“A cult?” Caffery replied hopefully. “Or a particularly effective mass-murderer. Unthinkable, sure, but perfectly human.”
“Except someone in Duvcorp knew it was happening.”
A couple of hours of surveying with extra hands flown in from Tromsø turned up little more they could go on. Back in the main station, the officers milled about in stages between vengefully angry and utterly devastated. They insisted it never happened – people were used to these conditions – but he insisted back, it could happen. A mass psychosis brought on by isolation and dark. There was one glaring discrepancy, though: how had an Englishman happened to check on it?
For the locals’ sake, Tasker settled on his usual ground somewhere between the truth and a cover. He explained that they monitored for unusual energy readings, this one being a particularly dramatic change in atmospheric pressure. Something like atmospheric pressure, he corrected – in case their meteorological offices disagreed. Chances were the weather had been affected by whatever Duvcorp picked up on, anyway. Could this anomaly have driven a group of people to brutal murder for no good reason? Sure, possibly.
Besides the chill mystery of exactly what had happened – and how the killers had left no traces of their retreat – Tasker found himself most concerned with what in hell it had to do with Duvcorp. Their mole must have been aware that something was going down. Concerned to the degree that they would go behind their employer’s back. Tasker told Caffery, “I recommend sending a Support team up, take energy readings on the ground, see if anything unusual was left on the bodies.”
“Done,” Caffery replied. “You staying on the ground to ease them in?”
“I’ve seen all I need to,” Tasker said. “I want to talk to the mole myself, as soon as possible. It was the Ordshaw Ministry that put us onto this, right? Have them pick him up.”
“I can put in a request to Duvcorp’s management –”
“Pick him up, Caffery, as soon as possible.”
Caffery went quiet. He was technically Tasker’s superior, but as Tasker was the one physically wading through these messes, it was rare that London didn’t accede to his demands. “The Commission won’t have us provoking a company like Duvcorp.”
“Yeah, not without an airtight case, which we won’t get without provocation.”
“What case, Tasker? Duvcorp picked up on this, but it doesn’t mean they’re involved.”
“Please, everything that company touches stinks. You don’t want to pick up their mole, at least put a man on him until I get there. Which will be how long?”
Caffery sighed deeply, like Tasker was the bane of his existence. Eighteen people dead, and he had the gall to sound put out by Tasker’s travel demands and willingness to cross a big company. “I’ll look into it. Meantime, you keep a lid on things there.”
“Already done,” Tasker said. Unlike some people, he didn’t need telling to do his job. But saying that, he saw more looks coming his way across the station. Upset cops, wanting to blame him, suspecting he knew more than he was letting on. Well, it couldn’t be a rabid doppler; they stayed mostly hidden, and the massacre clearly wasn’t the work of one creature. The venom of the tremer vesper might induce madness, if Duvcorp had poured that into the village’s water supply. But why would they? And if they had done this deliberately, where was the clear-up? The only thing he did know was that the answers weren’t here in Norway.
3
“Here, rest here, cher,” Reece said, lowering the girl onto a squeaky bed. She weighed nothing but he had to prise her fingers off him. Her unusual eyes glowed with desperation. Don’t let go. “Sorry you had to see that, but you’re safe now, understand? How you end up here – with them?”
Her lower lip trembled.
“You’re safe – it’s over.” Reece stepped back and smiled to show it, triggering tears. She pressed her face into her small hands. He glanced to the empty doorway, half-expecting Stomatt to jump in laughing at her for crying. But Stomatt was unconscious downstairs, with Leigh-Ann tending to him, while Caleb hunted after Donny. The kid was Reece’s responsibility alone.
She whimpered, almost too quiet to hear, “I want to go home.”
“Sure,” Reece said. “Where’s home, cher? How you get here?”
Sniffing in her last sobs, the girl knotted her brow against the question.
“How about a name? I’m Reece” – he put a hand on his chest – “and you?”
She braced herself, then said, “Zip.”
“Your name’s Zip?”
She nodded.
“Weird, but I like it.” He wore a goofy grin. Zip watched his teeth suspiciously. “Zip’s a real pretty name. These people, Zip, they take you from your family? Your school?” She shook her head. “So where you live? My friends and me, we come outta Cutjaw, Louisiana – you ever heard of a place like that?”
Another head shake, getting curious.
“Long way from here, right now. Cutjaw’s like nowhere you’ve been, we got swamp and a river nearby, every family a different trailer. You ever slept in a trailer? No? Well, we live in them. People in Cutjaw work wood, mechanics, all good with our hands – decent, family folk.”
Zip watched him warily, and her eyes ran up to the green hair.
Reece ran a hand through it, laughing. Seemed a good idea at the time – confuse anyone looking for him once he washed it back to black. “Ah, this – not my natural colour. Part of this shabby costume, see.” He picked at the boiler suit. “We do not normally look like this. The Cutjaw Kids are usually the most best dressed crewe you ever saw. That’s crewe with an e – making us like family. I got no brothers but Caleb and Sto are my kin. Leigh’s got no dad but mine treats her like a daughter, see? You got brothers, sisters? Mama, a daddy?”
Zip considered it carefully. “Dad.”
“Just a dad?”
She nodded apologetically.
“Well, stick with us and we’ll be your family. Cutjaw moms raise us to take care of strangers. Talk proper round kids and ladies. Respect elders and all that. We even came into Texas to do some good.” Reece pointed vaguely, probably in the direction they’d come. Maybe not. “Working with Caleb’s uncle, against people that would take advantage of us in Cutjaw or elsewhere. We’re good people, see?”
“You’ve got guns,” Zip whispered.
Reece paused, then twisted his gun belt forward. “This? This isn’t any old gun. You looking at La Belle Riposte. A work of art. Wanna hold it?”
Zip blinked disbelief. Yes, he was offering a child a gun.
“Maybe later, huh? We armed because of people like them downstairs, Zip. We been into Waco to tell some bad men No. Same as we told them no downstairs, understand?” She didn’t entirely. But the kid didn’t need all the details of how Steer Trust had been forcibly expanding their “Gold Star” network into Louisiana. How the gang had valiantly combined sending a message that Louisiana didn’t want them with stealing a lot of money. He diverted: “Speak funny, don’t I? That’s Cutjaw – ain’t no one talk like us, no one play music like us, no one play cards like us. Like that where you’re from? Your home special?”