The Moreau Quartet, Volume 2

by S. Andrew Swann

  Lei picked up the note and began reading it.

  “The future?” Angel felt her heart accelerate and told herself that she was getting irrationally emotional again.

  “Oh, my,” Lei said.

  Angel got off the couch and walked to the door, paced back, walked to the window. “Is that all you have to say? ‘Oh, my?’”

  “He could be talking about anything—”

  Angel stared out the window. “Damn.” Angel rested her forehead against the glass.

  Lei walked up behind her. “What’s the matter? You look worse off than before.”

  Angel shook her head. Why couldn’t he wait a little while? Why’d he have to force things so damn quickly?

  “Angel, you’re crying . . .”

  “I’m not crying!” In a much quieter voice she said, “I’m not ready for this.”

  Lei rested a hand on her back. Angel felt herself shake under Lei’s hand and realized that she was crying. “Damn it. I don’t want to lose him—”

  “Shh, you aren’t going to lose him.”

  Angel stood there, crying, unconvinced.

  • • •

  Thursday morning. Angel wasn’t ready for the breakfast crowd. As her shift drifted toward noon she was so distracted that she confused orders at least once, giving a young tiger a plate of greens and giving a trio of white rabbits the tiger’s plate of bleeding hamburger. She could scratch two tips right there.

  Sanchez rode her even harder than usual, even coming out of his little shoebox manager’s haven to order her to pick up the pace. All the time her mind kept drifting off the orders and on to Byron.

  Foxy knew she’d freak if he popped the question unprepared. Of course he did. And she had to live in one of the three states that recognized moreau weddings as legit. The only state that recognized interspecies marriage—even the Catholic Church in its latest liberal wave had yet to go that far.

  If she still lived in Cleveland, she wouldn’t even have to think about it. But then, in Cleveland, she’d have more pressing worries—like stray gunfire.

  It was unnerving for her to realize that if she was going to marry anyone, Byron’d be it. Worse, he obviously knew it.

  Yeah, right. She was going to marry anyone? Bloody fat chance, as Byron would say.

  “Yo, fluffy!” came from part of the rodent brigade of the lunchtime crowd. “Where’s my fries?”

  Spuds for the spud. Obviously she had to stop whatever she was doing so a fleabitten member of the rat patrol could get his daily allotment of grease. She almost served the ratboy a handful of abuse, but Sanchez had come out of hiding to lord it over his lunchroom kingdom and his look said, He’s a customer—

  Angel returned Sanchez’s look with one that said, Yeah, a rare breed here, and got the rat’s fries from the kitchen.

  Byron and her, she thought. It was too soon.

  She shook her head. Whatever happened, she’d be asking the same question a week, a month, a year from now. And she was getting older. Balthazar was an uncomfortable reminder of that. She was doing well for her age, but twenty was three years the far side of middle age for a rabbit.

  At least with Byron she wouldn’t have to worry about kids—unless they wanted to go to a Bensheim clinic and make some.

  Angel had a vivid mental image of a litter of rabbits being infected by Byron’s seductive Brit accent. It brought a smile wide enough to make the old cut on her cheek ache.

  Was she really thinking about this, seriously?

  “Where’s my ketchup, fluffy?”

  Angel looked at the black rodent and wondered if it was some genetic quirk that made all rats assholes. Angel looked at him, street kid, pissed at the world, age pushing double digits. He was making points with his friends here by harassing the help. Rat would probably die of old age before he had to work for a living.

  The fries were steaming from the fryer and Angel had an urge to insert them into that shiny pink nose of his. Instead she said, as sweetly as she could muster, “Just a moment.” She couldn’t bring herself to say “sir.” It’d dock her a few points in Sanchez’s book, but at this point she didn’t give a damn.

  She was heading off to get a bottle from another table—the rat had probably stolen the one that was supposed to be on his—when she found herself facing two pinks.

