|
|
Part 3
“How’s Oz taking it?”Elisa Summers looked at her father beside her on the park bench, at the worry and sadness in his face, and she suddenly felt very close to this generous, loving, but ultimately lonely and enigmatic man. She’d known him all her life, yet sometimes she felt she hardly knew him at all. And other times they connected on a level that she couldn’t even begin to understand.
“Not well,” she said, shaking her head. “He wants to kill him. He’s not thinking too straight at the moment. Thank God he refuses to leave her side, or I think he’d be out there hunting him down right now.”
“The doctors, they’re still optimistic?”
“You know doctors. Bland optimism on top of bland pessimism. It’s hard to tell.”
He looked at her and gently brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “When did you become such a cynic, huh?”
“I think it was the day you told me there was no Santa Claus.”
“You’re so much like your mother sometimes, ’Lise. Even your sense of humor, bringing some light to the darkness. Have I ever told you how much I love you?”
“Not since this morning.”
Angel smiled and looked out at the children playing in the park, enjoying a day that was unusually warm for the wintertime, even in Sunnydale.
“Look at this place, this town,” he said. “You’d never know from looking at it that thirty years ago your mom and I fought a war here. But maybe places change more easily than people. Our wars never seem to end, just grow more bitter and hard-fought over the years.”
“What’s with you two, anyway? On her recordings, Mom talks about him, but all I know is that you and Harris never got along. I never knew why.”
Angel shook his head. “Love, infatuation, obsession — call it what you will. Your mom was an easy person to fall in love with, Elisa. And once you fell in love with her, you’d do just about anything to win her heart. Hard to explain. That kind of passion, it’s as frightening and dangerous as it is exhilarating. So this thing with me and Xander, that’s how it started. He loved her, or thought he did. I loved her, and I knew I did. And somewhere along the line, rivalry became jealousy and jealousy became hate. Then I had my very bad year, killed a lot of people and hurt even more, your mother not the least of all. That only deepened Xander’s hatred of me. Shakespeare couldn’t have written it any better.”
“Still, it doesn’t explain this thing about his wife. What’s that all about?”
He sighed. “I didn’t know either. But after the other day, I put the Group on it. Turns out, Willow knew the whole story, had dug it up years ago. She always did have a thing for Xander I’ll never understand. Anyway, it seems that shortly after your mom closed the Hell Mouth and left Sunnydale, Xander left, too. Practically dropped off the face of the earth. Seems he became a sort of freelance vampire hunter. He must’ve hunted vamps in every backwater hellhole on the planet. But he met someone along the way, and they were married, and moved to San Diego.”
“Okay, that explains the wife part. It doesn’t explain why he thinks you killed her. We both know the chronology. It’s not possible,” said Elisa.
“In a way, I did kill her, ’Lise.”
“What?”
“Shortly after your mother defeated Lillith Prophet, Xander’s wife was murdered by a vampire in revenge for Xander having killed his lover several years earlier. The ironic thing is that the vampire that killed her was one of mine. I sired him during my bad year. So in a way, Xander’s right. I killed his wife. After that, he went back to freelancing until the Gehenna Key ended the Eternal War. Then he fought against the M-7 aliens in various mercenary groups, and that pretty much brings us up to date.”
“But he can’t blame you for what happened to his wife. Mom killed the demon inside you a long time ago.”
Angel shrugged. “To Xander, I’ll always be a monster.”
“But you’re not a monster. You’re my dad.”
“And that’s one of the only things in my life that I’m really proud of,” he said.
When the silence had stretched uncomfortably, Elisa asked, “So what now? You can’t just leave him to try to kill you again. Next time he might succeed. I’ve already lost Mom. I don’t want to lose you too.”
“I know. One way or another, this has to end now, before someone dies or someone else gets hurt.”
“Go to the police. Let them handle it.”
“It may come to that. But my guess is after everything, Willow still would want me to do that. I don’t know what she sees in that guy, but …”
He shrugged and let it trail.
“Besides,” he continued, “I already told the police I didn’t see who it was, that it seemed to be just a random shooting. If I change that story now, they’ll have questions we may not want to answer. I think the Group can handle this.”
“Just be careful,” said Elisa.
“Always.”
Elisa managed a smile. “Great. In that case, if it’s okay I’d like to take the rental, explore a little, see this town of yours.”
