Once again our footsteps echoed hollowly down a long, narrow corridor. On the left were conference rooms and APD offices, but on the right was a long wall of tinted glass with a Fed-smelling seal engraved on it. Behind one window I saw a figure standing; as I drew closer I saw dark sunglasses and a devilish goatee. Sunglasses, at night. Come on.
We paused before another keycoded door, and I became acutely aware that the man behind the glass was checking me out, staring at me, sipping his government coffee. Finally, I looked over and saw a trim form inside a crisp black suit. He was looking straight back at me, raising his cup towards me in salute, his smile not a leer but… appreciation?
Jack opened the door with a beep beep beep, strolled in and disappeared into a warren of ratty old cubicles. We followed him through, and the door closed behind us. I looked back at the big, knobbly lock. I was sure you could get out without the code, but… it still slowly swung shut with a solid click, and I felt trapped.
In moments I was in a plain white "evidence" room, looking down on a salt-and-pepper haired, Greek-looking officer improbably named Vincent Balducci, seated at a large table in front of a large manila folder. There was a side door to the right, and a huge mirror dominated the rest of the wall. If you squinted you could just see the blinking light of a camera, or maybe a video recorder, and I felt the invisible presence of a dark figure somewhere behind the glass. Maybe I was imagining it, but, come on, I've seen this movie before.
"Taller than I expected, Miss Frost," Balducci said, not moving to greet me as I sat down. My long leather vestcoat shhhed against the tile as I settled into the chair, but after that, the only noise was the hum of the air conditioning.
Rand was seated at the edge of the table, naturally, easily, like an Armani model dressed on a police officer's salary, but losing none of the class. Finally he seemed to lose patience with Balducci and said, "Show her."
"This is pointless," Balducci said. "She can't tell us anything that-"
"Chickening out?" Abruptly Rand flipped the manila folder open and turned it towards me, then stood and staring at the glass. "What can you tell us about this?"
Curious, I stared at the picture: it was a bad photocopy of a circular design, some kind of braided wreath with a chain and a snake eating its own tail. Big black blotches covered the upper quarter of the design, but after a moment I puzzled out what I was looking at. "This is flash," I said. At Balducci's puzzled look, I explained: "A tattoo design, or a part of one."
Balducci nodded dismissively. "Told you," he said to Rand.
"And?" Rand asked.
"And… you need to tone the contrast down on your copier?" I said. It was half blotted out… but then I realized it wasn't a photocopy, but some kind of printout of an image, posterized to the point that it was almost illegible, with large-brush black blotches of a digital pen redacting some of the details. But it still had that distinctive natural look that meant it had started life as a photograph, not a drawing.
"This isn't flash," I said. "It's an actual tattoo."
"Toldyou," Rand said.
As my eyes studied it I became suspicious. The reproduction was terrible, but something about the wreath and chain had the flavor of a magical glyph. What if it was magical? These mundanes would have no way of knowing. But how could I tell from this printout? "Do you have a better picture? No-a different picture?"
Balducci sighed, and slipped another piece of paper out of the folder. A similar shot, similarly degraded, but… I put the two next to each other and planted my hands on the table, staring down upon them. After a moment I saw it: the head of a snake in the design was three links past the belt of the chain in one, and five in the next. It was moving.
"This is magical," I said. "This tattoo is moving. It's a magical mark."
"Told you," Rand said triumphantly.
"Holy-" Balducci breathed. I looked up, and saw him not looking at the flash, but at my hands. "Hers are doing it too. I swear the fucking butterfly flapped."
"What, did you think they only moved after?" Rand asked.
"What do you mean, after?" I asked. No one said anything, and my stomach suddenly clenched up. "What do you mean, after? You don't mean, like, after death-"
"I can't discuss the details of an ongoing investigation," Balducci said.
"Why did we bring her here if not to discuss it?" Rand said.
"It was your idea," Balducci said. "She's your old partner's daughter-"
The side door opened.
The dark-suited Fed I had seen in the hall walked out. His crisp goatee and short wavy hair made him look more like an evil Johnny Depp than a laid-back agent Mulder. One hand was in his pocket, the other still holding the cup of coffee. In his dextrous fingers, the Styrofoam cup looked like alabaster.
"Show her," he said, with unassuming authority. "Or quit wasting our time."
Balducci looked up, at a loss. "You've got 'it,'" he said.
The Fed just looked at me, mouth quirking into a smile, at which point Balducci touched his head in a "senior moment" gesture, then hit the intercom. "Rogers," he said. "You got 'it'? Yeah. Bring 'it.'"
After a moment, a tall, drawn man stepped out of a back door I hadn't noticed, gingerly holding a large, white plastic envelope with the same Fed logo on it. The cadaverous man paused in the white light of the doorway for a moment, eyes twitching as he saw me- not unfriendly, but… in pity? Then I noticed a long plastic tray in the man's other hand, and saw the padded envelope bulging with something.
I suddenly didn't want to see 'it.'
The Fed touched his left ear for a moment, then turned to go. "Aren't you going to stay?" I asked nervously. I wasn't quite sure why I was asking him for reassurance, but there it was.
He paused. "I've seen 'it,'" he said, and stepped into the blackness.
The tray clattered against the table, shockingly close to my hands, and Balducci and I both leaned back a little. The evidence technician, if that's what cadaver man was, put on a pair of blue gloves before opening the envelope and withdrawing a smaller, plastic-wrapped object. "Even though it is wrapped," he said, putting it in the tray, "it would help if you do not touch 'it.'"
My skin grew cold.
'It' was a ripped piece of human skin pinned to a stained wood board.
2. GODS FINEST CANVAS
I stared in horror at the scrap of human skin, stretched across the board like so much canvas. The braided wreath curved across the flesh, marred by a few small cuts that had been blacked out on the print copy. On most sides the skin curved over the board, but at the upper left, the skin was torn away, revealing both the bloodstained wood and a set of torn holes in the skin that indicated it had been stapled underneath, like a leather seat cushion.
Without another nod to Balducci, Rand took over, channeling Joe Friday.
"Do you know what this is?"
"It's a tattoo," I said, unable to take my eyes off it.
"Do you know what it means?"
"It's a… magical ward."
"To protect against evil spirits?"
"No, it's… like a capacitor. It collects, or deflects, magical power," I said. "Which depends on the intent of the wearer."
"Do you know who inked this?"
I'd have to look closer at the design to tell that. I really didn't want to do that. I looked up at Rand, eyes pleading. His face had gone cold, a bit stony; not unfriendly, but all cop. I leaned forward, looked through the clear plastic bag, at the wreath, the inking. The board exposed through the rip was smoothly polished and finely worked, despite the bloodstains. Suddenly I knew.
"Yes, I know the artist," I said. "Not, I mean, personally. It's Richard Sumner."
"Do you know where he is?"
"Buried in Cincinnati," I said. "Sumner was famous, but he died in