Red Dirt (Part 2)

Overnight, Bennet, Ellis and Daniel slept in a guest house. Daniel was the first to wake up, well before dawn. The house was intentionally suburban. The kind of house you find in a million neighborhoods across middle America. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen. Its layout was almost identical to the wood paneled house Daniel had shared with Sam at Camp Hardrock.

She was still somewhere in the system, partnered with someone else. He'd thought about her when he'd seen the body. She'd done something similar to the monster in Lautville. But Sam wouldn't have done that to a person.

He hadn't been sleeping well, not since San Francisco. The time zone change could be part of it, as could his schedule. He'd worked a lot of nights recently. But Daniel knew it was neither. There was opportunity, just outside his reach from within the walls of the Agency. And he could smell it, as surely as sweat or magic.

Both of which he could smell on his morning run. He'd meant to get some sense of the geography but found himself following the distinct smell of magic. It was old, stale. Like the smell of someone's flower scented perfume, compared to the real thing. He followed it to a dirt road between houses, and a complex of administrative buildings. As much as a military camp can have an alleyway, this was one. There wasn't enough light to see by yet, for a normal person. But Daniel had his Trace.

He hopped over some yellow caution tape and walked in. There were no cameras here, no lights either, although the administration buildings many windows faced this way. It probably lit the space up during the night. A blue tarp covered the patch of sand on the right. It smelled like blood. That must be where they'd found the victim.

Tire tracks, wide ones, spanned the corners of the road, suggesting it was nominally a loading area. Dozens of footprints cut over them, proving that it was used far more often for foot traffic.

"Early start, operative?" Newson said. His high reedy voice cut through the early morning air. Daniel looked up with a start. He was standing on the porch of the administrative building, smoking. He must have been there the whole time; Daniel would have heard him walking up. He should have heard him anyway. He'd been too lost in his own thoughts, too tired to keep up.

He nodded in answer.

"I got thinking about what you said." Newson said. "That it might have been someone working on the base."

Daniel nodded and went back to looking around. There were cigarette burns all over the porch where Newson stood. This must be a common hangout spot for the employees of the building.

"And I realized, we gave up on investigating the whole thing rather early. Because we assumed that something otherworldly must have happened, we didn't do the normal diligence."

Daniel took a step up onto the porch, placing his sneakers in the worn boot prints of half-a-dozen men. "You're staking out the crime scene" he said.

Newson nodded. "Didn't have anything else to do with my morning."

Daniel leaned against the rail, a few feet away from him. "We didn't introduce ourselves. I'm Daniel" he said.

"Why are you up so early Daniel?"

"Wasn't sleeping."

"Oh." Newson nodded like that explained everything, which of course it did. Sleeplessness on military bases was not uncommon. "I got the list you asked for."

"How many names?" Daniel asked.

"Two hundred."

Daniel kept a curse to himself. That wasn't a viable number. They'd need to work the pool down somehow.

"Where any of them having drinks in here with him?"

"No. Officers only."

Daniel started thinking. They'd need a different approach.

"What's your trick? "Newson asked.

"Sorry?"

"Your ability, magic power. Like turning people into pools of blood."

"I can't do that." Daniel said.

Newson grimaced. "It's classified then?"

"I'm good at finding people, or the things that want to eat them."

At breakfast, Daniel reported on the state of the list. Bennet volunteered to go over CCTV footage, account for as many of the names as possible.

"I want to work the other side." Ellis said, "If I can interview the people he was with before he died, we'll know why he was walking alone."

Bennet nodded. "Take Daniel with you. In case one of them decides to turn you into goo."

Ellis looked at him. They hadn't talked since he'd visualized pointing a gun at her and proved she could see more than people's emotions. "Sounds good" she said.

"It's not mind reading." Ellis said. She looked well rested, her normally misbehaving hair combed and treated into a cute bob. "I can see things people are focusing on. If someone's single minded about something— really intent."

"And their emotions?" Daniel asked.

"That's always."

"As words?"

She shook her head. "More like— do you know those mood rings they sell at gas stations? Imagine one of those, but you didn't see it, you felt it."

"Through walls."

"Anywhere, because it's not really seeing."

