“Ugh,” Chaz said, walking back into the room, holding a bucket. “Davis? Damn it, man. Stop standing there in the middle of them. What’s wrong with you?”
Davis looked around at the bodies. “You checked them all?”
“Mostly.”
Davis tucked away his phone, then rolled over a body. Her face was covered in swollen bee stings—a horrible sight. He could see why Chaz had been disturbed.
“He’s killing people he decides are Deviations,” Davis said. “He thinks he’s in a Snapshot.”
“He is in a Snapshot.”
“Yeah, but only his dupe is right,” Davis said. “And it only does what the real him has already done. The killer thinks everything is a Snapshot, and he’s trying to expunge the Deviations—which he sees as people who have some flaw in their biology. The first group had terrible asthma. The second group, bad vision.”
Davis rolled over another corpse. “These people were allergic to bee stings. Look at these wounds—those aren’t regular stings. He rounded up a bunch of people with terrible allergies, then locked them in here with bees. He’s cleansing the city of Deviations.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Davis ignored him, inspecting the next victim, a woman who had died on her back with her eyes swollen shut. “Serial killers like this . . . lots of them are looking for power. Control. They feel they don’t have control in their lives, so they control others. Imagine being paranoid. You get the idea you’re in a Snapshot, that you’re not real. How might you act?”
He looked up as Chaz shrugged. “Everyone’s different,” Chaz said. “You’ve seen it. Some wander off, some cry, some—”
“Some kill,” Davis said.
“Yeah.” Didn’t happen often. Most people didn’t have it in them to kill, even if they discovered something terrible like this. But once in a while, someone they showed a reality badge to immediately reached for a weapon, perhaps thinking—irrationally—if they killed the person with the badge, it would disprove what they’d just seen.
That was probably too simple for this killer. Davis looked back at the dead woman. This killer was already crazy; you had to be, to do something like this. But mix it with a belief that your world was a sham . . .
It was surreal. In here, the killer’s dupe would be right. He was in a Snapshot. That didn’t change the fact that out in the real world, there was someone killing entire groups of people. Real people. Not dupes.
The woman in front of him stirred.
Davis cried out, leaping backward, scrambling for his gun—though of course he wouldn’t need it.
“What?” Chaz demanded.
“That one is still alive,” Davis said, pointing, hand shaking.
The woman rolled her head over and whispered something. “Water?”
Davis knelt down. “Get some water,” he said to Chaz. “Go!”
“Water,” she whispered again.
“I’m getting some,” Davis said. “We’re cops. It’s okay. Don’t worry.”
“He’ll . . . come back. . . .” She couldn’t open her eyes. They were swollen shut. She could barely move her lips.
“When?” Davis asked.
“Every night,” she said. “Every night at seven thirty. He checks on us then. We were going to jump him . . . but . . .” She cursed softly. “It hurts. . . .”
Chaz returned with a cup from the desk outside, filled with water. He knelt down, but didn’t move.
“Give it to her!” Davis said.
Chaz tried dribbling it onto her lips. She didn’t move anything but her head, which she could barely rock. It seemed like some got into her mouth.
“Seven thirty,” Davis said. “He’ll be back at seven thirty?”
The woman whispered something, but even leaning down close, Davis couldn’t make it out. Grimly, he checked the others. They were definitely dead.
The woman had started weeping. A tearless trembling.
Chaz stood up, then looked to Davis, who stared at the woman, horrified.
“I’ll take care of this,” Chaz said, getting out a pair of earplugs. “It’s okay.”
Davis nodded numbly, then forced himself to walk out.
A gunshot sounded behind him; then Chaz came to the doorway, his face ashen. Together they closed the door, put the rope back as they’d found it, and propped the chair in place. Chaz put the water cup back as Davis slumped down on a bench beside some lockers, licking his lips. His mouth had gone dry.
“So we wait here,” Chaz said, “and catch him when he returns?”
