Irregulars - lanyon Josh (книги онлайн полные .txt) 📗

Keith continued to leaf through the paper, looking for live music listings. Carnivore Circus had a Friday show booked at a club called The Greenhouse. He found no listings for Theater of Blood. Was it because they’d gone underground or because they were just a bad band who nobody wanted playing their club? Hard to say.

As Keith could have predicted, when at last they sat in an interrogation room with Lancelot, they found him not terrified that he would be arrested and tried for cannibalism. Instead, he wanted to know whether or not he would be out of jail in time to make it to his gig on Friday night. Gunther glanced to the legal advocate. She was some sort of faerie with long pink hair and longer legs. She shrugged and shook her head slightly. Gunther turned his attention back to Lancelot.

To Keith’s surprise, Gunther’s amicable cool evaporated. He let loose a long string of growling goblin syllables that, from Lancelot’s reaction, were seriously profane.

“If you could stick to English, I’d appreciate it, Heartman,” Keith remarked.

“Lancelot,” Gunther snapped. “Disappointing your band mates is the least of your problems right now.”

“I know, I just can’t think about it. I don’t know what to do.” Lancelot hung his head in misery. “My legal advocate says I don’t have to talk to you, but I didn’t do anything. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what to do.”

“Why isn’t your family here with you?” Gunther shot back.

Keith thought it an odd question for Gunther to ask, but then, he supposed he’d underestimated the filial connectedness of goblins.

“My parents are dead,” Lancelot replied. “They were in a boat accident last year. I don’t have anyone else.” Lancelot’s hands shook.

Much as he valued aggressive questioning, Keith didn’t think badgering Lancelot would yield much profitable information. The kid—and he was clearly a kid, Keith could see that now—was visibly retreating into himself. He said, “Would you like a cigarette?”

“I sure would.” Lancelot raised his eyes fractionally.

Keith signaled to Gunther who grudgingly placed his own pack of Luckys on the table. Lancelot took one and chewed the end nervously. He looked up to Gunther and said, “I know you’re disappointed in me, but I didn’t do anything.”

The rest of the interrogation revealed nothing of value. No one could provide Lancelot with an alibi for the time of the murder. He had been at home, alone.

They left Lancelot in the interrogation cell and headed back downtown.

Gunther wanted to walk along the river, so Keith parked and soon they walked shoulder to shoulder along the greenbelt, the Willamette River on one side, the skyscrapers of downtown on the other. Gunther chewed three cigarettes, one after another in silence, before finally saying, “The latest victim of the Cannibal Killer was dumped directly in Lancelot’s backyard. There has to be a goblin connection. Only another trans-goblin would know about Lancelot’s status.”

“But the question is, is the connection to Lancelot or to Carnivore Circus?”

“When I interviewed the other two band members, they alibied out. No, I think the connection must be to Lancelot, but…”

“But?” Keith prompted.

“But I don’t think he’s a killer.” Gunther shook his last smoke out of the pack and crumpled the empty box.

“Are you suggesting he was framed?” Keith sat down on a bench overlooking the water.

“To me it feels like someone is going out of their way to make it look like he is the killer. Not just any old goblin, but him.”

“All right, what’s special about him? Apart from the fact that he’s in a band?”

“He can’t make change?” Keith suggested.

“Well, you can’t expect that. He hasn’t been working at the market all that long.”

For the first time, Gunther’s reflexive defense of Lancelot’s abilities didn’t annoy Keith. It was true. He hadn’t worked there long. “We know he’s an orphan, if you can call a twenty-one-year-old guy an orphan. He owns nothing of value. No car, no savings. His house is rented. He hadn’t even finished paying off his guitar. He lives off the nominal cash he gets from his band and his recycled sweater stall.”

“Didn’t his parents leave him anything?” Gunther asked.

“Just the hereditary table. Lancelot’s mother sold handcrafted knitwear.”

“There has to be a connection between these things,” Keith said. “I’d be willing to bet it’s money. Somehow.”

“Not food?”

“Food is money,” Keith said simply. “In other contexts, food can be love, art, and culture. But in this case I feel comfortable saying that if food is involved, it’s in the form of money.”

“Agreed.” Gunther gazed out at the river. “Maybe if Lancelot needed money enough he would start hunting and selling human flesh, but I don’t think it would have been his idea. Maybe Bullock or one of her cronies lured him into it?”

“I don’t buy the money angle there. Lancelot’s market reporting shows that he made enough cash to support himself,” Keith said. “And he has absolutely no connection to Bullock.”

“That we’ve found yet,” Gunther countered grimly.

“It’s not like we haven’t looked. There’s none. Zip.” Keith flipped his paper open, once again reading the article on the Bauer & Bullock closure, looking for anything he’d missed. What was surprising about the article, from a law enforcement standpoint, was the complete lack of apparent concern the writer had about the restaurant being shut down by the police under suspicious circumstances.

Rather, the author was simply obsessed to the point of torment by the idea that he wouldn’t have any more alphajores described lovingly as, “A three-tiered sandwich cookie filled with alternating layers of feijoa jam, goat cajeta, and hazelnut pastry biscuit dipped in white and black chocolate for the signature Bauer & Bullock  half-moon effect. An Argentinean delight made native to the Pacific Northwest. Local hazelnuts were supplied by Peabody Orchards. The luscious cajeta goat caramel was sourced locally from Azalea Point Creamery.”

Keith did a double take. Gunther, who had been reading over his shoulder, seemed to notice the name at the same moment. He said, “Don’t I recognize that name?”

“Holy shit,” Keith breathed. “It’s the fucking vampire after all.”

“I don’t disagree, but why? And where’s the evidence? We already searched his property and came up empty.”

“I don’t know yet.” Keith popped his knuckles in irritation. But the pieces refused to assemble themselves into any sort of picture. “The connection we have is the cookie.”

“If only we could interrogate pastry,” Gunther remarked dryly. “I suppose we could have it analyzed, but what for?”

“Don’t you still have that box you got for your old partner?”

They drove back to hotel under flashing lights and Keith parked illegally while Gunther legged it up to his room to retrieve the souvenir. He flopped back into the passenger seat just as the hotel manager was approaching the loading zone. Keith zipped around the corner into the alley, put on the hazard lights, and said, “Let’s see them.”

Gunther opened the beautifully wrapped box and handed over a cookie. Keith broke it in half. A delicious, fruity scent floated up. Instantly, his mouth began to water. He wanted nothing more than to put it in his mouth but knew better.

“This jam is not made with feijoa.” Keith had experienced this amazing aroma before. He’d confiscated twenty-seven jars once in a quaint teashop in Madison, Wisconsin. “This is heartfruit.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a fruit that grows exclusively in necrotic human organ meat, specifically the heart and liver. It’s incredibly rare. I busted a manufacturing operation last January. A guy who worked at a funeral home was harvesting organs and selling them to a nice little grandma who used them for growing material.”