After Glow

Chapter 34

Emmett crouched beside the twisted and broken body. The remains of Foster Dorning were sprawled in the alley behind the City Center Parking Garage. A large trash container partially obscured the dead man. The rain that had been falling steadily all morning had soaked Dorning's clothing and sluiced off much of the blood. His personal phone lay in the muck nearby.

"Who reported it?" Emmett asked.

Verwood juggled the oversized umbrella he was using to cover Emmett and the body. "A delivery truck driver found him a few minutes ago. He notified the garage attendant who sent for me. Figured you'd want to know."

"Someone call the cops?"

"I told the attendant to take care of it. They'll be here any minute." Verwood looked at the body. "His assigned parking space is on the top floor of the garage. You think maybe he got out of his car, got disoriented in the rain, and fell over the edge?"

"No." Emmett rose slowly. "I think it's a lot more likely he was pushed. What the hell was he doing here at headquarters in the middle of the night?"

Verwood shrugged. "Who knows? Looks like the Guild is going to be in the news again this week. Never a dull moment, huh?"

Sirens hummed in the distance.

Emmett leaned down and picked up Dorning's personal phone and dropped it into his pocket just as the first police car turned into the alley, lights flashing.

The car doors opened. A familiar figure got out.

"Detective Martinez," Emmett said. "What a surprise."

"Personally I'm trying to look on the bright side," Martinez said. "At least your wife isn't involved this time."

Fifteen minutes later Emmett managed to escape Martinez's clutches.

Upstairs he walked into the reception lobby and dropped the phone on the desk in front of Perkins.

"The last number he called is blocked," Emmett said. "I assume you can get around that little obstacle?"

"Of course, sir. I'll have an address for you in a few minutes."

"Thanks." Emmett went toward the door of his office. "I'm going to call Wyatt. Let me know as soon as you track down that number."

Inside his office he reached across the desk, grabbed the phone, and dialed Wyatt's private number. Mercer answered on the first ring.

"Tell me everything you can about Sandra Thornton," Emmett said.

Mercer was silent for a moment. "Something else happen?"

"Dorning is dead. Apparently he fell from the top of the garage here at headquarters."

"Seems a little unlikely," Mercer said dryly.

"Struck me that way, too. I think someone is getting rid of loose ends. Talk to me about Sandra."

"You think maybe she was a loose end?"

"Yes. Lydia is right. The coincidences are getting a little too thick on the ground. What did you know about her? Where did she come from? Where did she go to school? Any family?"

"I slept with the woman for a time, Emmett, I didn't make her my best friend."

"She must have said something about her past during that time."

"Let me think for a moment."

The line went silent. Emmett leaned back against the desk and waited. A sense of urgency was building in him.

"She was stunningly beautiful," Mercer said after a while. "But not in a glamorous way, if you know what I mean. There was a sort of sweet, pure innocence about her. Hard to describe. She seemed fragile in some ways and in others she was sophisticated beyond her years."

Sophisticated in bed, for instance, Emmett thought. All he said was, "Go on."

"I remember one night when I arrived at her apartment, she seemed sad," Mercer said slowly. "It was unusual for her to be down. One of the reasons I enjoyed her company, aside from the fact that she was lovely, was because she was always in a cheerful, upbeat mood. Not one of those whiney, demanding, clingy types."

"I need hard information, not your personal impressions about her personality."

"That night, I could tell she had been crying and drinking. Her face was all red and puffy. There was some obnoxious music playing on the stereo."

"What kind of music?"

"Some of that screaming-loud, high-rez stuff that no one my age can take for more than five minutes without going crazy."

A tiny alarm bell went off somewhere. "She say anything about the music?"

"She mentioned that the songs she was listening to went back to her college days. I got the impression she had once been involved with some young man who had had his own band."

Emmett stilled. "She say anything else about this guy?"

"I don't think so. She turned the music off right away. We had a couple of drinks together and that was all there was to it."

