by Peter Hartog
“I’m good, Doc,” she replied, round face pinched in concentration. “I’ll let you know when I find something.”
I strode back to the laboratory in time to watch Stentstrom and Deacon hasten along the catwalk and down the stairs.
Stentstrom was smothered inside a heavy winter coat, white designer gloves, and a white ushanka with the earflaps down. He carried a steel briefcase. A sticker was affixed at an angle on one side displaying a symbol of two poodle heads back-to-back, one black and the other white, with the tagline “Proud member of the PC of EC”.
“Doctor—" I began, but the medical examiner stared at the laboratory, eyes round as the moon.
“Sweet Westminster’s Kennel Club!” the little man exclaimed.
“Gilbert!” I said, snapping my fingers in front of his face. “Over here.”
“Oh, yes, my apologies,” the medical examiner said, fast blinking eyes focusing on me. He took a deep breath. “It’s just so…so…”
“Awful,” I supplied.
“Magnificent,” he breathed.
“Um, right,” I said, steering him back to the foot of the stairs.
“And a Vellan,” he squealed with delight. “How extraordinary! Is she your assistant?”
He twisted his head around to catch another glimpse of Besim and the laboratory.
Once I got his attention, I introduced him to Besim and Leyla, then summarized what had transpired since our arrival at the nightclub. His eyebrows merged with the ushanka.
“Make sure these people are cared for,” I finished. “And don’t mention anything about the vampires to anyone else. Not in your report. No one.”
The medical examiner stiffened.
“Well, I have to provide an explanation of some sort,” he sniffed in professional indignation. “I have a reputation to uphold, after all, not to mention hours of paperwork to complete. I take pride in being quite thorough, after all. What on earth am I supposed to say?”
“Make something up,” I countered. “Look, just gloss over the details. Say it’s a case of kidnapping, abuse, and drug dealers employing slave labor. That’s pretty much the truth anyway.”
“Detective Holliday, this is highly irregular.” He wasn’t convinced. “Lieutenant Gaffney and his narcotics team will have their own forensic investigators, who will be equally thorough. I appreciate what we did regarding the theft of the body from the morgue, but withholding evidence is—"
“There’s a lot at stake here,” I implored in a quiet voice. “Delay things for a little while, until I can figure out what’s really going on. Lives depend on it. I’m asking you to trust me, Gilbert. Please.”
Stentstrom searched my eyes for a moment. “Of course, Detective. I’ll take care of it.”
He winced when I clapped him on the shoulder.
“That’s the spirit!” I grinned. “Oh, once you’ve finished assisting Doctor Saranda, head back upstairs to scoop up whatever’s left of Crain and his two goons. That white fire from Deacon’s truncheon melted them to the bone, and I’d rather you hold onto their remains.”
“I thought I recognized the foul stench of burnt hair when I was led through the club above.” The medical examiner’s eyes lit up with interest. “I had presumed it was from all the hairspray young people wear these days. How terribly repugnant, not to mention flammable! Fortunately for you, Detective, I came prepared, and brought a full complement of forensic paraphernalia, as well as a spatula, a rather useful tool. Blood and fluid splatters find homes in some of the more unusual and dirty places. Why, I recall one particular case involving a triple homicide at a sperm donation facility—"
“Yeah, Doc,” I shuddered. “We get the picture.”
“A rather nasty bit of business, that one,” Stentstrom tittered, turning toward Deacon. “And since we’re on the subject. Mr. Kole, perhaps you could explain the properties of the white fire you used to melt the decedents?”
The former Protector glowered but said nothing.
“Another time, then,” Stentstrom said quickly, offering me a nervous smile as he joined Besim. “Doctor Saranda, how may I be of service?”
Stentstrom set the briefcase on the floor, removed his hat and gloves, and placed them on top. Nine stood unmoving nearby, a tiny rag doll next to the towering Vellan and the shorter medical examiner.