Davis rocked himself, the woman’s whispers haunting him.
“Davis!” Chaz said. “What do we do now?”
“We . . .” Davis took a deep breath. Just a dupe. She was just a dupe. In the real world, she’s already dead. “What would we do if we caught him, Chaz?”
“Interrogate him. Like we did earlier.”
“Earlier, in the precinct and with the narco, we simply flashed our badges. But the Photographer already believes he’s a dupe. I don’t think it will work.”
Chaz considered that.
“What we really need,” Davis said, “is to pin down where the IRL cops can find him. He’s obviously got a third hideout—the place where he really lives. If we can find that and send it to Maria, I think they’ll have a good shot at grabbing him.”
“So . . .”
“So we watch him when he comes back,” Davis said, taking a deep breath. “And we tail him. If it looks like he’s spotted us, we capture him and see what we can beat out of him. Maybe that will be enough. But hopefully, instead we can find where he lives.”
“Great, okay,” Chaz said. “But we’re not waiting here. Not with those corpses in there.”
“We shouldn’t go far, in case he—”
“You need a break, Davis. Look at you! Hell, I need a break. We’ll go get a coffee or something. When’s the last time we ate? Those burritos?” He thought for a moment. “Better yet. We’ll go to Ingred Street. It’s four, right? Good timing.”
Ingred. Of course you want to go to Ingred.
Davis just nodded his head, mute. Chaz was right. Though they probably should stake out nearby and watch, he was at his limit. He couldn’t confront a killer like this. He needed some time to recover.
“Ingred it is,” Davis said, standing.
Seven
Chaz left him, as he always did when they stopped at the park on the corner of Ingred and Ninth.
It was a little city park, of the type you found on neighborhood corners. Full of playsets that were old but sturdy, coated periodically in new layers of paint for a facelift. The place smelled better than the streets did. Of dirt and wet sand. Of course, it sounded better too. Over the distant rumbling of construction equipment and honking horns, here you could hear children.
Davis smiled, stepping up to the corner of the park, basking in the sounds of the laughter. Of children running, shouting, playing. When was the last time he’d just enjoyed life? He’d lost that skill, which seemed so natural to children. They didn’t have to work at having fun.
Hal was there, as he’d hoped. Though he was eight, he seemed smaller than the kids he played with. A mop of dark hair, messy as always, and a ready smile. He was never happier than when he was around others. He liked people. He got that from his dad too. Davis had always thought that would make him a good cop.
Hal stopped in place when he saw Davis, then grinned widely. The worry that they might get back too late to catch the killer fled Davis’s mind. Even with all the baggage that came along with visiting here, seeing Hal was worth it.
Hal ran up, and Davis grabbed him in a huge hug. The kid didn’t ask why his father had come to see him on a random day, unannounced. He didn’t connect that it was 16:00, when Davis knew his wife would be napping and the kid would be out playing. Hal was just happy he got to see his father.
And fortunately, court orders didn’t cover dupes inside a Snapshot.
“Dad!” Hal said. �
��I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“I’ve been busy with work.”
“Catching bad guys?”
“Catching bad guys,” Davis said softly.
“Dad,” Hal said. “We went to the zoo. I got a stuffed penguin. And there was a little antelope—it’s called a dik-dik, but we’re not supposed to laugh—and when we went walking, it followed me, Dad. It followed me all around. It attacked Greg. Kept butting its little head into his leg, everywhere he went, but it liked me.”
Hal took a deep breath, then grabbed Davis in another hug. “Are you here to talk to Mommy?”
Davis glanced toward a window of her nearby apartment. The blinds were drawn.
“No,” Davis said.
“Oh.” Hal looked morose for a minute, then perked up. “Want to be a monster?”
“I’d love to be a monster.”
The next hour was a bliss of chasing, growling, climbing on the jungle gym, and imagination. They were monsters, they were superheroes, they built mountains of sand and then stomped them. Hal changed the rules indiscriminately to every game as they played, and Davis wondered why he’d ever been annoyed at that. This kid didn’t need more structure. He needed to be free, to live, to have all the things his father didn’t have.
