by Liana Brooks
She walked over to the closet and pulled a windbreaker off the hanger. “DRENMANN LABS,” she said, showing him the logo. “Troom probably took the award as a memento after Dr. Emir died.”
“Do you think he took something else?”
“Like Emir’s research notes?” Sam asked darkly. “I imagine he did.”
“I really want to say, ‘But Henry knew better!’ ” Mac said. “But I get the feeling he didn’t.”
Sam stomped her foot and screwed her mouth up as she choked down whatever it was she wanted to say.
“It’s going to be okay, Sam.”
“No it’s not. I have one dead researcher and now a missing DJ. This district hasn’t had a homicide in three years, and now I have possibly three in a week? And Nealie’s just a random transient.” She stomped again and pivoted to fume at the wall.
“These things happen. You didn’t kill anyone. Stop beating yourself up and get back to work.”
She shot him a glare that made him smile.
“Come on, Agent Perfect. You’re the senior agent, stop pouting and get to work.”
“I hate you some days.” She sighed.
“Consider it payback for the many early morning runs you literally dragged me on.”
Her smile was coy. “I didn’t drag you anywhere.”
“You made me hold Hoss’s leash, and he ran.”
“You could have let go. Letting go was always a choice.” She looked around Henry’s room and sighed again. “Okay. I’m officially declaring this a crime scene. I’m going to alert the apartment manager and have Edwin get over here to help us process the scene. And then I’m going to co-opt Clemens and have her run a manhunt for us. I want Devon Bradet found.”
“I come bearing burgers!” Agent Petrilli from District 6 ducked under the police tape covering the door as he beamed at Sam. “I even brought chocolate milk shakes.”
“Mac! Dinner is here.” Sam took the bag from Petrilli. Drool pooled in her mouth at the scent of deep-fried goodness.
Mac stepped around the corner, stripping off his gloves. “Food? I could kiss you.”
“I don’t swing that way,” Petrilli said with a laugh. “But if Agent Rose wanted to kiss me, I wouldn’t deny her the pleasure.”
“I just want food,” Sam said. “Thank you, for this and for loaning me your crime scene techs. I need to petition for our own in the budget this year.”
“Not a problem. I’m all about interdistrict cooperation. I even told my ME to get out here tonight after he’s done with the tox screens he’s doing.”
“Oh, you can tell him he isn’t needed. I have Mac for that.”
Mac waved, a half-finished burger in his mouth.
“He doesn’t look familiar,” Petrilli said. “Is he the one you were telling me about?”
Mac offered a ketchup-stained smile. “I’m from Chicago.”
“I still can’t believe you couldn’t find someone closer,” Petrilli said. “What about that nice gal working for Mada down in District 4? She seemed easy to work with.”
“He was in town for a conference, he has clearance, and he didn’t object to staying a few more weeks. It was supposed to be a simple two-day autopsy. Not this mess.”
“No one misses me,” Mac said. He took a gulp of his shake. “We’re overstaffed with college interns right now. If I were in Chicago, I’d be playing Tetris and dying of boredom. This is a much better use of taxpayer dollars.”
Petrilli shot Mac a trademark grin, the one that Sam was certain he practiced to dazzle cameras, and held out his hand. “Senior Agent Feo Petrilli, I’d hate to see a fellow bureau brother stranded here without a friend. You give me a call if Agent Rose works you too hard. I hear she likes to crack the whip.”
“Eric MacKenzie,” Mac said, taking Petrilli’s hand. “And the only thing I’ve ever seen in Sam’s bedroom are handcuffs.”
Sam choked on her milkshake. Her eyes went wide. “You did not . . .”
Mac tried to hide a grin.
She punched him in the arm. “This is a crime scene.” She glared at both of them.
Petrilli held his arms up. “I came bearing food. No comments. No . . .”
“Oh, don’t even try that, Petrilli. You were both sizing each other up like a pair of—” She cut herself off.
Mac raised his eyebrows. “Of?”
“Don’t you even start with me, MacKenzie.”