“Hey, Doc,” Leyla called. She was in the doorway between the two refrigerators. A troubled expression crossed her face. “You’re gonna want to see this.”
I glanced at Deacon, then followed her into the control room.
“Crain’s security did a good job clearing out their virtual, cloud, and hard records,” Leyla explained as we entered. “They initiated a self-destruct sequence to their systems, wiping out whatever data they kept. They got rid of a lot of it, too, but not all.”
Deacon walked over to the holo-screens to stand before the one depicting the entrance to the club. Flashing lights and dozens of figures milled outside, but no one had gone through the door yet. Mahoney was at the center of it all, directing traffic.
“You get any of the archived footage these cameras picked up?” Deacon asked.
Leyla flicked through a side holo-panel of the workstation.
“Not a lot,” Leyla replied, squinting at the screen. “The latest date stamp is from two nights ago. I did a facial recognition sweep looking for Vanessa, but she never came up.”
“Well that’s about as useless as tits on a bull,” Deacon grunted in irritation. “You found nothing better than that, girl?”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” Leyla sniffed haughtily.
She shunted the side panel away, drawing to the fore a single window. A series of characters, numbers and symbols ran along the screen like falling rain.
“What the fuck is all that?” Deacon demanded.
“That is the result of our tracker program.” Leyla pointed a triumphant finger at the streaming data. “That is where the signal from the surveillance cameras we found in Vanessa’s townhouse went to.”
“Where does it go?” I asked.
“Here,” she replied, stepping to the side of the screen. “And what you’re looking at isn’t one signal, it’s three. Or, more accurately, the telemetry from three different signals. The first is the initial code. That one isn’t very elegant or discreet. You see that most commonly used in one-way transmitting devices. It still took a lot of time to hunt down because of all the false paths whoever wrote it had set up. I’ve uploaded the remaining data that didn’t get wiped and transmitted all of it to some extra micro-drives I keep handy. From what I can tell, it goes back years.”
My eyebrows rose. I exchanged a grim look with Deacon.
“You said there are three different codes,” Deacon said with grudging respect. “What about the other two?”
Leyla nodded. “Wrapped around the first one was a second, transmitted to an office building in Queens. I’m still working on triangulating its exact location, but I’ve got a pretty good idea. Anyway, this code is much more involved, written by someone very skilled. I don’t think Crain and his security team had a clue it was even there.”
“That’s gotta be Orpheus,” I declared. “Keeping tabs on their business partner, no doubt. What about the third one?”
“That’s the weird part, Doc,” she answered, her face clouding over. “I have no idea where it goes. My program traced it to a point somewhere in Manhattan. But then it stopped, like the signal disappeared into a black hole or something. It reappeared sometime later in the Bronx, and then disappeared right after. I think the signal is mobile.”
“Any good security company can hide a signal,” Deacon growled. “That ain’t nothing new, girl.”
“I know that,” Leyla replied testily. “But this one is…different. Doc, you know how good I am at this kind of stuff. I’ve kept both ECPD and ECBI off my tail for years. But when I study the code involved with that third signal, it’s decades ahead of me. It’s so complex, and full of all kinds o
f subtle sub-routines, that it’s more than just some signal sending back information to whoever wrote it. And I think it’s two-way, made up of multiple signals, not just the one. The signal ends not because it’s coded to disappear if discovered, but because it was never there in the first place. It’s like a ghost.”
“How can you track something like that?” I asked, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “How did you know it was there in the first place?”
“More military-grade tech, Holliday,” Deacon grumbled. “If that’s the case, then that’s some serious shit. Although I ain’t never heard of a signal able to do what girlie here just said.”
“Well then what is it?” I asked.
“Magic.”
Besim stood in the doorway.
“Excuse me?”
“Whoever is responsible for that third signal has employed magic to keep it hidden,” she answered calmly. “Only magic can defy physics. The signal is there, but magic has been employed to obfuscate its presence, fool modern technology, and prevent anyone from finding its transmission source.”