  From a decade plus on the streets she ID’d the pinks as pure cop the instant she laid eyes on them. Not just the fact they were pinks in a morey joint. Cop emanated from the shoddy suits like the bald one’s cheap cologne. The barely hidden shoulder holsters didn’t help. A matched set, and from the way they spaced themselves out of arm’s reach from each other—there wasn’t much love lost between the two.

  The one on the right was Asian, jet black hair, razor mustache. The other was balding, rumpled, and carried a gut that could have comfortably hidden Angel in its girth.

  She was still in waitress mode, so she asked, “Can I help you?”

  “We’re looking for a Miss Lopez,” said the Asian.

  The urge to simply bolt for the door and disappear became overwhelming. Why’d Frisco PD want her? She was clean—except for the damn gun in her underwear drawer. Angel began cataloging all the shit leftovers in Cleveland. There was a lot of six-year-old crap nobody had tagged her for yet.

  She was thinking of stonewalling when Sanchez bellowed. “Get your butt moving, Lopez.”

  So much for stonewalling. The balding one pulled out an ID and flashed it at her, too quickly. “Detectives White and Anaka, San Francisco PD. We need to talk to you.”

  Angel bent around the Asian and grabbed the ketchup squeeze bottle off the table. “What about? I’m working.”

  She was going to go about her business and get the rat his ketchup. But something about the way the two cops smelled made her hesitate. There was a little too much nervousness hanging in the air around them.

  Instead of delivering the bottle, she stood and waited. The cops’ manner was beginning to worry her.

  “Miss Lopez,” the balding one asked, “do you know a vulpine moreau by the name of Byron Dorset?”

  She didn’t even feel the bottle slip out of her fingers as she asked them what had happened.

  Chapter 4

  Byron was dead.

  She had known it from the way the cops acted, even before they told her that he’d been killed in some hotel in the Tenderloin. When she went with the two detectives, she said nothing, even as Sanchez asked her what the hell was going on. She was in the cops’ unmarked green Plymouth before she could begin to think.

  Byron was dead.

  She couldn’t shake the phrase. It kept running through her mind over and over.

  Get a grip, she thought. A cynical part of her brain was telling her how insane this all was.

  Why?

  Angel’s mind locked on that word like a mantra as the cops shot down Market toward the police station. The fat pink, White, tried to be comforting, but his words didn’t jell into anything coherent—just another noise, like the engine and the abused suspension. Anaka said nothing.

  Why?

  Why him? Why now? Why did this have to happen before she knew what she felt?

  Maybe the cops were wrong and it wasn’t him. To most humans, moreaus all look alike, right? Even cops. Even to some cops who worked the moreau districts—

  Angel shivered when she realized that they were going to ask her to identify the body.

  Could she handle that?

  Damn it, of course, she could handle it. She’d seen corpses before, some of them her friends. She’d led a fucking street gang. She’d seen more death up close than some morey veterans. She was tough, a survivor . . .

  She never should have let someone get that close to her.

  The new, supposedly earthquake-proof, police headquarters squatted on the found
ation of the old post office. It tried, too hard, to look contemporary with the surviving structures in the cluster of civic buildings across Market. The Plymouth slid into a tunnel that fed into the parking garage. Even in the car Angel could feel the temperature drop and smell the ozone of a few hundred confined vehicles. The lights buzzed, and the echo from that made the scene feel unearthly.

  Anaka parked the car near the bottom of the hole. The garage was a concrete tomb. It was dark, hard, and cold. White led her out. Anaka had stepped out of the car to follow them, but White stopped him. “Go check with the coroner—”

  “But—” Anaka began to say.

  “Meet us back up on three.”

  Anaka stepped back into the car, slammed the door shut behind him, and pulled away.

  White put a hand on Angel’s shoulder and maneuvered her toward the elevators. Angel stayed pliant, saying nothing.

  They entered the elevator and White flashed his badge at a sensor. “Detective Morris White, third floor.”

