CHAPTER TEN
The theater-going blue-noses and high hats were all hustle with a little bustle to boot tonight in their spiffy half-tone shoes and glittering dresses. My line with the barker had gone over swell, no one had even thought to come correct him yet. Must not be that big of a tomato to have Ms. Culpepper removed from the top of the showbill. Still, even after the doors had shut, and the barker long gone, there was no sign of the redheads.
I was sitting in a restaurant across the street that had already closed down, and was trying to act like sipping the remnants of cold coffee I had ordered an hour ago wasn't suspicious.
"Nux, you aren't going to the show?" as voice said directly into my ear.
I twisted around to see a woman standing before me like she had the keys to the city and had just opened every door. She wore a beret, but from under it, a few strands of red were poking out. Maybe late thirties. "I'm not much one for shows," I said.
"Neither was Dana Wales," the woman responded, gesturing to the theater where I had changed the playbill.
"She a friend of yours?" I asked.
"Yes, and you already know that, Nux. Why waste a question when you already own the answer?" She said, her head tilting to the side.
"You're Cat." I wasn't asking.
She smiled, slightly pulling up her lips at the edges. "Catherine Periwell. Please to finally meet you. Not a bother if I call you Nux, right? I hear that's what you go by."
"Whatever you like, Ms. Periwell." I made like I was about to stand up, but she sat down across from me before I got there.
"Let's get one thing straight, Nux," She started. "I'm not here for your sunny disposition. I'm here to find out what happened to Dana. That's all I'm going to talk to you about, then I'm making tracks. You aren't putting me on the record, and you aren't bringing me downtown."
"When you're in Rapture you're already as far down as you can go."
"That's where you're wrong." She was quick. "We're in the deep, but there is a darkness that goes deeper than anything you've ever seen, Nux."
"Ms. Periwell, I want the same thing. What was done to Ms. Wales…" I trailed off for a beat, then found my words again. "I can't let that happen to anyone else, and I can't let the person, or people who did it get away like nothing happened. I don't care if its Frank Fontaine, I don't care if it's Andrew Ryan himself."
Cat didn't respond right away. She just leaned forward and looked at me, looked right through me with those green eyes of hers. "Perhaps," she finally said. "I see truth in your eyes, Inspector Nuckles. Perhaps you can help Dana. Perhaps you can help us all."
"Help us all? There's more?"
"In the deep, if you go down far enough, only then can you see the light. It is not the same as the warm light up above, from the sun. No, the deep light is a cold light, a fragile light, but a powerful light all the same. It has the power to give life, the power to take it away."
"And you're saying this deep light, it had something to do with what happened to Dana?" I asked, not a clue where Cat was going.
"Not something, Inspector Nuckles. Everything."