Daniel nodded. He was grateful she was talking to him, telling him all of this. She, for some reason, had decided he was going to be her ally. No matter what. They were walking back to the crime scene and drawing stares. Not for their age, plenty of teenagers served in the army, but their uniforms. White buttoned shirts, red ties. Daniel's Glock, holstered at his waist.

She elbowed him. "I told you mine."

"What."

"Now tell me yours."

Daniel waffled, but she'd figure it out eventually. Besides, his best chance at finding the shooter from San Francisco was with her co-operation.

"They don't know how quick I really am" he said.

"Reflexes?"

"Movement, neural processing, all the stuff they tested me for."

"You sandbagged all their tests?"

"I didn't try as hard as I could have."

"And they already treat you like their golden child."

Daniel snorted. "They keep a very close eye on me. I don't think that's the same."

She laughed, suddenly. "They're scared of you, you know? That's how Henderson feels."

Newson was waiting for them inside the building. Like yesterday he walked them into a sound isolated room at the back of the complex. "Are there cameras in here?" Ellis asked. "Microphones?"

"No." Newson said.

Ellis tapped her index finger on the table twice, which they'd agreed meant someone was lying.

"We're going to have to ask you to turn them off." Daniel said.

He grinned. "I had to try."

A picture emerged over the next four hours. The officer had been disliked by almost everyone, but not strongly. He was in logistics, more of an accountant than a soldier. That, during peacetime, made him one of the most powerful people at the base. He decided who got what, at least when no one else was paying attention. Ellis got several of the officers to admit that they gave him personal favors, baseball tickets, covered a shift, let something slide, to get on his good side.

Daniel mostly watched, occasionally speaking up to call someone a liar when Ellis asked for it. She wanted to keep anyone, but most importantly Newson (who paced across the back of the room while they were conducting interviews) from figuring out exactly what they could do.

"There's nothing here worth killing him over." Ellis said at the end. Daniel nodded. Plenty of people had reason to dislike him, but they all needed his help with their pet projects. And he had no direct subordinates who would gain anything from his death either.

"Could it be like the thing in the Peters house?" Ellis asked.

The thought had been gnawing at Daniel. "Repetition is rare, and no one else has vanished."

"What was in 'The Peters House'" Newson demanded.

"Something that could pretend to be people." Ellis answered before Daniel could stop her.

"How do we know that whatever killed him looked like a person?" Newsom asked.

"I'm sure after this morning." Daniel said. He'd discussed this with Bennet and Ellis at breakfast. "The lights in the alleyway come from the administrative building. If he was killed where he stood, he would have been backlit."

"So, he would have seen exactly what killed him, walking towards him." Ellis said.

"And if he'd shot at it, or even yelled, multiple people would have heard." Newson finished. He grimaced. "It would almost be better if it was a monster."

Bennet met Daniel and Ellis in the mess hall the Officer had been in. They ordered food, restaurant style from a uniformed soldier, and reported their findings. Bennet was quiet.

"Well, of the 216 names that Newson gave us, thirty were in the area two nights ago."

Ellis sat up, "That's great news."

"Did the officer personally know any of them?" Daniel asked.

Bennet frowned. "No. We have no reason to think he'd met any of them."

"We can't interview thirty people on suspicion of turning someone into a blood cloud" Daniel said. "We're already drawing enough attention."

Ellis stared pensively at her french fries. "How did you discover your trace, Daniel?"

Daniel swallowed, thinking of the attack. They weren't pleasant memories. The screams must have drifted a little too far forward in his mind because Ellis nodded. "Right."

"So?" Daniel asked.

"Have any of those thirty teenagers been through a traumatic incident in the last month?" Ellis asked.

Bennet shrugged. "It's the army."

Daniel was warming to the idea. "Bennet, we're talking life and death. They keep records of that kind of thing."

He sighed and pushed his laptop over to Ellis. "Go crazy. Just don't drip any ketchup on my keyboard."

"Got it." Ellis said, almost automatically.

"What?" Bennet said.

"Private Andy Ferris."

Daniel slid his seat over so he could look over her shoulder. Ferris had been caught inside Bennet's net, emerging from the gym after his curfew. He was on base after being injured overseas. In combat.

"A bullet wound would do it."

"Why would he kill an Officer he didn't know?" Ellis asked.

Bennet stole one of Ellis' french fries. "You can ask him yourself."