  “Confirmed,” the elevator responded.

  Angel took a few breaths and tried to find her voice. “Where are we going?”

  The doors slid open, and White led her to a desk, behind which sat a bored looking uniform.

  White acted a little uncomfortable. He addressed the uniform first. “I have an appointment for a vid room.”

  “Detective White, right?” The uniform held out his hand. White handed over his badge and the cop ran it through a scanner. “The lawyers are waiting for you, 5-A.”

  “Lawyers?” Angel asked, forcing herself to regain a little touch with reality.

  “We want you to ID our suspects.” They walked past the desk, and down a long corridor. They passed doors every ten meters or so. One door near the end of the hall hung open. White paused in his walk down the corridor. “Are you up to this?”

  “Me? ID the suspects?” Angel spoke slowly. She’d agreed to go with the cops, mostly out of shock. She still didn’t trust police, and she was beginning to wonder exactly what was going on here. Who the hell could she identify? She barely knew Byron.

  Yeah, said the cynical part of her mind so why are you so torn up over this?

  I might have married him, she answered herself.

  Out of love, replied the cynic, or because he was the only person to ever show any interest in a well-used lepus that barely scraped herself off of the pavement back home?

  “Let’s talk inside,” White said, taking her nonanswer as a yes.

  White led Angel the rest of the way to room 5-A, and shut the door behind him. The room was a stark white rectangle. The far wall was covered by ranks of vid screens. A long table squatted in front of the screens. Two empty chairs faced the table and the screens beyond. Two chairs at either end of the table were filled.

  Both occupants wore conservative dark blue suits. The one on the far right was a redheaded human woman who was idly tapping at a wallet computer. The other one was a moreau ferret. The ferret turned a sinuous gaze on the two of them and shot White a chuckle. “You finished prompting the witness?”

  White sighed. “Miss Lopez, let me introduce Mr. Igalez from the public defender’s office.”

  The ferret whipped a nod.

  “And Mrs. Gardner, Assistant District Attorney.”

  Gardener glanced up, and her head moved in a nearly imperceptible acknowledgment.

  There was a third person in the room. A uniformed cop sat at a control console next to the door. White didn’t introduce him. From the way the seats were arranged, Angel couldn’t see him when she sat down.

  White sat down next to her. They faced a wall full of test patterns. He pulled a microphone over to her face. “I want you to understand, you’re here as a witness, not a suspect. But you do have the right to have your own lawyer present.”

  Yeah, right, a morey with a lawyer. A morey waitress ex-gang member with a lawyer. She wondered where Igalez came from, and who he was defending.

  Angel sighed and asked, “What do you want from me?”

  Gardener, the DA, started. “We want to know about the events of October 23.”

  After a long pause, Angel finally asked, “Friday?”

  It all slipped into place. The Rabbit Hole. That’s who White’s suspects were—

  The three punks who’d jumped her!

  She’d been feeling numb, in shock, ever since White and Anaka had picked her up. However, she had no idea how truly pissed she’d been until she had something to focus her anger on. Angel bit her lower lip until she tasted blood. She wanted to kick something.

  She’d see those skinheads fry.

  The questions went on about The Rabbit Hole, and the punks who’d attacked her. The DA asked calm, sometimes leading questions, while the Public Defender was hard, angry, trying to rip any hole in her story, and, failing that, trying to cast her in the worst light possible.

  The questioning was accompanied by a rapid drumbeat that Angel only realized belatedly was her own foot pounding the ground, hard.

  Igalez got to her. Not that he made her admit anything, but having a fellow moreau try to make that fight look like she’d provoked something . . .

  “Are you saying that crushing that man’s testicles was not excessive force?” asked the ferret.

  “Three bald punks were about to spike me like a football.” Her pounding foot doubled its speed against her volition. The table vibrated in time to it and Angel realized that White was staring at her.