He chuckled.
“I didn’t realize you were in a relationship,” Petrilli said.
“I’m married to my work,” Sam said.
“She just keeps me around for my brains.” Mac jumped back before she could hit him again. He was enjoying this, dammit all.
Leveling her best Senior Agent glare at him, she said, “You’re drunk-on tired, that’s what you are.”
Mac’s smile didn’t dim under her scowl. “Considering it’s past ten at night, and we’ve been up since five? It’s a possibility.”
“It isn’t dereliction of duty to get some sleep,” Petrilli said. “My techs are good at their job. Go home. Get a few hours of sleep. Let my people do what they’re paid to do and tackle this again in the morning.”
“Listen to the man,” Mac said, as he put an arm around her shoulder. “We have Troom’s room cleaned out and tagged. Unless Edwin calls saying he found the guy in a hospital, there’s nothing more we can do until we’re clearheaded enough to understand his notes.”
Caught between the desire to finish the case and overwhelming need to see her pillow again, Sam relented. Edwin would find Bradet, and tomorrow’s sunshine would make everything much clearer.
CHAPTER 10
With this we step out of the darkness into a brighter dawn. We will not simply await the future, we now will change it.
~ Dr. Abdul Emir speaking at the inauguration the Future Command Force complex I1–2064
Saturday March 22, 2070
Florida District 8
Commonwealth of North America
Iteration 2
Ivy pulled her car to the side of the road and leaned her head against the steering wheel. If scientists had the common sense evolution gave a caterpillar, the geneticists who’d made her would have thought to give her a better-functioning body than the normal human one. Goodness and the great beyond knew the department worked her like she was a robot. In before seven in the morning, still chasing down leads at three the next morning, with one meal in between and a shot of an Extra Energy Lime drink that left her jittery for an hour and desperately in need of sleep now.
“Patroller?” the dispatcher’s voice floated through the car like a ghost.
“This is Officer Clemens. I’m in the armpit of nowhere following lead 391. Sending GPS coordinates now.”
“GPS coordinates received, Officer,” the dispatcher said. “Check-in scheduled for twenty minutes from now.”
“Check-in scheduled,” Ivy agreed. “Exiting the car now.” She slammed the door shut on the dispatcher’s response. A waxing gibbous moon hung low over the eastern horizon, not quite above the palmettos shivering near the bay. There was worse weather for a manhunt than 60 percent humidity and low seventies with a sea breeze.
The tipster had called dispatch to say he’d seen a man matching Devon Bradet’s description north of Ponce Inlet along A1A. And by matching they meant he looked about the right height and weight and might have been Caucasian, it was hard to say the in the dark, might have had a maroon shirt on, maybe purple.
All it meant to her was she was chasing a transient hitchhiker through Mosquito Central.
Grabbing a flashlight, Ivy started humming a billboard top-ten song to stay awake. Halfway through the chorus of “A clone would never love you like me” she was at the mile marker where the tip had been called in. She shined her flashlight on the gr
ound, looking for any indication someone had been here an hour before. Gravel and dust looked like gravel and dust to her. No candy-bar wrappers, abandoned shoes, or cooling corpses to indicate that the tipster had been anything other than drunk.
Ivy checked her watch, an old plastic one she’d bought with her first paycheck because it was green and waterproofish. Seventeen minutes until check-in.
The beam from her flashlight arced across the water and to the foot of the bridge. There was an old road there. With a sigh, she plodded forward. There was half a chance someone might be sleeping under the bridge. She stopped and redid the math. Okay, no one smart was going to sleep in the sand with the fire ants and mosquitoes this close to the inlet, where there might be gators. But no one said she was looking for someone smart, and it wasn’t a bad place to stash a body. The ants would swarm it, then the crabs would come. A corpse might only last a day or two in a place like this.
She jumped over the guardrail and landed softly a few feet lower than the highway on the curve of the dirt road. A bat swooped low over the river and swept past her, clicking in a chiding tone. Ivy laughed. “Look at me, I’m a regular cartoon princess complete with animal sidekick.” The bat flew away. “Or not.”
