I went into the room behind Catherine. But she’d only taken a step or two inside before she turned quickly, her head lowered, hand over her face, and went back out. Which left me with nothing between me and the pile that had been Celeste Stanhunt except a short stretch of floor. The blood was on my shoes before I’d had a chance to consider staying out of it.
Someone had started from the bottom on Celeste, which is sometimes okay, but they’d kept going long past where it was a good idea to stop. They’d done a real nasty job on her. If that sounds cold, it’s the only way I can put it. She wasn’t wearing any clothes, but I was going to have to rely on my Peeping Tom memories to know what she was like undressed, because you couldn’t figure it out from looking at her now.
I stood there looking and thinking, and not feeling anything at first, and then it hit me, and hit me hard. I didn’t experience nausea the way Catherine had—that went away a long time ago and never came back—but I felt pretty much everything else. I started sobbing into my sleeve, the first time I’d cried in years. It went away fast, but it left me feeling like my face was a baby’s behind that needed changing, diaper rash and all. I stopped being able to look at the corpse. I backed out of the room past the inquisitor at the door, and I went and leaned against a wall. I closed my eyes, but the picture didn’t go away.
My work at putting myself back together was interrupted by a familiar, if unexpected voice.
“It’s a setup,” said Morgenlander. I opened my eyes. He was talking to Catherine and the inquisitor at the door “We’re meant to believe she forgot to insert her death control device,” he went on. “But I for one don’t buy it.”
It was the same old Morgenlander, with his fat head and his black-looking teeth and tongue, and I was pretty sure he’d say something stupid when he saw me, but in a funny way I was glad to see him. He was a wretched excuse for a human being, but for an inquisitor he wasn’t half bad. If Kornfeld was the robotic visage of the future of the Office, Morgenlander was a throwback. He represented the human face, for what that was worth.
“You can file a report,” said the inquisitor who’d let us into the room.
“Fuck that,” said Morgenlander. “I wasn’t here.”
“I understand,” said the inquisitor.
A team of evidence guys crowded the hallway on their way into the room. I wished them luck. When they cleared out, Morgenlander caught sight of me, and screwed up his features in an expression of distaste. It wasn’t a long distance for his features to go.
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “The fly in the ointment. How’d you get here?”
“Hello, Morgenlander.” I wasn’t really up to repartee.
“I’m surprised you’re still on the streets, Metcalf. Didn’t I bill you enough karma?”
“Plenty, thanks. I thought you were off this case.”
“The case is closed. Go home, Metcalf. Don’t be stupid.”
“The case was closed,” I said. “Angwine didn’t kill Celeste Stanhunt too.”
Morgenlander just stood there in his baggy, disheveled suit and stared at me, as if what I’d said was something other than obvious. He moved his big jaw like he was sanding the roof of his mouth with his tongue.
Then he shook out his sleeves the same way he did in my office the first time I met him. “Okay, Metcalf. Let’s go have us a little talk. Teleprompter, bring your pal here downstairs. I’m gonna use him to bounce some ideas off of. We’ll see if they knock holes in him or just leave dents.”
We all went downstairs, Morgenlander at the head, pushing through the milling inquisitors, head lowered, hands in his pockets. When we got outside, it was quieter. Some of the cars were gone, and the street was opened back up for traffic. Someone still thought it was important to flash a light around, and when Morgenlander stopped on the pavement and turned to me and Catherine, his face was lit into a series of red masks which pulsed and faded, one after another. I guess I was in pretty poor shape, because the effect hypnotized me. I didn’t notice what the man was saying until halfway into his saying it.
“Celeste tried to call me twice,” he was saying. “Wouldn’t leave a goddamned message. The Office didn’t tell me until about an hour ago, which is about the time she was getting cut up.” He sighed. “I told them to put a trace on her. Fucking Kornfeld.”
“Last night she told me she was afraid,” I said. “She didn’t think Angwine was the killer. That’s what she would have told you if she found you.”
Morgenlander twisted his mouth. “That wasn’t what she told me when she had the chance.”
“She changed her mind a lot.”
He chewed his mouth for a minute and then spat into the gutter. “Fucking case,” he said.
“The case is closed,” I said. I just wanted to be the first to say it, for once.
Morgenlander turned to Catherine. “Where’s Korn-fuck?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“He know you’re going around with this hobbyist?” He pointed a finger at my chest, came just short of prodding me with it. “Last I heard, he wanted your ass, Metcalf.”
“We’re sort of steering clear of him for tonight,” said Catherine.
“Good luck,” said Morgenlander. “Remember the walls have eyes. Kornfeld’s eyes.” He gestured past me, at the pair of inquisitors leaning against the doorway of the club. “He’s got Eastbay in his fucking pocket. Hell, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Odds are you’re part of the problem.” He laughed his wet, ugly laugh. “It doesn’t matter. I’m out of here. Someday me or somebody else is coming back to nail your little boyfriend’s butt to the wall. I just couldn’t do it alone. He kept me smothered in disinformation.”
I kept quiet and listened.
“You made it tough, Morgenlander,” said Catherine. “Why be surprised at the backlash? You made everyone nervous. It’s been played a lot cooler than you played it.”
“Fuck you, Teleprompter. Angwine was going down, and he wasn’t the first. I’m supposed to do something about it.”
Catherine made a face. “Go back and file your report, Morgenlander. Tell yourself you understood what was going on.
Someone turned off the lights. I looked around. The cars were thinning out in the street behind us. The crew upstairs would work the body and the room over for most of the night) but everyone else was going home or back on the street to work on their quotas. You had to change a couple of hundred points of karma in a given night or you weren’t doing your job.
Teleprompter and Morgenlander just stood in the darkness and glared at each other. I had a feeling the conversation was about wrapped up. I myself would have liked to go home and curl up around a line of make, but I had another feeling there was more I should get out of Morgenlander while I had the chance.
“You ever hear the name Phoneblum?” I asked. “I mean, from anyone besides me.” I hoped he wouldn’t balk at answering a question. “My job lately has consisted of tossing his name at people and watching them flinch—except when I get punched in the stomach.”
“Which do you want this time?” said Morgenlander sourly. When I didn’t answer, he said, “Aw, get out of my face.” He turned and walked quickly aw^y. For whatever reason, I looked down, and even in the darkness I could make out the bloody footprints he’d left behind on the pavement. I didn’t check, but I knew I was making footprints like that myself.
Catherine and I went back to her car in silence and sat down in what were now feeling like our accustomed places. I guess we would have driven somewhere if we’d known where to go. The radio was still mumbling at us, and Catherine reached and turned it off.