  “You could see no other way to remove yourself—”

  Angel jumped on to the chair, tensed like a spring. She leaned toward him. “You ever been raped, Igalez?” She was amazed how calm her voice sounded.

  “Miss Lopez—” White said. He put a restraining arm on her shoulder.

  “Have you, Mr. Public Defender?” The pounding was now her own heart, and the smell of the blood from her lip seemed to fog the room. She was riding a razor-thin edge here, and be damned if she wasn’t pushing the envelope.

  Gene-techs all over the world had designed moreaus for battle, and most designs had some combat mode written into their genes. All Angel really needed was to get pissed enough and she’d go crazy on her own adrenaline.

  “No—” From the way the ferret looked, he could smell how far he’d pushed her. The fear he broadcast, and the sound of his own heartbeat fed into Angel’s state.

  It was like a wind at her back, pushing her to move. She’d reached a point where she’d fired every cell of her body to scream threat. “A ferret—kinda like you—tried to rape me once. If I’d kicked him in the balls, he might still be alive.” She jumped. White didn’t expect the move, and she was so hyped that she was across the table and on Igalez before anyone else could act. By a supreme act of will, all she grabbed was his tie. “I let him get too close.” Her nose was only a few centimeters from the ferret’s. She could hear other people in the room scrambling around the table. Every sense was sharpened on a metabolism her anger had driven to just this side of panic.

  She gave Igalez her best smile. “I had to chew through his throat.”

  Some sense started leaking in, and she began to force it all back. Her body wanted to rebel, but it recognized that she was still in charge, barely. She let go of his tie and he dropped back into the seat. “The scar on my cheek’s from a chunk of his cartilage.”

  She backed off, barely able to admit to herself that what she’d just done had scared her as much as it had Igalez.

  White was about to grab her, but she hopped back into her seat without assistance. “Excessive force, my ass.”

  Had she really been about to do to Igalez . . .

  It took a few seconds for everyone to return to their seats. Even the uniform by the door had vacated his post. The color had drained from the Assistant DA’s face, and her hand shook her wallet computer slightly. White glared a
t her, wiping sweat from his balding skull. The uniform’s hand hung a little too close to his weapon.

  Angel shook. Losing control like that wasn’t good. The only person who knew how close things had come was Igalez, the only other morey in the room.

  And Igalez looked truly spooked.

  “Are you contending,” Igalez asked, regaining his composure and spending a few seconds loosening his tie, “your belief at the time was that these humans were going to—”

  “Beat me up, rape me, kill me, and bugger me up the ass? In that order? Damn straight,” Angel said quietly, trying to hide her own discomfort.

  The questioning was subdued from that point on. Dates, facts, names. Igalez didn’t go into motivation or justification again. They covered the fight at The Rabbit Hole two or three times, and only briefly did they go over the time between then and now. The fact that they didn’t ask her much about relatively recent history struck her as odd, but she didn’t dwell on it. She was too shaken.

  When the questions ended, White said, “Now, what we’d like you to do is identify the three men who attacked you.”

  White waved back at the uniform and the test patterns dropped from the screens; Angel faced a wall of faces. Over twenty of them slowly rotated in front of her—

  “First of all, I told you, they were all bald.”

  In response, the pictures with hair froze as the computer erased the hair, pixel by pixel. After a half second, she was facing a wall of bald humans. Angel stared, looking for Earl, Chico, and the black dude. Earl was the first one she recognized; he wore a face she’d never forget.

  “Freeze number twelve. That’s the guy I kicked.”

  Twelve froze and the Assistant DA said, “We’re more interested in the other two—”

  “Can we avoid prompting the witness?” The ferret stepped on the DA’s speech.

  Angel ignored them and studied the black faces on the wall. She didn’t know his name, but he had been standing closer than White was now.

  “Six, number six.” Six froze, facing them expressionlessly. “That’s number two—”

  “Are you sure?” asked the ferret.