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  Digital Knight

  Ryk E. Spoor

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2003 by Ryk E. Spoor

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 0-7434-7161-X

  Cover art by Gary Ruddell

  First printing, October 2003

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

  Printed in the United States of America

  This book is dedicated to:

  Jim Baen, for giving me a chance;

  My wife, Kathleen, for her constant support;

  The "Butcher of Baen" for his invaluable help.

  The yard was very dark; no lights were on in the house to which it was attached, the fence was high, and my eyes were still accustomed to the streetlights. But I could make out something on the ground, about thirty or forty feet away . . . and it seemed to me that across the yard there was a movement, another gate opening, and someone going through. There was nothing I could put my finger on . . . but something about that distant, moving figure sent a sudden shiver down my spine. "Hello?" I said tentatively.

  There was no answer, though I heard a faint clack noise of the other gate shutting in the distance. "Sorry to intrude, but I heard something . . . ?"

  Still no answer, but no sudden attacks from darkness either. I took a deep breath and stepped inside, walking slowly towards the object lying on the ground in front of me. Even before I reached it I had a very nasty feeling I knew what it was. I pulled out my keyring and turned on the mini-flashlight, pointing it downward.

  Lying on the ground before me was a dead man.

  "Oh, for crissakes," I heard myself say. "I'm on vacation, dammit!"

  Gone in a Flash

  1

  I clicked on the JAPES icon. A second picture appeared on the RAN-7X workstation screen next to the digitized original, said original being a pretty blurry picture of two men exchanging something. At first the two pictures looked identical, as always, but then rippling changes started: colors brightening and darkening, objects becoming so sharp as to look almost animated, a dozen things at once. I controlled the process with a mouse, pointing and clicking in places that were either doing very well or very poorly. JAPES (Jason's Automatic Photo Enhancing System) was a specialized plug-in program module I'd designed, which combined many of the standard photographic enhancement techniques into a single complex operation controlled partly by me and partly by a learning expert system.

  The computer-enhanced version, on the other hand, was crisp as a posed photo; except that I don't think either the Assemblyman or the coke dealer had intended a pose. Yeah, that ought to give Elias Klein another nail to put in the crooks' coffins. I glanced at my watch: eight-twenty. Time enough to enhance one more photo before Sylvie came over. I decided to do the last of Lieutenant Klein's; drug cases make me nervous, you never know what might happen.

  I inserted the negative into the enlarger/digitizer, popped into the kitchen for a cream soda, sat down and picked up my book. After seventeen minutes the computer pinged; for this kind of work, I have to scan at the best possible resolution. I checked to make sure the scan went okay, then coded in the parameters and set JAPES going, then went back to Phantoms. Great yarn. After the automatic functions were done, I started in on what I really get paid for here at Wood's Information Service ("Need info? Knock on Wood!"): the ability to find the best "finishing touches" that make enhancement still an art rather than a science.

  A faint scraping sound came from the back door, and then a faint clank. I checked the time again; nine-twenty-five, still too early; Sylvie's occult shop, the Silver Stake, always closed at precisely nine-thirty. "Lewis?" I called out.

  Lewis was what social workers might call a displaced person, others called a bum, and I called a contact. Lewis sometimes did scutwork for me—as long as he was sober he was a good worker. Unfortunately when he was drunk he was a belligerent nuisance, and at six foot seven a belligerent Lewis was an ugly sight. Since it was the first Friday of the month, he was probably drunk.

  But I didn't hear an answer, neither voice nor the funny ringing knock that the chains on his jacket cuffs made. Instead I heard another clank and then a muffled thud. At that point the computer pinged again, having just finished my last instructions. I checked the final version—it looked pretty good, another pose of the Assemblyman alone with his hand partly extended—then downloaded all the data onto two disks for the Lieutenant. I sealed them in an envelope with the original negatives, dropped the envelope into the safe, swung it shut, pulled the wall panel down and locked it. Then I stepped out and turned towards the backdoor, grabbing my book as I left. Just then the front doorbell rang.

  It was Sylvie, of course. "Hi, Jason!" she said, bouncing through the door. "Look at these, we just got the shipment in today! Aren't they great?" She dangled some crystal and silver earrings in front of me, continuing, "They're genuine Brazil crystal and the settings were handmade; the lady who makes them says she gets her directions from an Aztec she channels—"

  There was a tremendous bang from the rear and the windows shivered. "What the hell was that?" Sylvie demanded. "Sounded like a cannon!"

  "I don't know," I answered. "But it wasn't a gun. Something hit the building." I thought of the photos I was enhancing. It wouldn't be the first time someone had decided to erase the evidence before I finished improving it. I yanked open the righthand drawer of the front desk, pulled out my .45, snicked the safety off.

  "You're that worried, Jason?"

  "Could be bad, Syl; working for cops has its drawbacks."

  She nodded, her face serious now. To other people she comes across as a New Age bimbo, or a gypsy with long black hair and colored handkerchief clothes. I know better. She reached into her purse, yanked out a small .32 automatic, pulled the slide once. I heard a round chamber itself. "Ready."

