“Go on, sir,” I urged Matheson.
“The customer was a D. Lipper of Kensington. I glanced at Shad in his micro. Before he became a duck and a telly advert star, back when he had been in the NYPD, Guy Shad’s name had been Donald Lipper. Hard to read emotional reactions off the chassis of a micro.
“Interesting sense of irony,” observed Shad.
“He paid the full amount in cash,” Matheson continued. “His money was good, name and address both phonies.No description.”
“Superintendent, what about surveillance records?”
“For what they believe are obvious reasons, Jaggers, Celebrity Look-alikes do not allow cameras of any kind on premises. We’re running the records of the street cameras right now, but Celebrity has hundreds of client visits, inquiries, pickups, and deliveries every day. Given this fellow’s proclivities, he was probably in disguise when he rented the rat meat suit.”
“What about the person who handled the sale? Someone with a downloadable memory?”
“A human natural, as our luck would have it. The agent who handled the sale can’t remember one rat customer from another. Rat bios are quite popular costumes for some disquieting reason—school outings, club meetings, university bashes—that sort of thing. The fellow didn’t copy into the rat suit on the premises. Presumably he has the use of a stasis bed elsewhere. I may be jumping the gun, but I’m reopening the inquiry as a possible homicide.”
I glanced down at Shad in his flying lipstick. “Thank you. Is that it, sir?”
“An additional unrelated matter. Quite interesting. Birdshot was found in—among Shad’s remains.”
“Yes, sir,” I answered, looking at Shad’s micro. “When Shad was an officer with Northern New England Wildlife Protection I believe he was wounded during a duck hunting season.”
“Really. Well, Jaggers, it appears that two of the pellets have been positively matched to a registered microscopic barrel map of a shotgun purchased in Burlington, Vermont, eleven years ago. The purchaser was a bloke named John Quinn.”
“John Quinn, you say?”
“Yes. He was once in law enforcement in New York City. Chief of detectives, actually. Eventually became commissioner. Seems to have gotten into politics. Running for state governor or something. Don’t suppose there was anything they could do about a duck hunter shooting a duck in duck hunting season, eh?
“No, sir.”
“Well, that’s all I have, Jaggers. Enjoy your picnic and best to Val.”
I bid Matheson good-bye and looked at Shad. “John Quinn?” I said.
He was silent for a very long moment. At last he played his memory recording of the rat’s last words. “‘Hi cheese eater.’”
I looked at Walter. “You watch the American news. Have you ever seen this Quinn on the telly?”
“Yes, sir. Former police commissioner Quinn is frequently invited to appear on American news programs to reflect upon various law enforcement issues. Polls place him at least twenty points above his closest rivals in the coming primaries. There is also speculation that after capturing the state governorship his goal is the White House.”
“What do you think of the cheese-eater recording?”
Walter turned toward Shad. “May I hear it again, sergeant?”
Shad played the recording.
“Sir,” said Walter, “that sounds very much like John Quinn doing his impression of Mickey Mouse imitating Bluto with a New York accent.”
“Bluto?” asked Nadine looking up from her mouse morsels at Shad.
“Popeye’s rival for the hand of the fair Olive Oyl,” said Shad. He repeated the cheese eater recording, then played the mysterious transmission he had picked up from Gidleigh: “‘Finish it.’”
“Is that Quinn?” I asked Shad.
“Yeah. I think so.” The micro faced me. “John Montgomery Quinn. I don’t get it, man. I was even going to vote for the guy.” Shad flew in slow, measured circles. “Damned near kills my partner when he blows me up with a bogus rat. Two years ago he shoots me in the ass with a shotgun. Twelve years ago...” Shad’s micro stopped moving, hovered motionless for an instant, then streaked out from beneath the shelter. I had Walter help me up and serve as a crutch as I followed. The rain had stopped leaving a dank heaviness to the air. When I found Shad he was down at the original position of the hanging stone, his lens aimed at the pool at the bottom of the crater.
“What is it, Shad?”
He was silent for a long moment. When he spoke his voice sounded strangely vulnerable. “Jaggs, are you familiar with an old Al Pacino cop flick titled Serpico?”
“A cop classic. What law enforcement officer hasn’t...” My voice trailed off as I realized to what Shad was alluding. The real Serpico wouldn’t go along with the other cops in bribe taking. His fellow cops, uncomfortable with such reckless behavior, set up young Serpico to be killed. Back in the NYPD, I-never-took-a-bribe Detective Donald Lipper was asked to back up some other cops in taking down a fugitive. Detective Lipper was first one through the door. As Shad put it the day I met him, “The next thing I knew all the bullets in the world were headed in my direction, and I was fricassee.”
“When I was killed,” said Shad, “Chief Quinn was the head of the Detective Bureau. Nothing left of me but memory. Chief Quinn came by the hospital to talk with me about coming back to the force when I’d copied into my replacement meat suit. That’s before my agent got me the duck gig. Funny thing, though.”
“What?” I asked.
“On that visit Quinn accidentally knocked over a cup of coffee into the chassis of my memory unit.”
“Embarrassing.”
“Yeah, not to mention lethal. Lucky the hospital kept patient memory units on continuous sync with its main engram bank.”
“Lucky. I say, Shad, Quinn wouldn’t happen to have bomb disposal unit experience, would he?”
“Funny you should ask. Thirty years ago John Quinn started out as a firecracker.” He paused a moment, then said, “Four attempts at killing me and still at it.”
“One must admire the fellow’s resolve,” Walter observed.
“I don’t want to jump to conclusions, Jaggs,” said Shad, “but I’m beginning to suspect Quinn wants me out of the way.”
“Is there some reason?” I asked. “Do you have anything on him?”
“Other than a couple of attempts at killing me, I can’t think of a thing. I know five or six really crooked detectives, though. I’m guessing if they had to sit in front of a committee they could put a substantial knot in Quinn’s political panties.”
“I suppose we ought to do something about it, old fellow—I mean before candidate Quinn reaches the White House, attains control of a brace of plasma bombs, and accidentally vaporizes Devon.”
Shad turned and aimed his lens in the direction of Steeperton. “Unless we can convince that dependable expendable fellow over there to roll on his employer before he zeroes out, all we’ll be left with is a dead hunk of machinery and a prime suspect off scot-free.”
“What do you suggest?”
Shad’s micro looked at Walter. “When I was hooked up to Walter, getting my battery topped off, I got a look at his package. You know he’s got more than two hundred thousand recipes on file?”
“Any involving duck?” I asked Walter.
“One hundred and sixteen, sir. All quite excellent.”
“He’s got some other stuff in there, too, Jaggs. Gives me an idea.”
The time and power requirements of Shad’s plan left very little charge on Walter’s MG and not a great deal of light left to the day by the time we finished preparations. Afterward Walter drove us down the hill and parked the car where the track came in from the Taw Head ford, the last of the rain clouds in the east reflecting the setting sun’s light. Val and Nadine remained in the MG equipped with a cell phone whose preprogrammed number for a police ambulance could be entered with the stroke of a single paw. Walter, Shad, and I continued north. Shad hovered, Walter walked, and I leaned rather heavily on Walter as I limped along. In twenty minutes or so we reached a gentle track that came up the southwest side of Steeperton Tor. Twenty additional minutes of climbing, slowed by having to wait for me, and we were at the top, looking across massive stacked granite plates of the tor to the shed-roofed stone observation shack upon a rise at the north end of the rocks.