The smell of rotten fish assaulted her as she walked under the bridge. Bycatch left to wash up onshore and rot under the sun, nothing more. She toed the muddy bank but saw neither signs of a freshly dug grave or a corpse. Leaving her with another dead end. Eleven minutes to check-in.
She shined her light across the road. It curved west behind a copse of fiddlewood shrubs to a broken wooden sign where the faded words SPRUCE CREEK were still legible. Her memory ticked over to, pulling up information from her early years on the force. Back in, what—Sixty-four? Sixty-five? Something like that—there’d been rumors of the Spruce Creek Cannibal. Ol’ Crazy Ivan, a shadow who had gone mad, run off to the twisting fens to eat raw fish and unwary tourists. Ivy rubbed her nose and choked down a cough.
Crazy Ivan.
Crazy Ivy was more like it.
Nine minutes to check-in. She shined the flashlight back at her patrol car. It was five hundred yards away, a quick sprint up loose gravel. She might skin her knee, but she was confident she’d make it to the car before any homeless clone got her. She stretched a tension knot out of her neck and slowly walked away from the main highway, flashlight beam dancing madly in front of her.
There was an old wooden bait shack, roof missing and one wall shattered, an old airboat tilted and rusting on the silty shore, and a quiet chorus of tree frogs excited by the light. A snake slithered across the road and rattled the grass still yellow from winter’s drought. The place looked forgotten but not threatening. She walked around the hut once, shined the light through the broken wall at the forgotten spiderwebs, and turned away. There was nothing here but the memories of bygone days paddling through the waterways taking pictures of blue heron.
Three minutes to check-in. She hurried up the gravel road, heartbeat rising as she exerted herself, and the caffeine wore off. There was a muffled thud. Ivy turned, frowning at the darkness. Nothing. Maybe a frog jumping onto the old boat, or her mind playing tricks on her. She ran to the car as the dispatch line lit up.
“Patroller?”
“This is Officer Clemens,” Ivy said. “I’ve checked under the bridge.”
“Nothing there?” dispatch asked.
“Nothing but bycatch.” She hesitated. “There’s an old shack around the bend. A bait shop. I’m going to walk down the road a bit to see if there are signs that anyone was here.” Maybe she’d get lucky and find a lost wallet with the phantom’s name in it.
“Check-in in twenty,” dispatch said.
“Check-in in twenty,” Ivy agreed. “But it shouldn’t take that long.” She glared at the darkness as she leaned against the car. There was a warm blanket in an air-conditioned apartment just waiting for her at home. She reached through the open window of her car and grabbed her water bottle. A quick swig, and she headed back for one last look at the shack.
Nothing stood out for her. Moonlight splintered on the quiet water. Mosquitoes swarmed overhead. Gnats chased her. Frogs croaked. Bats skimmed the water. A fish leapt out. It was a nature biopic only missing a sound track and a soothing voice to narrate the scene.
She closed her eyes.
Thud.
A faint echo of metal and boot meeting each other. She walked toward the broken bait shop. Nothing. She circled toward the boat.
Thud. Soft, faded . . .
Thud.
“I don’t think it’s frogs,” she muttered.
“Help!” The muffled cry was almost drowned out by the chorus of frogs.
Ivy ran to the boat and stood on tiptoe to look at the deck. She shined her light on the peeling deck. “Hello?”
Another thud, from the stern of the boat.
Tucking her flashlight into her utility belt, Ivy let her eyes adjust to the dark, then climbed the side of the listing vessel. There were holes in the transom. Probably spiders lurking under the boards, too. She tested her weight on the floor and said a small prayer to anything that might be listening that she wouldn’t fall through rotted boards as she let go of the side of the boat.
The boat rocked precariously in the wet sand.
“Hello?” Ivy said quietly. “Is someone there?”
Another muffled thud reverberated through the hull.
She sidled sideways, sliding her booted feet across the rotting boat, never quite trusting her weight to any one spot.