It didn’t last though. It couldn’t last. Eventually he spotted Chaz waiting for him at a nearby corner—and he couldn’t believe that the time was over already. Sweating, Davis felt his grin melt away.
Right. The world waited; Chaz was its banner, held aloft to gather the faithful. Or in Davis’s case, the reluctant.
Hal stepped up beside him. “Is that your partner?”
“Yeah,” Davis said.
“You’ve gotta go?”
Davis pulled him close, and felt tears in his eyes. “Yeah.” Then he turned, squatting down and fishing in his pocket. He took out the nickel, his fingers brushing past the paper with the number, and held it out. “Check it.”
“Two thousand one?” Hal said. “Oh! You’ve been looking for one of these.”
“Keep it,” Davis said.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Davis said. “I’ve got another.”
“You found two?”
The same one twice, he thought, then hugged his son one last time. Hal seemed to sense something to it, and clung tightly.
“Can’t you stay a little longer?” Hal asked.
“No. Work needs me.” And your mother will be down soon.
He forced himself to let go. Hal sighed, then ran off to show the nickel to one of his friends. Davis sat and pulled his shoes and socks back on, then trudged across the road toward Chaz.
It twisted him up inside. That hour had been wonderful, but the harsh reality was that this wasn’t his son. The real Hal wouldn’t remember this event, or the other dozen times that Davis had come to visit in the Snapshot. The real Hal would instead go on thinking that his father never visited.
“Not fair,” Chaz said, hands in pockets. “You should be able to see him whenever you want, Davis.”
“It’s only temporary,” Davis said.
“Temporary for six months now.”
“We’ll figure out custody soon. My wife—”
“Your ex-wife.”
“—Molly is just protective. She’s always been like that. Doesn’t want Hal getting caught between us.”
“It’s still a raw deal,” Chaz said. Then he sighed. “Food?”
“Sure.” Time to deal with his memories of Hal would be welcome. Davis needed to recover, it seemed, from his break to recover.
They chose Fong’s, a place around the corner that Davis had always liked. On the way in he froze, turning to look over his shoulder at someone who had just passed. Had that been . . . the woman from the diner?
No. Different clothing. Still, it left him thinking, clutching the number in his pocket. They went inside and were seated in a little booth by the window.
“Do you ever wish,” Chaz said, “that we could just live in here? You know, in a Snapshot?”
“You’re the one who’s always reminding me it isn’t real.”
“Yeah,” Chaz said, sipping the water the waitress brought. “But . . . I mean, do you ever wonder?”
“If it’s exactly like the outside world,” Davis said, “then what would be the point?”
“Confidence,” Chaz said, staring out the window. “In here . . . I just, I can do things. I don’t worry as much. I’d like to be able to take that with me to the outside, you know? Or stay in here, let days pass, instead of switching the place off.”
Davis grunted, taking a sip of his own water. “I’d like that.”
“You would? I’m surprised.”
Davis nodded. “I’d like to see what kind of difference I make,” he said softly. “You know, we call them Deviations. Problems that we introduce into the system. But there’s another way to look at them. Everything that changes in here, everything different, happens because we cause it. I’d like to see that run for a week. A month. A year.”
“Huh. You think it would be better or worse than the real world in a year? Because of us.”
“I don’t know that I care,” Davis said. “So long as it’s different. Then I’d know I meant something.” He fished in his pocket, got out the woman’s number. “We don’t let them live long enough in here to develop into distinct people.”
“They’re just dupes though.”
They ordered. Davis got his favorite, cashew chicken. Chaz asked the waitress what the spiciest thing on the menu was, and ordered that. Then he asked for mustard to come with it.
Davis smiled, watching out the window. He’d hoped to catch a glimpse of Molly as she came to get Hal, but he couldn’t spot the boy in the park. She’d fetched him already.
