Doppelgangster - Laura Resnick [98]
Lucky said, “That thing wasn’t real. It wasn’t him.”
I rubbed my hand over my face. “It seemed like him. Just like him. It seemed so real.” I tried to banish the memory of the doppelgangster’s expression right before Max cut off its head. I felt a surge of nausea. “It sounded just like him. It said exactly what he . . .”
“Of course,” Max said gently, handing me a glass of water. “It was fashioned after him. It was created to be identical to him in all outward appearances.”
I took a sip of water, then said, “But you knew.”
“Nelli’s keen senses alerted us,” Max said.
Nelli gave a little woof! and wagged her tail.
“Yeah, that was damn good work,” Lucky said to her.
The velocity of Nelli’s tail increased until it could have seriously injured anyone in its path.
“Her objective at the sit-down, of course,” Max said, “was to identify doppelgangsters. But until she encountered the creature posing as Lopez, we didn’t know whether she could indeed do so. Tonight’s incident, however, was conclusive. We now know we have an excellent means of detecting the presence of a doppelgangster.”
“That’s a relief,” said Lucky.
I found it unnerving to hear Lopez’s perfect double described as “the creature.”
“But it was the first time I’d ever seen her react like that,” Lucky added. “So I wasn’t a hundred percent sure until I cut that thing and saw there was no blood.”
“You ripped open his face, Lucky!” I shuddered in remembered horror. “If that had been the real man, you’d go to prison for assaulting a police officer with a deadly weapon.”
“Well, let’s say I was ninety-five percent sure. Nelli never acted like that before, after all. Not even at the sit-down, when Danny was disrespecting her and deserved to get his leg chewed off.”
Nelli went back to snuffling at the piles of ephemeral matter that were scattered all over the floor.
“Yes, excellent notion, Nelli,” Max said. “Continue studying our adversary’s handiwork. We must learn all that we can from this encounter.”
“How are you feeling now, kid?” Lucky asked.
“Like I still want to scream.”
“It’s most unfortunate,” said Max, “that the doppelgangster was armed and dangerous.”
“Y’think?” said Lucky.
“Rather than destroying it,” Max said, “I would have liked to capture and question it. That’s why I hesitated, my dear fellow, to dispatch it after you exposed its true nature.”
“Great, so now we gotta capture one of those things?” Lucky said.
“One that isn’t as dangerous as this one was,” Max said.
“This one was only dangerous,” I said angrily, “because he was—”
“It, my dear,” Max said. “It. You need to dissociate that mystical, ephemeral creation from the man it resembled.”
“It didn’t resemble him,” I said in shaky voice. “It was absolutely identical to him! And it only became dangerous because you all attacked it—which is exactly what would make Lopez dangerous, too!”
“That’s a fair point,” Max conceded. “The situation was fraught.”
“You really think that gun woulda worked?” Lucky asked Max. “It was in that thing’s hand when you lopped off its head, and—”
“Oh, God.” I felt faint again.
“—I saw it explode into dirt and stuff, too.”
Max frowned thoughtfully. “At the time, I was too agitated by the realization that the creature was armed with a deadly projectile weapon—as Detective Lopez himself would be—to consider this. But you bring up an interesting point, Lucky.”
“That the gun might not have fired?” I asked.
“Yes. Or that it may only have seemed to fire. The killer is a very talented sorcerer, but his creations are illusions, after all. They’re convincing, but they’re nonetheless subject to practical limitations.” Max added, “However, we’re theorizing without enough information. It’s also possible that a bullet which is part of such an elaborate duplicate may indeed be effective, as was the creature’s physical blow when it knocked down Lucky. So we must treat any armed doppelgangster with extreme caution.”
“Good point, Doc. And even if the gun didn’t work,” Lucky said,