"She ever mention where she went to college?"

"Not that time. But a month or two later we happened to catch a late-night sports report on the rez-screen. The announcer was giving the results of an upset game between two college teams. Old Frequency College had pulled out a last-minute save. Sandra got excited and said something like 'Go, Freaks. "

"Did she attend Old Frequency?"

"I asked her that. Instead of answering directly, she brushed the question aside. I got the impression that she didn't want to talk about it. I figured maybe she had dropped out or flunked out and didn't want to admit it."

"And now she's dead, along with Master Herbert and Dorning," Emmett said softly. "That makes three. Someone is definitely mopping up."

"What the hell are you talking about, Emmett?"

The door opened. Perkins walked in, notepad in hand. He was clearly troubled.

"Hang on, Mercer." Emmett looked at Perkins.

"I have that address for you, sir," Perkins said. "It was somewhat complicated to track because it was unlisted and the first address that came up is evidently an error. I had to do some rather involved cross-checking."

"Just give it to me, Perkins."

"Number Twenty-seven Ruin View Drive." Perkins looked up, more anxious than ever. "It doesn't make any sense, sir. That's Gannon Hepscott's address. You know, the big developer?"

"Hell, I should have put it together sooner."

"What's going on there?" Mercer demanded. "I heard Perkins say something about Gannon Hepscott."

"Hold on," Emmett said. Leaving Mercer hanging on one line, he dialed Lydia's office.

"Shrimpton's House of Ancient Horrors," Melanie said cheerfully. "Be sure to see our latest attraction, the Harmonic children's picture book of—"

"This is Emmett, Mel. Where is she?"

"Who, Lydia? She had an appointment with her big-time client this morning. Left here about forty minutes ago. I had to help her sneak out the back way because the reporters are still loitering around in front."

"She went to Hepscott's office?"

"Not today. He asked her to come to his home up on Ruin View Drive. Just imagine; our Lydia is drinking tea in one of those big fancy mansions up there even as we speak."

"Shit." Emmett cut the connection and went back to Mercer. "Lydia's in trouble. She's in your neighborhood. I need some help."

"You're Troy Burgis," Lydia whispered.

She had dropped the portfolio but she clutched her purse very tightly and forced herself to look away from the gun. She had to watch Gannon's eyes, she thought. Like all technology from car keys to heavy construction equipment, the mag-rez gun required a small pulse of human psi energy to activate it. If she paid attention she might catch the telltale signs of increased concentration that meant he was sending power through amber to enable the trigger.

Gannon looked annoyed. "So Maltby did put it all together. I was afraid of that. I had him taken care of immediately after he was seen leaving the sector that night. He managed to break into some private files down there. But how the hell did he get the information to you?"

"Let's just say he put your face in a milk carton. But you've changed a lot since college, haven't you? I wouldn't have recognized you if it hadn't been—" She broke off quickly.

"Yes, Lydia? If it hadn't been for what? I need to know how you figured out that I used to be Troy Burgis. I make it a point to not repeat my mistakes."

She shrugged. "There were a lot of little clues along the way," she lied. "But the one that I finally picked up on today was the music. I found your old recordings."

"How did you know about my band?" he asked sharply.

She was not about to drag Karen Price's name into this, she thought. She would keep it vague. "According to your college yearbook you formed a band." She angled her chin toward the collection of unmarked recordings. "That's your music on those old tapes, isn't it? You rented a studio to make them but you couldn't afford to have fancy dust jackets created for them."

Gannon looked startled. "You got that information out of a yearbook?"

She didn't answer that question. "The clipping about your death mentioned that you were obsessed with Vincent Lee Vance. What was that about? The man was a wanna-be dictator, for heaven's sake. Not exactly a great role model."

"Vance was a brilliant, powerful man who came within a hairsbreadth of ruling all of the city-states."

