"Ben?"
"Don't look at me. Somebody's got to stay behind to bail your ass out of jail when things go wrong."
That vote of confidence was staggering.
Ben said, "If you're about to do something prosecutable, I don't want to know about it until afterward. I'll see you tomorrow." He started off down the hallway, waving over his shoulder.
Jeffrey watched him go. "He's your lawyer, huh? He's…"
"Brusque?" I said.
"I was going to say honest. He's got a good aura."
Well, that was something I supposed. I apparently had an honest lawyer.
I sighed. "Since I don't know where Smith's caravan is, the whole plan to go looking for him is moot anyway."
I couldn't really see me climbing into a cab, flashing a fifty at the driver, and saying, "Follow that man!" I started to ask Jeffrey if he would do an interview on the show, when Roger Stockton stepped around from behind us, where he'd been lurking, eavesdropping, and who knew what else. He still had the camera, but at least he held it down and not pointed at me.
"I know where Smith is camped," the reporter said. "And I know he isn't human."
"Then what is he?" I said, once I'd regained control of my jaw. "And how do you know?" I'd tried to catch a scent off him, but his bodyguards stayed close, and I couldn't get past their smells, the overpowering scent of werewolf that set my instincts on edge.
"I'll tell you when we get out there."
"So I just get in your car and let you drive me to God knows where?"
"Look, we all want the same thing here. We all know Smith isn't curing anyone, not for real anyway, and he's got some kind of funky voodoo—I saw what he did to you back there. We all want to expose him, and we all know that he's dangerous. This way none of us has to go it alone and we all get to break the story together."
"Are you sure you're not just after some prime Kitty Norville footage for sweeps week?"
"I wouldn't mind that—"
I turned away with a dismissive sigh.
"He's telling the truth, Kitty. He knows," Jeffrey said. Jeffrey, who claimed to see honesty radiating off a man.
I had a guy with second sight and a reporter from Uncharted World for backup. A girl could do worse, I supposed. I looked around to see if Cormac was lurking somewhere. Now there was backup, assuming he kept his guns pointed in someone else's direction. But wouldn't you know it, the one time I might want him around, he'd disappeared. He hadn't been near the hearings since Duke fired him.
I said to Roger, "We find the caravan, we check it out. Then what?"
"Then, we see. Sound good?"
"No. If you know what he is then you should know what he's doing, and what we should do about him."
"I can't do it alone" Roger said. "Are you in?"
Jeffrey nodded. He seemed eager, even, as if this were just another enlightening experience.
I had to be out of my mind.
Stockton's smugness at knowing something I didn't was stifling. I was glad Jeffrey had agreed to come along. He sat in the backseat, regarding both of us with an amused smile.
I had no idea what we were going to do when we got there. If anything I'd heard about the caravan was true, shutting it down would take the National Guard.
Maybe between Jeffrey's intuition and Stockton's camera, we could collect enough evidence to bring about some kind of criminal prosecution. It was a modest enough goal.
It was all I could hope for. We weren't exactly the Ghostbusters.
Around sunset, we left tract housing and suburbs and entered countryside, driving along a two-lane state highway. The light was failing, streaking the sky shades of orange and lighting up the clouds. The land seemed dark, shadowy. The fields around us might have been fallow farmland, or rolling pastures. Fences bounded them by the roadside, but beyond that, trees surrounded them.
Trees everywhere, rows of old growth oak or elm, windbreaks planted a hundred or two hundred years ago. The road curved from one valley into the next, making it impossible to see what lay ahead.
I was surprised, then, when we rounded a turn skirting yet another gently rolling hill, and Stockton put on the brakes. The seat belt caught me. He pulled onto the shoulder, to where we could look over the rail fence.
Ahead, occupying the back half of a wide swath of pasture, was what looked like the back lot of a down-on-its-luck traveling circus. Maybe two-dozen old-fashioned campers hitched to beat-up pickup trucks, a few RVs, Airstreams and Winnebagos, converted vans and buses, parked in a rough circle, like pioneer wagons. Another dozen cars were scattered among them. In the center, like the spoke of a wheel, the top of a large canvas tent was visible. Around the perimeter, a few figures, indistinct forms in the twilight, walked around wire fencing that enclosed the settlement. Lights flooded the area inside: lights from the campers, the trucks, floodlights inside the tent. Even a hundred yards away I could hear the generators. The place was an event, a carnival without a town to go with it, a circle of light in an otherwise shadowed world.
A dirt road, little more than two tracks worn into the soil, led from the highway, through an open gate, to Smith's caravan. A couple of other cars were parked near the gate, their motors still running.
Stockton rolled down his window and leaned out, aiming his camera at the encampment.
"How did you find out it was here?" I asked.
"One of the guys at Uncharted World's been following it. Caught up with it in DeKalb, Illinois, a couple weeks ago and tracked it here."
"Then why isn't he out here filming?"
"Because two nights ago a car with no plates forced him off the road and into a dry creek bed. He's in the hospital with four broken ribs and a smashed shoulder."
"Shit." I shook my head. "Do you see anything?" I said to the backseat. "I mean, you know. See anything?"
"At this distance, the floodlights muddy everything up," Jeffrey said. Then he pointed to one of the other cars, that had just turned its headlights off and shut off its engine. "Although that guy's a lycanthrope."
A man—young by his gangly figure and the way he slouched—got out, closed the door softly, and started walking along the dirt track to the caravan site.
Quickly I undid the seat belt and scrambled out of the car.
"Kitty!" Jeffrey called after me, which I ignored.
I trotted after the guy and was about to call out to get him to stop, but he heard me, or smelled me, because he turned and backed away, shoulders tense, like a wolf with hackles.
"Who are you?" he said sharply.
"My name's Kitty." I stayed put, kept my gaze turned down, my shoulders relaxed. He could smell me; he knew what I was. "I'm just curious. Why are you here?"
He let his guard down the barest notch, shrugging. "I've heard there's a guy here who can help."