddy said. "A master unit is quite efficient. It doesn't lose things."

  St. Cyr looked at the federal policeman quizzically and said, "Well?"

  "Nothing more for us to do here," Rainy said. "I'll send a man down to take prints from that key, but later. Let's get back upstairs and see if anything else has been turned up."

  * * *

  Nothing else was, of course, turned up.

  The key in the workshop cabinet was as bare of fingerprints as every surface in Betty's room had been.

  Finally the police machines were moved out of the house and loaded aboard the helicopter again, along with the uniformed technicians who guided most of them. The corpse was removed too, to be taken back to police headquarters where a more thorough autopsy could be performed, after which it would be cremated according to the Alderban family's wishes. The ashes would be returned in an urn, but no religious ceremony would be held; the Alderbans were non-believers.

  Inspector Chief Rainy was the last of his crew to leave, and he asked for a moment of St. Cyr's time before he went. The family still lingered in the corridor outside of Betty's room. Rainy and St, Cyr moved a dozen steps away from them, where they could speak privately.

  "I'm not going to leave one of my men behind," Rainy said.

  St. Cyr only nodded.

  "I planted a man here after Dorothea's death, and absolutely nothing happened for so long that we pulled him off. Apparently his presence gave the killer a bad case of nerves."

  "And just as apparently, my presence here doesn't bother him in the least."

  "Anyway, you don't deter him."

  St. Cyr said, "You want me to report to you?"

  "That's it."

  "I will, if I find anything interesting. I would have anyway, without the request." He listened to Rainy thank him, then said, "What do you know about Hirschel?"

  Rainy didn't look at all surprised by the question. "Rambler, gamesman. He's been just about anywhere that the hunt is good and done just about everything to lay his life on the line."

  'Except murder?"

  "You think he'd consider it the ultimate thrill? I doubt that he could be that jaded," Rainy said.

  "You've no reason to suspect him?"

  "No more than the others, I guess."

  Then Rainy was gone, and St. Cyr realized that the responsibility for the family's safety had devolved, suddenly, to him. He looked at them, realized that everyone but Hirschel would be an easy mark when the time came for the killer to strike again — if, indeed, he intended to commit a fourth murder.

  Strong possibility.

  "Are there any weapons in the house?" St. Cyr asked Jubal.

  "I won't permit my children to have them," he said. He was as aggressive as ever, surprisingly contained in the face of Betty's death. Even Alicia had stopped crying, though her eyes were swollen and red.

  "I have a number of weapons, of course," Hirschel said. "It is my hobby."

  "No," Jubal said. "I will not allow everyone to go around armed with deadly weapons. As likely as not, inexperienced as we all are in such things, we'd end up accidentally killing each other or ourselves."

  "I have narcotic-dart pistols," Hirschel said. "They produce an hour of sound sleep, nothing worse."

  "How many do you have?" St. Cyr asked.

  "Three different types, all workable in this situation. They all fire clusters of darts, so you don't even have to aim well, just point and pull the trigger." The big, dark man seemed to be enjoying the tension.

  "How about that?" St. Cyr asked Jubal.

  The patriarch's white hair was in complete disarray. He tried to comb it in place with his fingers, frowned, and said, "I guess that would be all right."

  "Get the guns," St. Cyr told Hirschel.

  The hunter was back in five minutes and explained the operation of each piece. St. Cyr left one with Jubal and Alicia, warning them to stay close together whenever possible and never to leave each other for even a moment during the night hours. Two of the three murders had taken place late at night. The second he gave to Dane, who seemed eager to understand its workings and willing to use it.

  "I doubt it's going to work, though," he said.

  "Why is that?" St. Cyr asked.

  "I think the du-aga-klava is only susceptible to certain substances. Drugs most likely have no effect on it."

  St. Cyr looked at Hirschel to see what his reaction was to what Dane had said; he felt more comradeship with the violent man than with any of the others, even though he also had greater suspicions about him. But the hunter seemed unmoved, either way, by the theory of supernatural intervention.

  The third handgun went to Tina, who quickly caught on to the proper way to hold it and take aim. Hirschel said that she would make a fine marksman. Jubal looked unhappy at that.

  "I'd like to make a suggestion," Tina said when Hirschel had finished explaining the narcotic-dart pistol to her.

  She had been so taciturn before that St. Cyr was surprised by this sudden turnabout. In fact, he thought it was the longest statement he had ever heard her make. "What is that?" he asked.