"And you really thought you could finish the job? Sheesh, talk about delusions of grandeur. What gave you the idea? Finding his secret headquarters under Old Frequency?"

"Yes." Gannon hesitated and then shrugged. "He had left behind some of his early journals and a few battle maps. One of those maps appeared to show the location of the underground chamber that he intended to use as his headquarters when his forces took Cadence."

"The library."

Gannon's mouth twisted. "Vance did not know what was inside at that point. The note in his journal says that the chamber was unusually well guarded by a very difficult trap. He said he hoped that Helen Chandler would be able to de-rez it. He was convinced that the Harmonics had used the trap to protect some great secret inside that room."

"A secret that would be his when and if he got into the chamber."

Gannon nodded. "I assumed he and Chandler had died somewhere in the catacombs, but I decided to try to find the chamber he mentioned in the journals."

"You talked your three band buddies into disappearing with you so that you could all search for the tomb together."

Gannon shook his head ruefully. "We had such dreams in those early days. We were sure that whatever we found in that chamber would make us all rich and powerful. But nothing went right."

"What do you mean?"

"The maps were badly flawed. I suspect that Vance made the mistakes deliberately as a sort of code so that no one else could find the chamber. The result was that the four of us blundered around for over two years underground trying to find the chamber before we realized the enormity of the task."

"How did you survive during that time?"

"We used to slip out of the catacombs at night to steal food and supplies. It was a miserable existence, I assure you." Gannon grimaced. "Eventually I faced the fact that it would take a great deal of time and money to conduct a proper search."

"So you came out from underground and started investing in real estate."

"Yes." Gannon was amused. "Imagine my surprise when I discovered I had a knack for it. The beauty of real estate was that it allowed me to buy up huge plots of land directly above the sector of the catacombs that the four of us were exploring. Owning that property enabled us to maintain a measure of control over the rat holes and hidden entrances."

"Which meant you could keep out most of the ruin rats and treasure hunters."

"Yes. It didn't provide perfect security but it worked fairly well. But we soon realized that to clear an entire sector we needed a loyal workforce and we required security. Herbert, who used to be Norman Fairbanks, came up with the concept of the Order of the Acolytes of Amatheon. He established the various legal entities and took out the license to excavate. After we established the cult the money started to pour in so fast we could hardly count it."

"That's when your dreams really went over the top, isn't it? You saw all that money and all those loyal servants and it occurred to you that you had the makings of your own personal army. All you needed were some high-tech weapons. So you started stockpiling guns."

The intercom on the large desk chimed gently. The interruption rattled Gannon. He flinched and then punched the button.

"I thought I made it clear that I did not want to be disturbed, George."

"I'm sorry, sir, but there are visitors at the gates."

"Send them away."

George cleared his throat. "The visitors are Mr. and Mrs. Mercer Wyatt, sir."

"The Wyatts?" Gannon's jaw jerked. "What the hell are they doing here?"

"They probably just stopped by to borrow a cup of sugar," Lydia said sarcastically.

"Sir, Mr. Wyatt said that he and his wife were out for a drive and noticed a large plume of smoke coming from this house." George sounded agitated. "They said they've summoned the fire department. But none of our sensors show a problem."

Sirens blared outside on the street.

"What is going on here?" Gannon whispered hoarsely.

An interior alarm system screeched.

"Shit," Gannon said. "That's the perimeter security system. Someone is inside the gates."

"Sir, the fire department is demanding entry," George said urgently. "They insist that the house be evacuated immediately. They're sending men and equipment over the walls."

"Wyatt. That son of a bitch." Gannon cut the intercom connection and crossed to the curio cabinet. "A pity I didn't finish him off that night."

Lydia sucked in her breath. "You're the one who shot Mercer Wyatt."

"Who would have thought a man his age would survive two shots from a mag-rez?"

Gannon raised a lamp shade to reveal a small lever. He turned it swiftly. The large cabinet moved away from the wall on hidden rollers. An opening in the wall appeared. Lydia saw the top of a long flight of steep stairs leading downward into darkness.