“I get what kind of world we live in,” I said, folding my arms across my chest while giving Besim a skeptical look, “but I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
“There are many mysteries still undiscovered, even after all this time, Detective Holliday,” Besim said cryptically. “Perhaps whoever is responsible for the third signal remains hidden through a blend of magic and technology? Regardless, Leyla has discovered its presence, and it cannot be ignored.”
“She’s right,” Leyla said. She hugged herself, becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
Something clicked in my mind. I didn’t need my Insight to figure this one out.
“That’s how you stay hidden, isn’t it?” I said, keeping the accusation from my tone. “It’s why so few people have been able to find you. Your cold ability is one thing. And you’re a skilled hacker, great with holo-tech, too, but there’s always been more to it.”
“Yes,” she replied in a small voice.
“Like knows like,” Besim said. “You can see what lies within the code where others cannot.”
“Fine, then how do we figure out where it goes?” I asked.
“I’m working on it,” Leyla said in earnest. “I just need time, that’s all.”
I placed my hands on her shoulders.
“You got it, kiddo,” I smiled, and she returned it, but then her face clouded over.
“There’s more,” she said, turning from me to flick the screen away with her hand. The display changed to a dark image.
“What are we looking at now?” I asked.
“This is from several hours ago.” Her lip began to tremble. Crystal tears formed in her eyes. “Just listen.”
She activated the recording.
Something shifted in the blackness of the screen. Moments later, a door opened, and an aisle of light spilled into a large room. Two mercs stepped into view, each carrying a naked body. They came to a short wall and dropped the corpses over the side. Muffled cries arose from below them. The two men ignored the sounds, and shut the door closed behind them.
That’s when I heard it.
“Help us,” a faint, tremulous voice cried. “Please. Help us.”
The transmission ended.
Silence descended on the room like cold, unrelenting death.
“That is what I sensed from the other hallway, Detective Holliday,” Besim said. Horror filled her eyes as she regarded me. “That is where the vampyr keeps its larder.”
Chapter 28
“We’re too late.”
My badge illuminated dozens of naked forms, limbs and bodies twisted in grotesque parodies of life. All of them women, or girls of an age with Nine. Dozens of nameless victims had been cast into this black pit, never to see the light of day again. Now reduced to an unmoving pile of grisly shapes, they’d been carelessly strewn on a bed of skulls and bones like some forgotten assemblage of childhood rag dolls. The stench was unbearable, yet I willed myself to remain at the lip of the pit.
I stared at the collection of corpses, wondering who they’d been. How they came here. What had been done to them.
And why.
Leyla’s choking sobs echoed from the passageway behind me. Besim comforted her, but even her voice rang hollow, like empty air. Deacon stood beside me, a grim specter at the edge of the badge’s light. His eyes blazed. A flicker of white fire flared along the truncheon, as if responding to the roiling emotions of its wielder.
When I heard the little girl’s plaintive plea for help from the salvaged feed, I burst from the control room in a mad dash. I felt Nine’s dead, knowing eyes follow me as I bolted across the catwalk and through the door. My legs chewed up the distance in long strides, heedless of whatever lurked ahead. At the end of the hallway, I broke right and crashed through another metal door. Beyond was a small operating room containing empty tables and beds, glass and metal cabinets, all manner of medical equipment, and another door on the far side. A smashed virtual workstation sat dark next to a water cooler and cup dispenser. Ignoring the room, I pushed through the other door and down a shadowy corridor, my badge lighting the way.
Crain’s larder was at the end of the line through a thick metal door, but the rotten stench of human detritus still reached me well before I got there. The others arrived shortly after. Besim ushered Leyla from the charnel house before she could catch more than a glimpse of the horror below. But she’d seen enough.
We all had.
The little girl’s desperate voice from the recording echoed in my mind.
Help us.