“Sure,” he said. “Just be back before it gets dark.”
As she rose, she said, “Oh, and thanks for letting me come out here. I know how you are about me missing school work.”
“Some things are more important.”
Once inside her rental car, she fished her phone out of her purse and switched it on.
“John Kerschel, work number,” she spoke into it.
“Hello, Zoot,” she said when the connection went through and Kerschel answered.
“Hey, my favorite music fan,” came ‘Zoot’ Kerschel’s voice from across the country. “What’s up?”
“Got a favor to ask.”
“This is going to get me in trouble with your old man, isn’t it?”
“Not if he doesn’t know about it, and I ain’t gonna tell no one.”
“I don’t know …”
“C’mon, Zoot. Who found that Cannonball Adderly vinyl box set for you? Vinyl, for crying out loud. And who is it who has an in with a certain pianist who just happens to know the bassist for the upcoming one-time-only Wynton and Branford Marsalis reunion concert at Lincoln Center next month?”
“You kidding me?”
“Would I lie to you?”
“You might, if you wanted something bad enough. All right. You win. What do you need?”
“I need you to track down a SoCal Traffic Control vehicle transponder.”
“Easy one. Who’s it registered to?”
“I’m not sure. My guess is the registration’s under a false identity. But I know the coordinates it was near and almost exactly the time the vehicle would have left those coordinates.”
“That ought to narrow it down a bit. Give me the numbers.”
Elisa called up the address of the Bronze on her personal data pad and read the latitude and longitude off to Zoot. Then she gave him the time of the shooting.
“Look for anything in about a two block radius. That section of town is pretty past its prime while it waits on revitalization, so I don’t think you’ll have too many transponder hits.”
She heard a keyboard tapping, then, “Bingo. Okay, that time of departure, plus or minus two minutes within a two block radius, gives us three possibilities. A BMW registered to a Doctor Jorge Riviera, a Chevy Roadstar electric registered to a Mrs. Paula Devane, and an old Ford T-Bird belonging to a Richard Harris. Hey, wasn’t he in ‘Camelot’?”
“That’s before my century, Zoot.”
“So’s Cannonball Adderly.”
“Yeah, but you never played Broadway show tunes twelve hours a day while I was hanging around the offices over summer vacations, either. You listen to enough of that ancient jazz collection of yours, some of it seeps in,” said Elisa. Richard Harris. Was Xander really that stupid?
“Hey, it’s not ancient. It’s ‘classical’. I don’t think they’ll be saying that about the stuff your generation listens to in a hundred years.”
“I don’t know about that. I hear some of those ’90s dinosaur bands my mother used to listen to are making a comeback. Very fashionably retro. Now, be a dear and tell me where our musical theater friend is at the moment.”
A moment later, Zoot said, “Hmm … he’s dropped off the face of the Earth, it seems. Nothing in the SoCal traffic grid, anyway.”
“Maybe he’s fled the area,” Elisa speculated. It would make sense, if he thought her father had identified him to the police. But if his hatred ran deep enough after more than three decades, would he really give up so easily now?
“Or maybe he’s playing chameleon,” said Zoot.
“Huh?”
“Well, if this guy’s registering fake IDs with the DMV, he’s probably got something to hide. A lot of these shady types will install illegal transponders that cycle their ID codes, giving out new registration information and VIN numbers specifically to spoof this kind of search. But a transponder, like your cell phone or any other RF device, has a unique electronic signature. In fact, back in the old days before you were born, they used to use that fact to prevent people from using cloned cell phones to pirate the accounts of legitimate users.”
“I’m a musician, Zoot, not an engineer. Explain what this means to me, please.”
“What I’m saying is, we may be able to find this character. Let’s see, I’m pulling up the raw signal data recorded for King Arthur here … okay, let me just break it down mathematically into its component sine waves … now we’ll run it through the signal processor to isolate the unique profile … Got it. Run it against SoCal Traffic Control, do a little comparative signal analysis … and bingo! Damn, I love modern technology. You have no idea how long this would have taken twenty years ago.”
“You got him?”
“Yup. He’s right back where he started. About a block away from where he was the last time,” said Zoot.
“Thanks. I owe you one.”
“Yeah, probably a new job if your dad finds out.”
“It’ll be our secret. I promise,” she said.