The winds of psi power wafted out of the tunnel.

"Although I anticipated success all these years," Gannon said, "I made provisions for failure. When I discovered that this house had a rat hole that had gone undiscovered for nearly half a century, I bought it immediately."

"You're going to disappear again."

"I have another identity ready and waiting as well as a healthy supply of cash. I would have liked to have invited you to run away with me, Lydia. As I told London, I do believe you and I would have made a good team under other circumstances. But I can see that you are committed to your hunter."

"You got that right." She gripped the purse very tightly.

Gannon raised the barrel of the gun. "The least I can do to repay you for all the trouble you have caused me is to kill you."

This was it, Lydia thought. Her only chance. She prepared to hurl the purse toward Gannon, trying to brace herself for the mind-numbing horror of the nightmares that would envelope them both when she triggered the tiny trap anchored to the chunk of quartz.

The door slammed open an instant before she sent the pulse of energy to spring the trap.

Emmett exploded into the room, moving quickly.

Gannon jerked around to confront the new threat. The mag-rez gun roared just as Emmett dropped to the floor.

At the same time ghost light flashed and flared in the tunnel entrance directly behind Gannon. Lydia knew that Emmett was summoning an enormous amount of raw dissonance energy from the catacombs below.

Gannon convulsed and writhed wildly in the chaotic green fire that swept over him. The gun fell from his hand and clattered on the floor.

A few seconds later, he crumpled. Lydia knew that he had to be dead. No human mind could have withstood such a direct encounter from such a massive ghost.

The dissonance energy snapped and sizzled and then winked out almost as swiftly as it had appeared.

Emmett levered himself to a sitting position and looked at her. "Are you all right?" he asked, raising his voice to be heard above the screaming alarms that reverberated throughout the house.

"Yes. But I'd better get rid of this thing before there's an accident." She reached carefully into the purse, picked up the quartz, and carefully de-rezzed it completely, destroying the vicious little snare.

He settled back against the nearest wall, watching her. "You were going to trigger an illusion trap?"

"Only if nothing better came along. Luckily you got here first." She set the quartz down and turned toward him. "How did you—" Then she saw the blood. "Emmett. Oh, my God."

She ran to his side and clamped a hand over the bloody, ragged crease that the mag-rez bullet had opened on his upper arm.

"It's okay." Emmett looked down at the blood leaking through her fingers and grimaced. "I think."

"We need an ambulance." She kept her hand tight over the wound and tried to reach the phone on Gannon's desk.

Mercer Wyatt appeared in the doorway, leaning heavily on a cane. He fumbled with a small phone. "I'll make the call."

Tamara walked into the room followed by a number of firefighters and hunters. She took one look at Gannon and then, with quick, efficient moves, she unknotted the figured silk scarf at her throat and handed it to Lydia.

"Here, use this," she said as Mercer barked orders into the phone.

Lydia took the scarf and secured it snugly around the wound. To her relief the flow of blood had diminished considerably.

Mercer ended his call. "Medics will be here in a couple of minutes." He scowled at the crowd gathering in the room. "Someone turn off those damned alarms. Verwood, take a couple of men and detain that butler."

"Yes, sir," Verwood said. He motioned to several hunters.

A short time later the clanging bells and whistles went silent.

The firefighters checked the charred flooring and wall panels around Gannon's body but were soon satisfied that the ghost had not started a blaze. They left just as the medics pulled into the drive.

For a moment or two, Lydia, Emmett, Mercer, and Tamara were the only ones left in the room.

Emmett looked at Mercer, his mouth curving very slightly at one corner. "Thanks, Dad."

Mercer blinked. Then his specter-cat eyes, eyes that were mirror images of Emmett's, blazed with satisfaction. A slow, uncharacteristically warm smile transformed his face.

"Anytime, son."