  I raised an eyebrow, Spocklike. "Why the gun?"

  "This may be a fairly nice neighborhood, Jason, but some of the places I go aren't. And you get a lot of wierdos in the occult business." She started towards the back. "Let's go."

  I cut in front of her. "You cover me."

  I approached the door carefully, swinging to the hinge side. It opened inward, which could be trouble if someone slammed it open; I took the piece of pipe that I keep around and put it on the floor in the path of the door. Then I yanked the bolt and turned the handle.

  I felt a slight pressure, but not anything like something trying to force the door. Sylvie had lined up opposite me. She glanced at me and I nodded. I let the door start to open, then let go and stood aside.

  The metal fire door swung open and Lewis flopped down in front of us. Sylvie gasped and I grunted. Drunk like I thought. I reached out for him. That's when he finished his roll onto his back.

  His eyes stared up, glassy and unseeing. There was no doubt in my mind that he was very dead.

  I stepped over the body, to stand just inside the doorway. I peered up and down the alley. To the right I saw nothing but fog—God must be playing director with mood machines tonight—but to the left there was a tall, angular figure, silhouetted by a streetlamp. Pressing myself up against the doorframe in case bullets answered me, I called out, "Hey! You up there! We could use some help here!"

  The figure neither ans
wered nor came closer. He moved so fast that he just seemed to melt silently into the surrounding fog. I watched for a few seconds, but saw nothing else. I turned back to Lewis.

  Fortunately, there wasn't any blood. I hate blood. "Aw Christ . . ." I muttered. I knelt and gingerly touched the body. It was cool for a spring evening, but the body was still warm. Shit. Lewis was probably dying all the time I was reading Phantoms.

  "Jason, I have a bad feeling about this." Sylvie said quietly.

  "No kidding!" I snapped. Then I grinned faintly. "Sorry, Syl. No call for sarcasm. But you're right, this is one heck of a mess."

  She shook her head. "I don't mean it that way, Jason. The vibes are all wrong. There's something . . . unnatural about this."

  That stopped me. Over the years I've come to rely on Sylvie's "feelings"; I don't really believe in ESP and all that crap, but she has a hell of an intuition that's saved my job and my life on occasion. "Oh. Well, we'll see about it. Now I'd better call the cops; we're going to be answering questions for a while."

  Normally I might have asked her more about what she meant; but something about the way she'd said "unnatural" bothered me.

  * * *

  The sergeant on duty assured me that someone would be along shortly. I was just hanging up when I heard a muffled scream.

  I had the gun out again and was around the corner instantly. Sylvie was kneeling over the body, one hand on Lewis' coat, the other over her mouth. "What's wrong? Jesus, Syl, you scared the daylights out of me!"

  She pointed a finger. "Explain that, mister information man."

  I looked.

  On the side of Lewis' neck, where the coat collar had covered, were two red marks. Small red dots, right over the carotid artery.

  Two puncture marks.

  "So he got bit by a couple mosquitoes. Big deal. There are two very happy bugs flying high tonight."

  Sylvie gave me a look she usually reserves for those who tell her that crystals are only good for radios and jewelry. "That is not what I meant, and you know that perfectly well. This man was obviously assaulted by a nosferatu."

  "Say what? Sounds like a Mexican pastry."

  "Jason, you are being deliberately obtuse. With all the darn horror novels you read, you know what nosferatu means."

  I nodded and sighed. "Okay, yeah. Nosferatu. The Undead. A vampire. Gimme a break, Syl. I may read the novels but I don't live them. I think you've been reading too much Shirley MacLaine lately."

  "And I think that you are doing what you always laugh at the characters in your books for doing: refusing to see the obvious."

  I opened my mouth to answer, but at that moment the wail of sirens became obvious. Red and blue lights flashed at the alleyway—jeez, it must be a quiet night out there. Besides the locals, I saw two New York State Troopers; they must've been cruising the I-90 spur from Albany and heard about Lewis over the radio. I felt more comfortable as I spotted a familiar figure in the unmistakable uniform of the Morgantown PD coming forward.

  Lieutenant Renee Reisman knelt and did a cursory once-over, her brown hair brushing her shoulders. "Either of you touch anything?" she asked.

  I was glad it was Renee. We'd gone to school together and that made things a little easier. "I touched his face, just to check if he was still warm, which he was. Sylvie moved his collar a bit to see if he'd had his throat cut or something. Other than that, the only thing I did was open the door; he was leaning up against the door and fell in."

  "Okay." She was one of the more modern types; instead of scribbling it all down in a notebook, a little voice-activated recorder was noting every word. "You're both going to have to come down and make some statements."

  "I know the routine, Renee. Oh, and I know you'll need to keep the door open a while during the picture taking and all; here's the key. Lock up when you're done."

  I told the sergeant we'd be taking my car; he pulled the PD cruiser out and waited while I started up Mjolnir. It was true enough that I could afford a better car than a Dodge Dart, even a silver-and-black one, but I kinda like a car that doesn't crumple from a light breeze . . . and it wasn't as though Mjolnir was exactly a factory-standard car, either. But that's not important here.

