John left shortly after Peter did. He seemed thoughtful and troubled by what he’d learned. “Hopefully I haven’t put my daughter in any danger by bringing that metal to the house,” he said just before leaving.
“I’m sure Peter will take care of it,” I assured him.
John shrugged. Within that shrug were the vestiges of age and worry. He looked older somehow.
“You know,” he paused at the door, “I was doing some figures and it does seem like the angles on the gun might offer a slight advantage with their placement. Unfortunately any advantage they gain is lost because the engines shouldn’t be able to give the plane as much maneuverability as a more traditionally designed plane. It’s an odd thing.”
I agreed. I made that as a note as that observation might give us a clue as to why the plane had been built. Fire power but not maneuverability.
“I found something,” RaeLynn said walking into the door.
“What?”
“Well, you know our pilot?”
“Not personally,” I said, smiling even as I nodded at her to go ahead.
RaeLynn frowned at me but ignored the comment. “At any rate, he’s got no background other than his business. It’s like he’s a ghost.”
“I wish you people would stop insisting this whole thing is about ghosts,” Peter said walking up behind RaeLynn. To her credit, RaeLynn only jumped a little bit and her feet never left the floor.
“What do you mean?” she asked, standing aside to let him in the office. Peter entered, not pausing to let her walk in front but took center stage, sprawling in one of the chairs.
“Dillon has asked about ghosts and spirits as well,” Peter said. “I’ve explained that I’d sense that kind of thing.”
“That wasn’t exactly what I mean,” RaeLynn smiled and gave a little hiccup like she was trying not to laugh.
Peter clearly caught that and looked over at her with an expression as close to a glare as I’ve ever seen.
“Look, in the terms I meant, a ghost is someone without a past. What I think it means is that this guy has had an identity change or three in the past and we’ll have a heck of a time tracing him. Considering I’ve already worked on that, you can bet the identity change was well done. Zari even helped me.”
“And she’s good at that,” I said. She’d helped me change my identity on more than one occasion. She knew what to look for on both sides of that equation.
“Good at what?” Now Kyle was standing at the door too. I was feeling claustrophobic with all of them crowding around the entrance. I gestured for them to come in. RaeLynn walked into the office and leaned against the chair across from the desk. Peter didn’t move but Kyle came in and settled down at the table near the door.
“Is anyone else out there?” I asked.
“Just Kaitlyn,” Kyle said. “But I thought you might want to know about the guy I was investigating.”
“Did you find something?”
“Well, Paul, that’s the guy, says he was set up. The electronic components are missing from the building he was supposed to guard but he says he didn’t take them. The place was empty when he went in.”
“Why did he go in?” I asked.
“First he told everyone that he thought he heard something odd and found the place empty. Actually, he doesn’t remember what happened. He could have sworn that’s what he did, but he doesn’t remember getting there. He says he felt like someone slipped him a drug of some sort because he felt like he was walking forever and not getting to the building. Then when he got there, the place was empty.”
“Did he get a tox screen?” I asked.
“Unfortunately no. He wasn’t sure why someone would go to all that trouble. And he made it to the warehouse finally. I got a look at the surveillance cameras and they show a worker who looks like my guy, only shorter and thinner, going inside. And he’s removing things. We get one look at the face and it’s like someone tried to distort the camera with some sort of photo editor. The weird thing? The guy is wearing different clothing than my defendant and Paul, the real Paul, shows up in the video a few minutes later dressed like he says he was dressed and looking normal.”
“That’s strange,” RaeLynn said. “Suppose that they had someone who looked a little like him and then distorted that part of the video?”
I immediately thought of the pilot’s picture when Kyle said distorted. “Was it like his face was elongated or something?”
“Exactly. It was strange looking to see the rest of the background look so normal though,” Kyle said.
“So there is that link too.” I put my hand under my chin, thinking. There were people who shouldn’t be here and we were losing people who should be.
“And didn’t you say that your Mike Taylor wasn’t short and the person who said he was, was short,” RaeLynn asked.
“So this is like that,” Kyle said. “I ought to tell my Uncle. It may not help legally because this is weird but there’s something going on.”
I looked at Peter. He wasn’t looking at me. I was staring off into the corner, running his hand along the wall, but not with his usual attention to detail.
“This is more about the perception of vision. Would that be more in the realm of air than earth?” I asked Peter.
“The eyes are earth. They too are part of the human body. This distortion could be something dealing with air, but air spirits do not think like humans so they would be difficult to get information from.”
“What about Marcus?” I asked.
“I can get in contact with him,” Peter said. “Meg has suggested he spend some time at the plane site, but that could be dangerous for him. It’s possible that as half element spirit and half human he’d see something that I wouldn’t connect to the plane. And in this case, perhaps get a fix on something I cannot seem to.”
Peter left the room, still looking thoughtful. RaeLynn picked up her notes, following him out, looking equally lost in thought. That left me in the office with Kyle and Zari A.
Kyle was looking out the window. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to be accused of something and not have done it,” he said. “I’d hate that. At least if you’ve done it, you know that you did, right?”
I nodded watching him.
“Of course, even if you know that, some things you can’t take back, no matter how much you want to.”
“You can only move forward,” I agreed.
“It’s just damn hard to know that that guard is gone because I used that gun. He ought to be alive. Maybe in jail or something but alive,” Kyle said. Kyle hadn’t talked much about this aspect of the killing. Mostly he’d talked about things like being grateful to be alive and wanting to use his life for something more than just his own selfish reasons.
“You shot to protect yourself,” I said.
“At what cost? Was the cost worth it, really?” he asked. Clearly no matter how much he tried to offer a shoulder or a listening ear, the new tender Kyle worried that his life had to make up for the one he took.
“I heard once, from a veteran, that it’s easy to kill someone. It’s living with yourself after that’s hard.”
Kyle frowned. “How do people do that? Kill a lot of people and live with themselves after?”
“I think it’s harder than we know. It’s why the returning vets often have such a difficult time reintegrating into their old world. They’ve done things that can’t be shared and no one understands.”
“I get that,” Kyle said.
Zari leaped down from the cat tree and stepped on Kyle’s lap looking up at him with great golden eyes, a look that I knew too well. It was the one that suggested she was trying to see into your soul. I couldn’t hear if she said anything but Kyle started petting her for a few minutes, even as she stood there looking at him. For the first time, I felt a little left out of the relationship with my cat.
Zari turned to give me a look before turning back to Kyle. I could see her toes flexing and contracting while she “made biscuits”. She hated that term as it seemed too cute for the cat that she was. I tried to avoid thinking that she was being very cute cat in this moment and was acting surprisingly empathic.
“As if I have never killed anything,” she snorted at me.