The researchers vanished out the door, leaving Marasi and Wax to read over the three documents in turn. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a lot to go on. The blotter said that after Tobal Copper had calmed, they’d released him. He had not reoffended.
The last sheet gave an address in an area the researcher said was expensive. Marasi supposed a head chemist would be paid well.
“They probably killed him,” Wax said softly, “once the hubbub died down — so it wouldn’t look too suspicious.”
“Possibly,” Marasi said. “But it’s equally likely they grabbed him to make him work on their projects.”
“Death said he vanished two weeks ago,” Wax said. “This trail might be cold already.”
“But it’s the best one we have,” Marasi said.
“Agreed. Kim, do you know where this apartment address is located?”
30
The apartment building didn’t look much like a plateau.
Wayne stood with the others, hands on his hips, staring up at the thing. It was too shiny, with too many windows — like a big bottle of something expensive. Buildings shouldn’t look like that; they should look like bricks. And have alleys that smelled of what came out of a fellow after he’d had a bottle of something too expensive.
Most of all, he’d expected a plateau.
No, wait, he realized. There’s a canyon next. That’s how the story goes. We gotta find that first.
Comforted, he followed Marasi, Wax, and that Kim woman who tried too hard to be fiddly. The foyer had a doorman and everything. This place was fancy. Maybe Wayne should buy a building like that. A doorman sure would be helpful in carrying him up to his flat after he’d had too many bottles of something expensive.
Or, well, more often he had bottles of something cheap as piss. Just because he was secretly rich and posh didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate terrible booze anymore. He merely had to call it “retro” or “authentic” or something.
The doorman sent for the building manager, who turned out to be a man shaped kind of like a brick — so that was a nice nod to proper building protocol. Marasi and Wax explained they needed to investigate the missing man’s apartment, while Wayne took a long walk around the foyer with its enormous paintings of people dancing. They wore suits and dresses, their legs stretched really long, their backs all straight, as if they were made of rulers and not flesh.
Was this the canyon from the story? Ma had said it was beautiful. But no. This didn’t work. No self-respecting canyon would have pictures of dancing folks on the walls.
And why did he assume this would be like the story? Well, because he’d thought of it, he supposed. Once you had a thought, you had to keep ahold of it. That was how things was.
The building manager listened to Wax and Marasi’s explanations, squinted at Kim’s credentials, then grunted. He pointed the way to the elevator, and they all squeezed in.
Wayne didn’t much like elevators. It wasn’t just being trapped in a little box, or not knowin’ how it worked and needin’ to rely upon an operator. It wasn’t that you could smell everyone a little too much when pressed together, or couldn’t see where you were going, which ruined the experience of going up high.
Wait. No, it probably was that last one. Elevators were like a carnival ride designed by an overprotective parent who didn’t want you getting scared or actually having any fun. He’d had more faith in them when they’d been moved by people, not electricity. Folks were overly trusting of this strange power what leaked from sockets in the walls. After all, Wayne was a primary investor in the technology, and that should have been a big red flag for everyone.
On the twenty-second floor, at the end of a long hallway, the building manager used a set of keys to open a door into a large apartment. He gestured for them to enter, with a grunt.
“Anyone else been in here?” Wax asked.
“No,” the manager said.
“He’s been gone for two weeks,” Wax said. “And nobody came looking? No constables? No family?”
The manager shook his head, grunted, then left them — apparently wanting nothing to do with constables.
“Wonder what his problem is,” Marasi said, shutting the door behind them.
“Dunno,” Wayne said. “But whatever he has, at least it seems noncommunicative.”
Wax walked to the center of the room. One wall had narrow floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city, with steel girders between. The wall to its right was filled with bookshelves. There was a stylish sitting area to the left, with a smart yellow rug and black furniture. Everything was exceptionally neat, though keeping your place clean was probably easy when you was either dead or vanished.
“So,” Marasi said, “they grabbed him or killed him. Then left this apartment alone and visibly pristine. Trap?”
“Trap,” Wax said, with a nod. “Give me a minute to use Allomancy to scan about.”
Turned out it’s really tough to make an explosive trap without some metal, even using modern clay explosives. They found three tripwires and one pressure plate, each hooked to a doozy of a grenade. The Set evidently didn’t care about a little collateral damage.
“So, whoever you’re chasing,” Kim said, wringing her hands nervously, “they got here before us. Rusts. I didn’t know what I was in for…”
“They were undoubtedly behind Copper’s disappearance,” Wax said. “Be careful, everyone. There might be a trap we missed. Kim, would you encourage anyone in the neighboring apartments to leave for the next hour?”
She left to do so, and the rest of them set to some familiar work: going over a scene for clues. Kim returned a short time later while Wayne was inspecting the writing desk near the bookshelves. She knelt down beside him, looking up at the bottom as he knocked for secret compartments.
“Um…” she said, still acting uncertain, “I did as you asked. But … why are we bothering to search? Your enemy has been over this place thoroughly.”
“Sure,” Wayne said. “I can even prove it. See these little drill holes? You make those to be extra sure there’s no secret compartments, but only if you want to leave the furniture in one piece. Which is less fun … but sometimes there are good reasons. Like if you want the room to look normal to a bunch of constables when they visit, so they’ll be more likely to get themselves exploded.”
“So what is there to learn?”
“Well, you see, this is a kind of fight,” Wayne said. “A back-and-forth. A dance. They set those traps in case someone dangerous got wind of the Set. You don’t need to blow up ordinary constables. Just the extraordinary kind.”
“Like you?”
“Hell no,” Wayne said, then pointed to Marasi, searching through books, then to Wax, knocking against the far wall and listening for compartments. “You see those two? They represent the best of two worlds. Wax, now, he’s instinct. He’s lived a lot, been shot at a lot. He didn’t have the schooling to be a constable — he spent his school years learning from Terris scholars about old things people wrote a long time ago.
“But Marasi, she’s knowledge. She’s spent her life studying how to do this sort of nonsense. Sometimes I think she must have read more books on being a constable than have ever actually been written. She talks of crime patterns, preventing chains of poverty, and smart things what make you think maybe being a constable is about math.
“Put the two of them together, and you’ve got both. Instinct and knowledge. Practice and application. The enemy, they looked this place over, sure. They had first crack at it. But they left bombs. That whispers that they’re worried they missed something. And so the dance, the fight. Can we find what they didn’t?”