Tailed by Brian M. Wiprud Page B

too many WWII flicks. They were looking in the direction of an older man in a dark beret, tribal print shirt, and round sunglasses. He was reading the paper on a bench next to the hotel entrance. I guess they were scrutinizing the local fauna,
Americanus funkinae
. I’d seen foreign tourists do the same thing in New York, ogling a homeboy with the crotch of his pants hemmed an inch from the sidewalk and his boxer shorts up to his nipples. Made me homesick, believe it or not.
    But there I was, a tourist in Seattle. I didn’t have to consult the map to see where the Space Needle was—I just turned the corner and looked uphill.
    â€™Twas yet another fine, sunny, warm day, completely counter to the rain and gloom we Easterners have come to expect from the Northwest. And it was just the kind of weather that’s really annoying when the monkey of impending doom is on your back. First person who said “What a marvelous day!” was asking for a punch in the nose.
    But I did feel better now that I was outside. After making my way steadily uphill through a patchwork of commercial and residential neighborhoods, the Space Needle towered just ahead, beyond a park. Somehow the massive sixties spire (or was it really a UFO launchpad?) didn’t look as big as it had at the bottom of the hill. It was no different than approaching the Empire State Building or Statue of Liberty, I guess. In the park ahead I could see four sculptures that looked like jetsam from the “UFO,” black and orange painted metal space junk, no doubt: warped warp drives, discarded dilithium crystal containment chambers, phase modulators stripped for parts. I crossed Broad Street and treaded the footpath leading through the debris toward the base of the Needle.
    I wondered whether I should call Nicholas. He might have a useful perspective on my dilemma. Whether I would take his advice was another matter. Some small part of me wanted to blame him for my predicament. Yet I knew that in the long run he’d done me a good turn by getting me into this line of work. How could he have predicted that a serial killer targeting taxidermy collectors would surface? Another part of me—like any older brother—was reluctant to turn to my little brother for help. He was, after all, my little brother, even if he was vastly more experienced in matters of crime. That aside, I was kind of keen to take another crack at cajoling him about why he wanted Gabby at the wedding.
    Of course I still hadn’t called Angie back, and was reluctant to do so until I had some idea of when I was coming home. And as usual, I didn’t want her to worry. But maybe there was nothing to worry about. Maybe.
    What was really irking me the most was the possibility that the killer knew who I was and had wanted me to find Sprunty. Could it have been that I wasn’t killed because I wasn’t a big-game hunter? Kit Carson, yes—but not me. But then why get me involved at all? Was he intentionally using my client list to line up his victims? If so, then the killer was privy to Wilberforce/Peete’s files, or somehow knew my itinerary. But why even use my client list? If this psycho wanted to find trophy hunters for victims, he could just search the Web or thumb through a few hunting magazines.
    Near the end of the curving path, I stopped in front of one of the sculptures, a large bronze square with a round portal flanked by a bronze cylinder and oblong, also with portals in them. A plaque informed me that this was something called MOON GATES . Hey, warp drives, wormholes, moon gates—I wasn’t far off the mark.
    That’s when, like an alien empath, my sixth sense went off.
    New Yorkers, while singularly directed in their movements on home turf, are also keenly aware of any suspicious characters: loafers in doorways, riffraff leaning on cars avoiding eye contact, feckless amblers in one’s wake. In my peripheral vision I got a gander