At the stern of the boat, there was a jerry-rigged lockbox that had either held catch or gear at one point. Now the lid was closed and latched over something. Ivy lifted the latch, edged three fingers under the lid, and threw it up and jumped back all in one motion.
An unpleasant cocktail of smells of urine and sweat overpowered the stench of rotting fish. Ivy grabbed her flashlight, switched it back on, and shined the beam into the wide eyes of a bedraggled man wearing a torn T-shirt.
“Hi.”
He held up duct-taped hands.
Ivy took his arms and pulled him out of the hole, then stripped the duct tape off his mouth. “Are you Devon Bradet?”
“Yeah. This is not funny.”
“You’re telling me,” Ivy said, as she cut the duct tape with her pocketknife.
Bradet looked down at her hands. “Is that Hello Kitty?”
“Don’t knock it. I’m not officially allowed to carry lethal weapons and no blades over two inches.” Officially was the key word. Her extra-heavy flashlight was technically not a weapon, but it could break skulls as well as any truncheon. The Caye Law, making things almost-kinda-sorta equal if you squinted and thought the Constitution of the Commonwealth only applied to people born through “natural forms of conception and birth.” Which technically made people conceived by in vitro unnatural, clone-like barbarians who couldn’t be trusted with weapons, but no one seemed to mention that when the legislation went through.
“I’m going to die,” Bradet groaned.
Ivy rolled her eyes. “Calm down. I’m a trained officer of the law. I don’t need a weapon to pull people out of boats.”
In the shadows away from her flashlight, someone chuckled. All the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
“We’re going to die,” Bradet whispered. “They told me. They want Henry, but I can’t find Henry. Henry is dead.”
Ivy patted his arm. Her hand came away sticky with blood. “Just . . . just be calm. I’m going to radio this in, we’ll have you to the ER in no time.”
The boat rocked. “Hello, little girl,” said a voice from the shadows.
Ivy’s jaw tightened. “Hello? You’re the big bad wolf, I presume. Is that how this story goes?” She tightened her grip on her flashlight. Powder guns with beanbag rounds and
powdered mustard gas were standard issue in the department. Her badge hadn’t come with one. Instead, she had a five-pound flashlight, a one-inch Hello Kitty pocketknife, and a pair of steel-toed boots. She tucked the knife into Bradet’s hand and pushed him flat on the boat deck. “My name is Officer Ivy Clemens,” she said as she stood up. “Want to walk into the light and introduce yourself?”
A muscular man with buzz-cut hair and a wicked-looking fillet knife stepped up to the boat. “Name’s Donovan, and I like killing cops.”
“Wow. Great intro. You use that pickup line on all the girls?” Ivy smiled as her hand slipped to her radio. She turned the volume down and hit the distress button. “Nice knife. Compensating for something, Donovan? You come out here to Spruce Creek to do a little late-night fishing? Using my buddy Bradet here as gator bait maybe?” Cold sweat beaded her forehead. Come on, Dispatch. Get the hint. I’m not making check-in. Send backup.
Donovan chuckled. “Why don’t you come down here? Pretty girl like you, I’ll make it quick. Slit your throat. Quick burn, and it’s all over.”
Ivy licked her lips, her heartbeat rising a tick. “Your people skills need work.”
“Considering how much I dislike people, not so much.” Donovan walked toward the boat, pushed it so she rocked.
Ivy took two steps and jumped, rolling across the ground and coming to her feet behind Donovan. She hesitated, not sure if she should run for the car or stay to protect Bradet.
Donovan turned. He kicked something in the grass. Her radio. He stepped on it. “You weren’t hoping for backup, were you?”
“They’re already on their way. Let me arrest you. I’ll make it quick and easy.”
His first kick knocked her flat on her back. He followed up with his knife hand.
Ivy kicked back, arching her back and slamming both booted feet into his chest. Donovan staggered backward. She lunged at his legs, knocking him to the ground. With one swift motion, she slammed her flashlight into his nose. Jumping away, she ran for the boat.
“Bradet? Bradet you there?”