Closing my eyes, I focused on the case, blocking out Leyla’s devastated sobbing and my own rising anger. I reviewed all the information our investigation uncovered so far. The facts and evidence, our theories, anything that would pull me temporarily from that pit. Yet Nine and the bodies below intruded on my thoughts, taunting my inability to stitch together this intricate web of murder and lies. And then Vanessa’s still face floated before me, the ghastly wound on the side of her neck a chilling reminder that unfinished business remained.
EVI announced the arrival of Gaffney and his team, as well as the media swarm.
“Time to leave, Holliday,” Deacon said quietly. “Ain’t nothing left for us here.”
I tore my eyes from the bodies in the pit and nodded my agreement.
“We already got the sonofabitch,” he continued, placing a firm hand on my shoulder.
“No, Marko’s still out there,” I grated in a hard voice. “So are Rumpel-fucking-stiltskin, Julie, Orpheus, and whoever else is involved. I’m putting an end to this, Deacon. One way or another, I’m putting an end to this.”
Deacon’s mouth formed a thin line.
“Then let’s get these motherfuckers before they hurt anyone else.”
We returned to the darkened hallway. Besim held Leyla in a protective hug, the white-haired girl’s head buried in the Vellan’s chest. Leyla’s sobbing had subsided, but her shoulders still trembled. Even Stentstrom’s customary enthusiasm was gone, replaced by an uncharacteristically grim countenance I found comforting.
“Doctor, head back up and collect those remains,” I said, addressing them all. “Mahoney’s expecting you, so look for him, follow his lead, and just do what he says. Try not to answer too many of Gaffney’s questions. And contact me on my private number if you find anything new. At this point, I want to keep any further communication between us away from the regular channels. EVI’s been an open party line, compliments of Rumpelstiltskin and his inside man. Let’s not tip them off to what we’re doing any more than we’ve already done. The rest of us are getting the hell out of here.”
They murmured their assent. We returned to the elevator in silence. I pressed the button, staring back at the empty corridor. I felt the weight of the entire world settle on my shoulders, like Poe’s raven. The door slid open. Stentstrom stepped inside, both hands gripping the handle of his briefcase. Before it cl
osed, the medical examiner stuck his hand out, forcing the door open again.
“Detective,” he called.
“Yes, Doctor?”
He fixed me with a steady look.
“Stop them.”
The elevator door closed.
We returned to the catwalk above the laboratory to discover Nine and the others had resumed their mindless work. I paused, observing the activity below with a frown, and wondered what her life would now be like once she and the others were freed from the goldjoy laboratory. Was there a family out there still searching? A desolate mother and father to be suddenly reunited with their missing daughter? EC Social Services would put Nine into foster care if no one claimed her. And then what? Would there be a return to the light for this little girl? Or was she doomed as well?
She and I were kindred spirits in that, I supposed. But I was lucky. I had stared into that abyss and come back, for better and worse, with the help of Abner and Leyla.
I’d lost nearly everyone important to me. I couldn’t fathom truly losing everyone.
Or, if Besim was right, losing my very soul.
“You got everything you could from here?” I asked Leyla.
“Yeah,” she replied tentatively. Her sad eyes met mine.
“But you made sure there’s nothing for Gaffney to find either?” I pressed gently.
“Um, yeah,” she sniffled, pulling herself together. “I figured you’d want me to do that. I added a worm that wiped out everything it found relating to the surveillance footage and vampires. It’s already infected all of Crain’s virtual drives, the cloud and all the backups. By the time Narcotics gets down here, their holo-tech forensics team will assume Crain’s people did it.”
What Leyla did was illegal, and I’d lose my badge over it if anyone ever found out. Given how this investigation had gone, it was a gamble I had to take.
“Good.”
I gave Nine one last, pained look.
“O, why should nature build so foul a den,” I murmured, “unless the gods delight in tragedies?”
She turned her head up toward me, and our eyes met a final time.