  Sylvie's statement didn't take that long. Mine took a couple hours since I had to explain about Lewis and why he might choose to die somewhere in my vicinity. A few years back I'd been in the area when two drug kingpins happened to get wiped. Then Elias got me involved in another case and a potential lead fell out a closed window. I was nearby. Cops don't like it when one person keeps turning up around bodies.

  It was one-thirty when we finally got out. I took a left at Chisolm Street and pulled into Denny's. Sylvie was oddly quiet the whole time. Except for ordering, she didn't say anything until we were already eating. "Jason. We have to talk."

  "Okay. Shoot."

  "I know that you don't believe in a lot of the Powers. But you have to admit that my predictions and senses have proven useful before."

  "I can't argue with that, Syl. But those were . . . ordinary occasions. Now you're talking about the late-night horror movies suddenly doing a walk-on in real life."

  She nodded. "Maybe you can't feel it, Jase, but I am a true sensitive. I felt the Powers in the air about that poor man's body. And that noise, Jason. Big as Lewis was, even he wouldn't make that kind of noise just falling against the door. Something threw him, Jason, threw him hard enough to shake the windows." I nodded unwillingly. "Jase, it's about time you faced the fact that there are some things that you are not going to find classified on a database somewhere, comfortably cross-indexed and referenced. But I'm not going to argue about it. Just do me a favor and check into it, okay?"

  I sighed. "Okay, I'll nose around and see what I can find out. No offense, but I hope this time your feelings are haywire."

  Her blue eyes looked levelly into mine. "Believe me, Jason, I hope so too."

  2

  I got back to WIS at 2:45. The cops were gone but one of those wide yellow tapes was around the entire area. Damn.

  I went to the pay phone on the corner, dialed the station, asked for Lieutenant Reisman. I was in luck. She was still in. "Reisman here. What is it, Jason?"

  "You know, I happen to live in my place of business. Do you have to block off the entire building?"

  "Sorry," she said. "Hold on a minute."

  It was actually five minutes. "Okay, here's the deal. You can go in, but only use the front entrance and stay out of that back hallway."

  "But I store a lot of stuff there."

  "Sorry, that's the breaks. Tell your informants to die elsewhere from now on. Anything else?"

  "Yeah. This thing has Sylvie really spooked. She's really nervous about this, and being in the business she is, it gives her weird ideas."

  "So what can I do?"

  "Just give me a call when the ME report comes through. If there's nothing really odd on it, it'll make things much easier."

  She was quiet for a moment. "Look, Jason, medical examiner reports aren't supposed to be public knowledge, first off. But second, just what do you mean by 'odd'?"

  I grinned, though she couldn't tell. "Believe me, Lieutenant, you'll know if you see it."

  "Huh." She knew I was being deliberately evasive, but she knew I probably had a reason. She'd push later if events warranted. "All right, Jason, here's what I'll do. If the ME's report is what I consider normal, which includes normal assaults, heart attacks, and so on, I'll call you and tell you just that, 'normal.' If I see something I consider odd, I'll let you know."

  "Thanks, Renee. I owe you one."

  "You got that straight. Good night."

  I went back to my building and up to my bedroom. I was drifting off to sleep when I suddenly sat bolt upright, wide awake.

  The figure I had seen in the alley, backlighted by a streetlamp. I had thought it just moved away too fast to follow in the fog. But the Tamara's Tanning neon sign had been on its left, and the lit sign for WKIL radio on its ri
ght. One or the other should have flickered as it passed across them.

  Both had stayed shining steadily. But that was impossible.

  It was a long time before I finally got to sleep.

  I got up at twelve-thirty; that yellow tape would keep away the customers who might drop by, and as a consultant I keep irregular hours anyway. I was just sitting down with my ham sandwich breakfast when the phone rang. "Wood's Information Service, Jason Wood speaking."

  "This is Lieutenant Reisman, Wood. I've just read the ME report."

  "And?"

  "And I would like to know what your girlfriend thinks is going on here, Mr. Wood."

  "Syl's not my girlfriend." Not exactly, anyway, I thought. "What did the ME find?"

  "It's what he didn't find that's the problem." Renee's voice was tinged with uncertainty. "Your friend Lewis wasn't in great shape—cirrhosis, bronchitis, and so on, and various malnutrition things—but none of those killed him. He'd also suffered several bruises, someone grabbed him with great force, and after death the body was thrown into your door. But death was not due to violence of the standard sort."

  "Well, what did kill him then?"

  "The ME can't yet say how it happened," the Lieutenant said quietly, "but the cause of death was blood loss." She took a breath and finished.

  "There wasn't a drop of blood left in his body."

  I made a mental note that I owed Syl a big apology. "Not a drop, huh?"

  "Well, technically speaking, that's not true. The ME told me that it's physically impossible to get all the blood out of a corpse. But it was as bloodless as if someone had slit his throat with a razor. The thing that's really bothering him is that the man had no wounds that account for the blood loss. He'll have the detailed autopsy done in a few days, but from what he said I doubt he's going to find anything."

  "You're probably right. Well, thanks, Renee."

  "Hold on just one minute, mister! You at least owe me an explanation."