I’d been accused of a lot of things, but flights of genius wasn’t one of them, so I couldn’t argue.
We had to clear the room for the next set of hearings, a different committee, a different subject. The wheels of government rolled on, no matter what little paradigm shifts were going on in my head. I lingered outside in the hallway, arms crossed, shoulders hunched in and angry.
“Can we sue him?” I said to Ben. “There’s got to be something we can sue him for.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll look into it. I’m always game for a frivolous lawsuit.”
“It’s not frivolous! There’s something seriously creepy about that guy. We have to figure out what he’s really doing with that church of his, because I know it’s just horrible. It has to be.”
“If he hasn’t broken any laws, then
there probably isn’t anything we can do.”
How could we know if he’d broken any laws if we didn’t even know what he was really doing? Really, he was just inviting people to an old-fashioned revival meeting, and if they wanted to stay with him, well, that was their choice, right?
I had to find out what he was. “Jeffrey, if Smith isn’t human, what is he?”
“I was hoping you’d have a guess,” Jeffrey said.
I humphed. “Believe it or not, you probably have more experience with that kind of stuff than I do. I mean, you can see that he isn’t right. If we find out where he’s camped, take a look, maybe you’d see . . . I don’t know. Something.”
“I’m not sure I’m willing to get close enough to try that. He’s dangerous, Kitty. I can see that much about him.”
“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.