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where they got them. Literally. You knowSaucerhead . He can be convincing."
Like a landslide. You didn't talk when he said talk, chances were you would
real quick. "Great. There's a dead end."
"He's going to try again tomorrow. Pity your thief didn't take something
special so somebody would remember him."
"Thoughtless of him. Look. I've got an appointment with a man who says he
knows the killer. Maybe. I'd like to see him before he changes his mind about
talking."
"Lead on, noble knight." Morley rags me about being romantic and sentimental.
He has his moments himself like turning up here. He'd never admit he was
concerned about me swimming in a school of sharks. He'd just claim he was
curious.
"This is a real haunted house," he muttered as we stole downstairs. "How can
they stand it?"
"Maybe they're right when they say there's no place like home. Maybe you
don't notice after a while."
"Who's the brunette I spotted when everybody charged out of the hall across
the way?"
"That's the daughter, Jennifer. A dead loss, near as I can tell."
"Maybe you don't have what it takes."
"Maybe not. But I think it's bad chemistry." We hit the bottom of the stairs.
Nobody was around. We headed for the back door. There was a sliver of moon
out, just enough to keep me from stumbling over things. Morley had no trouble.
His kind can see inside a coffin.
"At least it's straightforward. No dead gods. No vampires. No killer ogres.
Just greedy people."
I thought about the woman in white and hoped she wasn't supernatural. I
didn't know how to deal with spooks.
Morley grabbed me. "Somebody moving over there."
I didn't see anything.
Somebody tripped over something.
"Heard us," Morley said. He took off.
I went to the stable, called, "Snake? Where you at? It's Garrett."
No answer. I stuck my head inside. I didn't see anything. The horses were
restless, muttering in their sleep. I decided to circle around outside before
I risked the inside.
Wavering light spilled between boards on the north end, near the west corner.
It was feeble, like the light of a single guttering candle. There was a narrow
door. I'd found Snake's hideout. "Snake? You there? It's Garrett."
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Snake didn't answer.
I opened the door.
Snake wouldn't be answering anybody in this world again. Somebody had stuck a
knife in him.
It wasn't a good job. The thrust had gone in on the wrong side of his
breastbone, piercing a lung. The tip of the dagger had lodged in his spine.
Morley materialized. "Lost him." He looked at Snake. "Amateur work." Always a
student, Morley. And always a critic.
"Pros make mistakes if they're in a hurry with somebody tough. This guy was a
commando, way I hear. Be hard to take him clean."
"Maybe." Dotes dropped to his haunches, toyed with a cord twisted around
Snake's neck. The killer had finished it the hard way. "Interesting."
I'd started looking for physical evidence. A killer in a hurry could have
dropped something. "What's that?"
"This is a Kefsidhe strangler's cord."
"A what?" I squatted beside him.
"Kefsidhe . They have strict religious injunctions against spilling blood.
They think if you spill blood, the murdered man's spirit can't pass on till
he's been avenged. So they kill without spilling blood because murder is part
of their religion, too. Using the cord is an art with them."
I looked at the cord. It wasn't just a piece of rope.
Morley said, "The master assassin makes his own cords. Making your own is the
final rite of passage to master status. Look. The knot is like a hangman's
knot, except the noose is round so it can be drawn with the hands pulling
apart. These knots in the cord aren't really knots, they're braided over cork
cones. They work like barbs on an arrowhead. The cord can be pulled through
the knot in only one direction."
It only took a second to see how that worked with an example right there. I
felt one of the tapered bulges in the cord. Morley said, "The cork crushes
down going through the knot, expands again on the other side."
"How do you get your cord off?"
"They don't. They use it only once, then it's tainted. I've only ever seen
one before. Cut off his own throat by a man I knew years ago. Excepting you,
he was the luckiest guy I've ever known."
I looked around, less interested in Snake than he was. If our killer wasn't
good he was lucky. There wasn't a spot of physical evidence. "Kind of sad," I
said.
"Death usually is." Which was a surprise, considering the source. But Morley
has been full of surprises as long as I've known him.
"I mean the way he lived." I gestured at our surroundings. He'd lived like
his horses. He'd slept on straw. His only piece of furniture was a
paint-stained table. "This was a professional soldier. Twenty years in, mostly
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spent in theCantard . Combat pay. Prize money. A man careful enough to stay
alive that long would be careful about his money. But he lived in a barn, like
an animal. Didn't even have a change of clothes."
Morley grunted. "Happens. Want to bet he came out of the worst slum? Or off a
dirt farm where they never saw two coppers the same month?"
"No bet." I'd seen it. Raised poor, they can get pathological about
squirreling it away for a rainy day and death comes before the deluge. Sad way
to live. I touched Snake's shoulder. His muscles were still knotted. He hadn't
relaxed when he'd died. Curious.
I recalled what Cook had told me about him. "Put it on his tombstone, he was
a good Marine." I rolled him over in case there was something under him. There
wasn't, that I could see.
"Morley. It takes a guy awhile to strangle. Maybe whoever killed him tried
that first, then stuck him. Instead of the other way around."
He glanced around at the damage, which wasn't all that obvious, considering
the state of the place. "Could be."
"You ever try to strangle somebody?"
He gave me a look. He didn't answer questions like that.
"Sorry. I have. I was supposed to take out this sentry during a raid. I
practiced before we went in."
"That doesn't sound like you."
"That was me then. I don't like killing and I didn't like it then, but I [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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