"Enough!" Wyte said. "Let's get this over with."
The language of men scared shitless.
Wyte put his hand in the huge left-side pocket of his coat. The one with the growing verdigris stain. The one with his gun in it.
He walked through the middle doorway, Finch behind him.
Dark and cool inside. A second door just a few feet after the first. Wyte pushed it open. Finch covered him.
As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Finch let the room come to him. The smell of moist, rotting wood. A high ceiling that made every step echo up in the rafters. Two sets of pews, in twelve rows. Leading up to a raised wooden platform with an ornate, carved railing. Beyond that, red curtains. The supports for a chandelier hung down from the ceiling. But there was no chandelier. On the right side of the dais, an iron staircase curled up toward the dome.
"What the hell is that?" Wyte said, pointing.
As his eyes adjusted, Finch could see that a long, low glass-lined counter ran along the right side of the dais. Couldn't tell what was inside it.
"I don't know."
Finch drifted ahead of Wyte. Walked up the carpet with Wyte behind. Climbed onto the platform from the steps built into the right side.
The counter. Under the smudged glass, a series of arms and heads. The arms looked like prosthetics. Didn't understand the heads with their hollow eye sockets any better.
"Why in a church?" Wyte asked.
Finch shushed him.
Beyond the counter: a doorway covered with a tapestry of Manzikert subduing the gray caps.
Finch motioned toward the tapestry with his Lewden Special.
Wyte shook his head. Too dangerous. Too unknown.
Finch nodded.
Wyte retreated into the shadows to the left of the counter. Pulled the gun from his pocket. It looped spirals of dark fluid onto his overcoat. Finch bent at the knees, put the counter between his body and the doorway. Aimed at the tapestry.
"Is anyone there?" Finch said. Loud enough to be heard in any backroom.
Something fell. Like a jar or tin.
"Is anyone there?" Finch repeated. His heart felt like a fragile animal inside his chest. Trying to get free. Being battered in the attempt. Kept switching the gun from hand to hand. So he could wipe his sweaty palms on his shirt.
A kind of hesitation from beyond the doorway. A kind of poised silence. Then a careful movement swept aside the tapestry. A short, thin woman walked out.
She stood behind the counter as Finch rose, gun at his side. Wyte reappeared from the shadows.
The woman's gray hair had been pulled back into a tight ponytail. She wore a formless blue dress with a black belt. Her face was heavily lined. Her mouth drooped on the left side as if from a stroke. Or an old wound. Finch thought he could see the whispering line of a scar across the cheek.
"Point your gun somewhere else, detective," she said, staring at Wyte. Her voice had gravel in it. Finch had no doubt she'd commanded men before.
The seepage had become a constant spatter against the wooden floor. But Finch couldn't tell if it came from the gun or from Wyte.
Wyte lowered his gun.
"Who says we're detectives?" Finch said.
Her eyes were the color of a knife blade. "That's a gray cap weapon."
"We're investigating a murder," Finch said. "That's all we're here for."
"All?" she echoed.
Finch wondered what they looked like to her. Wyte transforming. Him tired and dirty. In Wyte's crappy shoes.
Wyte asked, "What's your name?"
No answer.
"We could bring you in for questioning," Wyte said.
"But you won't, because I'm an old woman," she said in a whisper. "Because you're decent men."
Wyte snorted, losing patience. "A night in the station holding cell might make you more talkative."
The full, hawklike intensity of her stare focused on Wyte. "You want a name? It's Jane Smith."
Wyte opened his mouth. Closed it again.
Finch gave Wyte a wary look. Said to her, "What are all these parts doing here?"
"This is a business. People who've been released from the camps come here if they've lost a leg. Or an arm."
"Or a head?" Finch asked.
"You seem to be keeping yours, detective," she snapped.
Wyte said, "Are you the Lady in Blue?"
Finch knew he'd meant it as a kind of joke. But Wyte's voice couldn't convey a joke anymore.
A look of disbelief spread across the woman's thin features. The wrinkles at the sides of her eyes bunched up. She began to guffaw. The roughest, crudest laughter Finch had ever heard from a woman.
When she had recovered, she said, "You should leave. Now."
"Bellum omnium contra omnes," Finch said. Put as much weight as he could behind the words. As if he meant to physically move her with them. Couldn't have said where the impulse came from, to say it. Wyte gasped.
Her eyes opened wide. The color in her cheeks deepened.
"There is a way," she said. Hesitated. As if she'd made a mistake.
Finch repeated the words: bellum omnium contra omnes.
Her features hardened. "I don't think I know what you're talking about after all."
"I think you do," Finch said. He hadn't given the right response, but he'd been close.
Wyte pulled out his gun, brushed past Finch, and shoved it in the woman's face.
"Wyte..." Finch said in a warning tone.
"No, Finch," Wyte said. "I'm sick of this. Sick of it. She's lying. You want this to go down like Bliss all over again? Well, I don't." Wyte pushed the muzzle into the woman's forehead until the discharge dribbled down her face. She closed her eyes, winced, said again, "I don't know what it means. I don't."
"Wyte, this won't get you what you want," Finch said.
Turned his pale, monstrous head for a second. "Hell it won't."
"For Truff's sake, Wyte! Put down the f**king gun!"
"If I do, she's going to kill us," Wyte said. The gun slipping in his grasp. Finger still tight on the trigger. "Can't you feel it? We're going to die here because of her." Voice small and low. His shape beneath the overcoat in the grip of some terrible insurrection.
The woman's eyes fluttered, closed again. Waiting for the bullet while Wyte waited for his answer.
No way to get to Wyte before he shot her.
Saved by Dapple calling out in alarm from beyond the door. "Partials!"
Wyte looked toward the door. Lowered the gun. But something was swimming in his eyes. Something that wasn't part of him. Not really.
The woman leaned down, fast.
The front of the counter exploded in a cloud of dust and debris.