  'That someone run a check on Walter Dannery."

  Puzzled, St. Cyr said, "Who is he?"

  "A man my fath
er fired from the family business about a year and a half ago."

  St. Cyr turned to Jubal. "Is he a possible enemy?"

  Jubal waved the suggestion away as if it were a bothersome insect flitting about his face. "The man was a weakling, an embezzler. He would not have the nerve for something like this."

  "Just the same," St. Cyr said, "I'd like to hear about him."

  "My accountants came to me with proof that he'd embezzled nearly two hundred and eighty thousand credit units over a period of nine months. They had already let him go, but he seemed to blame the whole thing on me. Offered a sob story about dependent children, a sick wife, all very melodramatic. But he's been gone from Darma for quite a long time, well over a year."

  "Have you told Inspector Rainy about him?"

  "Yes, first thing."

  "He checked Dannery out?"

  "Yes. He's gone to Ionus, taken an administrative position in one of the heavy industries there. Whoever hired him is a fool, but at least he's no longer my consideration."

  St. Cyr turned to Tina and said, "You think that more ought to be done about this man?"

  "Yes," she said. "He was terribly bitter about losing his job, blamed it on everyone but himself — and he broke things the one time he came here."

  "Broke things?"

  "He smashed a vase," Jubal said, trying to minimize it "He was emotionally unstable, a weakling, as I told you. I threw him out of here myself."

  "Just the same," St. Cyr said, "I'll get off a light-telegram to my contact on Ionus tomorrow morning, see what he can dig up. The last thing any detective can afford to do is ignore even the smallest lead."

  As the group split up to go back to bed, St. Cyr checked the house map and found that Tina lived on the second level, the only member of the family with quarters that far down. He started after her, aware again of the gently rounded curves of her body, of the richness of her black hair; he caught up with her at the end of the corridor and took her elbow in his hand.

  She looked up, eyes black, lips pursed. When he had been asking questions, she was just another subject for interrogation; the bio-computer made certain of his impartiality like that. Now, however, she was much more than a suspect.

  He said, "May I see you back to your rooms?"

  She looked at the gun in her hand but said, "Okay."

  In the elevator, when they were alone, he asked, "Why do you have rooms so far away from the rest of the family?"

  "The fourth and fifth levels are pretty much broken up into the regular suites for family and guests, a few small art galleries and music rooms. The third level is where father has his den, mother her retreat. The library is also on the third level, as well as the recreation room and the drawing room, the motion picture theater and the pool. The studio level contains the storage rooms, kitchens, dining room — and my studio. I'm a painter, you know. I need plenty of space. The second level was the only place where I could have the studio the way I wanted it. You'll see soon enough what I mean."

  The elevator doors opened, and the hall lights came up in quick response.

  They were alone, or seemed to be.

  "This way," she said.

  She led him to her door, talked it open, went into her studio.

  He followed.

  The chamber was impressive, especially in that the ceiling was a good fifty feet overhead, arched by stained beams that criss-crossed in a neat geometric pattern. The walls were all white, almost dazzlingly white, broken only by a dozen of her own paintings. Two doors led to other rooms in the suite, and a barred window, forty feet long, was set in the far wall, providing quite a splash of sunlight during the day. The room itself measured approximately sixty by sixty feet.

  "See?" she asked, turning to face him, smiling tentatively.

  "Very nice."

  "I'm glad you think so."

  "Your work?" he asked, walking to the nearest painting, though he knew it was hers, recognized the style from the signed paintings in the fifth floor corridor.

  "Yes," she said. Her abrupt tone held no pride.

  He examined the painting, saw that it was a portrait of her father, Jubal, done entirely in shades of blue and green — and as if seen through a thousand small fragments of glass, some fragments crack-webbed. "I like it very much," he said.

  "Then you haven't much taste for art," she said. When he turned and looked at her, he found that she was serious, though there was a grim humor in her voice.

  "Oh?"

  "You like the colors, the shapes," she said. "But if you could go beyond that, if you knew some of the criteria for judging art, you'd know what a flop it is."

  "And these others?"

  "Flops too."

  He said: "Upstairs, in the corridors—"

  "Disasters," she said, chuckling, though there was little mirth in her chuckle.

  "Well," he said, "I disagree. You've got a great deal of talent, so far as I can see."

  "Bullshit."

