“Thinks?” she said, hovering next to me. Even though we’d both been running and we hadn’t had time to clean off, she still smelled faintly of soap. I smelled like a gamer at the end of a one-week tournament.
“Thinks,” I said. “ ‘Pandora’s box’ is wrong. Pandora — who was utterly beautiful, by the way, and whose name means ‘all gifts’ — arrived at Prometheus’ doorstep with a jar given to her by Zeus. The jar, which was probably as big as you, was initially used to store oil. Both Pandora and the jar were a gift to Prometheus; the jar was to be Pandora’s dowry. But Prometheus didn’t trust Zeus for some strange reason, and gave Pandora along with her dowry to his brother, who presumably opened both of them.”
“Crude,” Paladin said.
I shrugged. “Your friend did know what the mythological jar contained, however. He knew that the jar contained a cloud of evils that flew free the moment the jar was opened. Pandora clapped the lid back on the jar, trapping only hope inside. That’s the reference.”
Paladin sighed. “So maybe he knew the story after all, but just got the name wrong?”
I shook my head. “He only knew the vague details or he wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble. He made a box because he thought that Pandora’s box was right. And somehow he associates you with all the evils in the world.”
“Oh, lucky me,” she said.
“Any idea who it might be?” I asked.
She frowned. “It could be anyone,” she said. “People don’t really like me, Spade.”
“Sure they do,” I said, but I didn’t really know that. I only knew that I liked her.
“I’m tough and blunt and bossy. I insult people and I run right through them if they get in my way. I don’t have friends,” she said.
“Except me,” I said.
She looked over her shoulder at me, those luminescent eyes meeting mine, then assessing me for a very long time. I held my breath, not sure what she was doing — or what she was thinking.
“Except you,” she said. Then she went back to staring at the laptop.
I stopped staring. I dug into its guts, tracking e-mails and looking for all kinds of information people didn’t know they were sending when they sent things over the Internet.
While I dug into the laptop, I ran a search on the Tower of Terror, looking for artists, sculptors, and dealers who handled art boxes. I cross-referenced that with military experience, as well as scientific experience or degrees, particularly those who then went on to work for the government in classified areas. Then I filtered it for men who lived, worked, or had worked on the West Coast. Paladin was known in the East and South, but mostly as a rumor. She did the bulk of her work west of the Mississippi.
I ran two other concurrent searches. I looked for fen who called themselves Prometheus or who liked to play with fire. And I looked for art boxes like the one the bomb had been made of for sale on sites like eBay.
It didn’t take that long to find him.
“Dale Brewer, that son of a bitch,” she said, as she looked at the photo which appeared on my screen. The photo came from a con badge at one of the majors, done five years before.
Brewer wasn’t at all what I expected— He was neat and trim and not bad looking in a Mirror Universe Spock kinda way, with his dark hair and goatee. But he also had that shiny-eyed precision that could either be the mark of brilliance or a serial killer, or both.
“How do you know him?” I asked.
Her lips thinned. “He promised to help me find a room at my very first con,” she said. “He said a bunch of people were sharing and all I needed was a sleeping bag. Turned out he picked a woman from that bunch and honored her by letting her sleep in the bedroom of a suite. With him. Alone.”
“But you didn’t do that,” I said.
“I figured it out, told him no, and slept in my car. For years, he called me the one that got away. Then he got — I don’t know — creepier, if that was possible, and the California cons banned him.”
I checked my database. They didn’t ban him. They flagged him because several women had gotten restraining orders against him. Apparently he wasn’t allowed within two hundred yards of any con those women attended. None of the women were Paladin, at least that I could tell, not without knowing her real name.
I didn’t tell her that. I just nodded.
She pushed away from the Tower of Terror and reached for her laptop.
I caught her hand. It was tiny and warm in my huge sweaty one. “What’re you doing?” I asked.
“I’m going to let Mr. Dale Brewer know what I think of his little prank,” she said.
“First, Paladin, it wasn’t a prank. Second, he has explosives training from the U.S. Army, and then he went to work for the DoD until they asked him to leave. He made his living designing these boxes — out of resin, which can be used to transport bombs. The name on his badge at the last two conventions he was allowed to attend was The SF Unabomber. You don’t want to get near his house.”
She glared at me, then crossed those magnificent arms. “Oh, but I do.”
“He knows you pretty well, right?” I asked.
She nodded. “He’s kept his eye on me.”
“So he knows you’re a bulldozer.”
Her frown got deeper. It wasn’t so much a frown now as a suspicious look. “So?”
“So, he’s going to expect you to come after him. Physically. He’s planned for it. He’s prepared.”
When she ran with that bomb, I let her see how scared I was. I let her see it afterwards too. But I didn’t let her see it now because she’d gone all Tough Chick on me. I was afraid my fear would push her into action.
“I can put him in prison for a long time,” I said. “I can make sure he doesn’t bother anyone again. And I can do it without involving you or fandom or CrapCon.”
“How?” she asked.
I patted the Tower of Terror. “I work with the police all over the country—”
“On forensic accounting cases,” she said. She knew because she’d helped me with one.
“I have bona fides,” I said. “My evidence is good stuff. And what I have here is evidence, Paladin. The kind juries love.”
“Why won’t I have to be involved?” she asked. “He sent the e-mail to me. I took the bomb outside. The box looks like me, for heaven’s sake.”
She wouldn’t normally have admitted that and probably already regretted the words.
“We don’t need motive,” I said. “There’s more than enough physical evidence. The cops are going to eat this up. Trust me on this, Paladin.”
She did.
The cops arrested Brewer half an hour after getting my information, which I hand-delivered as a way to escape CrapCon.
When I got back, the hospitality suite was being picketed because it had run out of Blue Goo, and no one was smart enough to go to the local liquor store to get more. I dispatched the head of the con and let her make the Blue Goo when she got back.
I ignored the panels, such as they were, prevented the masquerade from turning into a food fight, and started the Renaissance Dance early. Then I took a much-needed shower and returned to Con Ops, to find a huge cup of coffee, a coupon for Krispy Kremes and a note from Paladin.
This isn’t nearly payment enough for all the help. But I got a call that couldn’t wait, so I’ll catch you next time.
I owe you, Spade.
XXOO
Of course I saved the note. And not in my pocket where it could get all sweaty and the ink would run. But in my wallet, where I could pull it out and stare at those xx’s and oo’s, and try to figure out if she meant them.
I spent weeks thinking about them, in fact, long after CrapCon got relegated to fannish history, long after the local SMoFs told the local fans that they would never support another CrapCon again, and this was without me telling anyone about the bomb scare.