“Is it . . . always like this?” Chaz asked softly. “Police work. The things we saw back there.”
“You weren’t on any murder cases in Mexico City?”
Chaz shook his head. “I was a traffic cop there too. Never even saw a real car wreck; Mexico City had already outlawed manual-driving cars. Spent my time yelling at kids for jaywalking. That’s why I kept pushing for transfers. I wanted to land somewhere I could actually be a cop.”
Davis broke his chopsticks apart and rolled them together to clear the splinters. “Well,” he said softly, “yes. Real police work was a lot like this. Except for the times when it wasn’t, which was most days.”
“There you go again,” Chaz said, grinning. “Not making sense. Contradicting yourself.”
“It always makes sense when I explain it, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
“Being a cop, a detective on real cases, is mostly about boredom. Sitting around doing nothing, pushing paper, talking to people. Waiting. It’s about waiting for something to go wrong. And when we get called, when we have something to do, it means that by definition we’re too late.
“I always imagined serving justice, fixing problems. But most of the time we aren’t saviors. We arrive in time to see someone dead, and maybe we catch the person who did it. But that doesn’t matter to the people who were killed. For them we’re really just . . . witnesses.” He looked down. “I tell myself that at least someone was there.”
They ate in silence. The cashew chicken wasn’t as good as Davis remembered it being. Too salty. He spent the time staring at the woman’s number.
I need something like this, he thought, turning it over in his fingers. Her number on one side. Death on the other—the address of the school. He flipped it back over. I need a new start, in real life.
He had to get over Molly. He knew he had to get over Molly. See other people. Even though he’d held out hope through the divorce.
But this number itself . . . it was a trap. He couldn’t call a woman and lie to her, pretending he’d met her for real. It was a crutch. He just needed to change his life.
You’re planning a change. Warsaw Street. He wouldn’t have much time to get there after
spying on the Photographer at 19:30.
“You going to call that?” Chaz asked as they finished up.
Davis turned it over again, then balled it up. “What’s the point?” Davis said. “Let’s go catch a bad guy.”
He left the little slip of paper on the table beside his uneaten fortune cookie.
Eight
They got back to the school around 19:00, half an hour before the Photographer was supposed to return. They entered an apartment building with back windows looking out at the school—one of the few places to watch from. After knocking a few doors, they found an apartment where no one answered. Chaz kicked open the door, and Davis used his regular police badge—not his reality badge—to quiet the neighbors.
They settled down in the bathroom, where a tiny window gave them a good—if cramped—view. As they waited, Davis played with the facts, dancing them around in his head. As long as he could focus on those, on making neat rows of ideas—on grouping them into abstract sets and collections—he didn’t feel so nervous.
“Why poison?” he finally said.
“Hmm?” Chaz asked, standing beside the toilet.
“He’s killing them with what he sees as their flaws,” Davis said. “He locked those poor people in with bees so their allergies would kill them. He suffocated the asthmatics. It’s like . . . he sees himself as culling the species. Letting our own diseases or handicaps destroy us. The people who were paralyzed? The cops found bloody scrapes on the side of the half-full pool. People trying to climb out, breaking fingernails. He dumped those poor people in a swimming pool alive, and let them drown because all their limbs didn’t work.”
“Bastard,” Chaz whispered.
“Yeah. But the poison . . . Why the poison? For the farsighted people? It doesn’t fit the pattern.” Davis tapped on the window, beside where the paint had chipped free. Outside, it was growing dark. “And another thing. Why in the world didn’t the precinct tell us about this?”
“Maybe they worried we’d do what we’re doing,” Chaz said.
“Who cares though? Maybe we create a few more Deviations for a meaningless domestic abuse case, but wouldn’t getting a clue about a terrible murderer be worth that risk? Besides, they know we usually ignore orders to go to saferooms—so we’re out creating Deviations anyway. Might as well have us doing something useful.”
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