Free Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman by Duncan Eagleson Page A

that. Reading a written report is different from hearing a witness’s story firsthand. And a professional investigator is the best witness we could hope for.”
    Auden stood. “You’ve got my reports. Read ’em.” He shouldered past me and left the bullpen. The door didn’t exactly slam behind him on the way out, but nobody in the room had any doubt that it had closed.
    Morgan opened the file with Auden’s reports. “Six-four or so, maybe two-thirty, two-fifty pounds,” she read. “Dark skin, but not like a black or either kind of Indian, more grayish. And fast... He was, and I quote, ‘hellish fast. A couple of times, I could barely see him move, he was just a blur, like.’ When Auden ordered him to freeze, he smiled.”
    “ With that speed, and being bulletproof,” said Rok, “I’d smile, too.”
    We all thought about this for a moment.
    “ We need to get to his motive,” said Morgan. “Why does he kill the people he kills? How does he pick them? When we find out how he finds them, we’ll find him.”
    “ Don’t sound like Chief Adams was real big on religion, and the treasurer was an atheist,” said Rok. “Looks like the religious angle isn’t holding up.”
    “ I dunno about that.” The sergeant who’d led our welcoming committee had crossed the office to join us. Her name tag said Robles . “Excuse me for intruding, but Investigator Auden had me looking into that a little this morning. Seems Treasurer Czernoff had been particularly hard-nosed about tax exemptions for churches and temples. Turned down a bunch of recent applications. Several groups were pretty pissed off about that. There were even a few demonstrations, and calls for his resignation.”
    “ Any chance of that happening?” I asked.
    Robles chuckled. I liked the sound. “Well, he’s permanently resigned now, isn’t he? But, no, Czernoff laughed in their faces. He wasn’t about to resign.”
    “ What about Roth?” asked Morgan. “Would he have asked for Czernoff’s resignation, if the political pressure was stiff enough?”
    “ No chance. Roth and Czernoff went back; he was one of Roth’s main men during the Takeover. Maybe if the council voted for it, Roth would consider it. But the churches involved didn’t have enough clout to take it that far.”
    “ Any of ’em might be angry enough to hire a killer?” Rok asked.
    Morgan looked at him. “You thinking this guy might be for hire?”
    “ I’m just saying,” Rok said.
    “ Professionals don’t usually leave a calling card, do they?” asked Robles. “And that’s an awful lot of jobs in a short time.”
    “ Calling card might be good for business. Maybe some were random, just to add to the rep.” Rok was trying, but I could see he didn’t believe it either. “Okay, so it ain’t likely, but it ain’t impossible, either.”
    “ On the religion angle, the other thing is,” Robles continued, “I was looking into the former chief’s finances...” She shook her head. “Seems shitty, like spying on your own chief, but you gotta cover all the bases. Anyway, I find out he’d been making large contributions to a couple of charities—the Rock Soup kitchen, and the Graceland Rehab Center.”
    Rok shook his head. “Contributions to charities? That don’t seem very suspicious... Or are they bogus charities? Were they unusually big contributions or something?”
    “ They’re legitimate, and no, the sums weren’t that big. No real stress on the chief’s wallet. The weird thing is, the chief was Episcopal, and both these places are run by the Church of the King.”
    That wasn’t totally outrageous, but it was a bit odd. The Church of the King accepted Christians well enough, but the good feelings didn’t tend to go the other way. CoKs saw their god, Elvis, as just another incarnation of the same dying king they saw in Osiris, Dionysus, Jesus, or JFK, but the Christians tended to see theirs as the one and only, and regarded such syncretic sentiments as