  He turned and looked at her and was suddenly caught up by the way the overhead lights gleamed in her black eyes and revealed unsuspected depths, by the way the same light shimmered on the long slide of her hair and turned the black to a very dark, dark blue.

  Unconsciously, he let his gaze wander down her slim neck to the pert roundness of the breasts. He felt his hands coming up from his sides, driven by an urge to cup her breasts, and he wondered what she made of his movements.

  Somehow he remembered the nightmare from which the bio-computer had wakened him that afternoon, and he felt that it had bearing here, though he could not say how…

  His gaze traveled downward still, to the pinch of her waist, the gentle flair of hips, to the long, well-shaped legs that were now all revealed by the shorts she wore. She was barefooted. Somehow this last detail intrigued him more than any other.

  Re-direct your attention.

  He told the other half of the cyberdetective to go to hell.

  You cannot risk physical involvement. That may lead to emotional ties, and you are aware of what that would do to your ability to function at optimum efficiency as a cyberdetective.

  St. Cyr still felt the urge to reach for her, to draw her gently to him, to see if that olive skin felt as soft and smooth as it looked. At the same rime, the bio-computer had subtly influenced him, even while he recognized its influence, and he raised his eyes to look only at her face.

  He said, "If you really think you're a terrible artist, why do you continue to work?"

  She laughed bitterly, laughed so hard that it ended in a choking cough. When she could speak again, she said, "I haven't any choice. There's nothing else I can do but paint, draw, sculpt, watercolor, sketch…"

  "Surely you have—"

  "No," she interrupted. "Remember, I've undergone hypno-keying — at the age of three, at my father's direction. Do you know what that does to you?"

  "Not exactly," he said. "Somehow, it makes certain that you reach your full creative potential."

  "And locks you into that."

  "I don't understand," he said.

  "Each of us seems born with certain abilities," Tina said, turning and crossing to the window, leaning with her back against it. Her black hair and dark complexion paled the night. "Dane, for instance, has an hereditary facility with words, as did Betty and Dorothea. Mother has a solid musical ability. Father, like me, excels in the manual arts."

  St. Cyr waited.

  "Once you've been through psychiatric hypno-keying, once you've had them in your head nudging your creative talents, you're almost—possessed by whatever one ability you have. I have to paint. My whole world is painting, drawing; I even gain satisfaction from cleaning my brushes at the end of a day."

  She walked away from the window and stood before a self-portrait done in shades of orange and yellow.

  She said, "When I try to get away from it— Oh, there are times I get so goddamned disgusted with myself, with my clumsy fingers, with my limited vision, that I never want to think about painti
ng again! But when I run away from it for a while, a few days, the anger goes. And I begin to grow nervous… I find myself anxious to be back at it again, anxious to try to do better at it. I know that I cannot do better, that my talent simply stops at a certain point of achievement, that I'm very good but not great. Yet I always go back. I always pick up the brush again. Over and over I make a fool of myself. I never manage to hold out against the urge for more than a week or two. Sometimes three."

  "Maybe, with all this drive—"

  She talked over him as if she had not heard him begin to speak. "Everyone who has gone through hypno-keying, unless his creative talent is enormous, supreme, lives in a gentle sort of hell ever after that. He cannot do anything but what the hypno-keying has freed him to do — and he knows he can never do it as well as it can be done. And then the drive, as you said." It was the first indication that she had heard him. "The motivation is somehow stimulated by the hypno-keying. In the end, you can do only one thing, you want to do only one thing, but you can never do it as well as you hope to."

  "The others feel this way?" he asked.

  "They may not vocalize it as readily, but they feel it."

  "It doesn't show," St. Cyr said.

  "Doesn't it?" She turned away from her portrait and faced him. She was no longer emotional, no longer angry with herself. In a level voice, she said, "Didn't it seem that the family took Betty's death with little emotion?"

  "Your mother was in tears."

  "A point for my argument," she said. "Mother went through hypno-training later than all the rest of us. Father was treated as a baby, as were all his children. My mother, however, did not undergo treatment until after they were married. Some vestige of normality remains in her."

  "I don't see how you tie together the hypno-keying and any lack of emotional response on your family's part."

  "It's easy," she said, and smiled. The smile, as before, was not a smile at all. "Each of us is driven by his particular talent, consumed by it despite the limit of his vision. It is not easy, therefore, to establish relationships with other people, to care deeply about them when your energies are concentrated in this one arena."