by E. E. Giorgi
Lyons turned, two drinks in his hands.
We sat, he on the couch in front of the fireplace, I on the recliner at the other end.
He sipped then asked, “What brings you here tonight, Detective?”
I clinked the ice in my glass. “We’re looking for a colleague of yours.”
He looked into his glass. “Medina. I’ve heard. His mother shot herself—is that so?”
I nodded—that was the story given to the press.
He took another swig, smacked his lips. It was good scotch. “Didn’t show up at work today. But that much you know already.” He scratched his temple. “It’s uh—a bit of a shock, really. Medina’s one of my best people. Associate researcher, I should say. He’s got a Ph.D.” He stared at me as if the information should’ve made a difference. I tried to look as if it made a difference. He sighed and leaned back on the couch, the glass of scotch snuggled in his hands. “I don’t understand why he’d vanish like that. Something really grave must’ve happened. I trust him.”
“Of course you do. He does all your dirty work.”
He dwindled for a moment then quickly regained his temper. A nervous titter surfaced between the sides of his goatee. “Yes,” he said. “Indeed. Sequencing and aligning DNA can be one of the dirtiest and most tedious tasks you can think of.”
I joined his titter like a good ol’ pal, drained my glass, then clinked the ice a bit more. “Seriously, Doc. You have no idea where he could be hiding?”
He frowned, all humor suddenly drained off his face. He cocked his head backwards. “Hiding? You think he’s implicated in his mother’s death? Medina was devoted to his mother. Her days were numbered, she was holding to a thin thread. I’m not surprised she killed herself, given the circumstances.”
I tapped a finger on the glass. “Maybe I should reword the question. Where are you hiding Hector Medina, Dr. Lyons?”
His brow shot up. The rest of him remained still. I inhaled. The spice of adrenaline. Could be fear, could be deception. The same finger that had scratched his temple came down to the corner of his mouth and brushed the sides of his goatee. Slowly, thoughtfully. Then the leer came back, not fully, like a minute earlier, more cautiously, rather. Testing grounds.
“I see,” he said. “That’s why you came here. You think Medina came to me.” He brought the glass to his mouth, took a long drag, then cupped it with both hands and smiled a sad and thoughtful smile. “Why would I be hiding my lab assistant, Detective?”
That was an easy question to answer. “Because you still need him. Because you’re nobody without him. You don’t have a vaccine, you never had one. Medina did it all. I saw his lab notes. I saw more than I ever wanted to see.”
I watched him take the news, his body posture, the change in perspiration. He sat with his elbows propped on his knees, staring at the ice in his glass. His jaw twitched. Then, suddenly, his eyes darted to the wet bar.
I pressed on. “You had one brilliant idea, Doctor. Fifteen years ago. It made you famous. You finally proved what had been controversial for so many years. HIV caused AIDS. You had it. It was all yours. And then, after that, your muse dried up. Grant money shifted to other groups, your lab shrunk. Lyons wasn’t coming up with good research any more. The papers you published afterwards were flops.”
He listened quietly. “So?” he said. “Year after year the NIH has continued to cut funds. Every lab in this country experienced the hardship, not just mine.” He shot his eyes to the wet bar again, coupled with a spike in adrenaline. His hands tensed around the glass. His jaw twitched. He looked away from me, and, rolling the glass between his palms, asked, “What are you getting at with this?”
“I’m getting to a killer. More than one, in fact.”
He shot to his feet and so did I. “I need another drink,” he said, sharply.
Before he could come around the coffee table, I stepped in front of him and took the glass from his hands. “Let me do the honors,” I said. Whatever he’d eyed at the wet bar, I wasn’t going to wait and find out.
I didn’t fill the glasses. I set them on the edge of the sink, turned around, and kept my eyes on the man. He flopped back on the couch and rubbed his face. He didn’t make eye contact. He just sat there. Maybe he knew what was coming.
“So, you teamed up, Medina and you,” I pressed. “He was the brains, you were the authority to endorse the ideas and make them happen.”
“What’s wrong with that?” he mumbled, without effort.
I thought I smelled something. Vaguely. I inhaled. It was gone. I focused on my speech. “Nothing’s wrong with that until it crosses paths with murder.”
His shoulders shook, his head with them. He was laughing, a sad, dry laughter that had long lost all its amusement. “It’s the second time you say that, Detective. I think I’ve made it clear that I’ve been the victim in all this. I lost a patient, a wife and a dear colleague.”
“That was the plan.” I leaned against the wet bar, right hand close to my holster. I knew he was unarmed but I also assessed him for a solid man, in good shape, and quite capable of putting up a good fight. “If anything were to go wrong, you were going to play the victim and Medina was to take the blame. Of course, Medina didn’t know this.”
The smell came back. A fluttery, vaguely sweet, vaguely rotten wisp of a human scent.
Lyons stood up, shoved a hand in his pockets, and walked toward me. Casually, as if trying to think things over. “And this plan of mine, as you call it,” he said, one finger drawing a circle in the air. “Where exactly did it go wrong?”
My turn to leer. I bobbed my head. “Oh, it was perfect. The weapon, the set-up, the whacko killer motive. A French catheter—who would’ve thought of that? Strong, smooth, kills fast with virtually no telltale. Very clever, Doc.”
He looked amused. I’m sure, deep inside, his ego felt flattered. I could smell it. He stood close to the Venus replica and put a hand on her waist. It was a sensual gesture, as if he were about to invite her to dance.
“Very clever, Doc,” I repeated. “Almost perfect.”
The “almost” jarred him. His fingertips pressed hard around the marble of the statue and became white.
“It takes a strong, steady hand to strangle with a French catheter,” I said. “A hand Medina didn’t have.”
He kept his eyes on Venus’s feminine navel. He caressed it, softly. “No?”
“No. Medina has Morgellon’s disease, a mostly psychotic condition that causes his hands to bleed. He’s in constant pain. He wouldn’t have the strength to hold the ligature for so long. No, Doc. Medina didn’t strangle the victims. You did.”
The sound was almost imperceptible to human ears, but not to mine. The smell drifting to my nostrils—I finally recognized it. Medina had been hiding in Laura’s home office. The door opened a crack, enough to release his scent. I turned to face him, and it was a mistake. Lyons grabbed the Venus by her waist and shoved her toward me. The statue hit the wet bar and split in half. The gracious goddess of love weighed a ton on me. I stumbled back and fell on the floor, my limbs still wacky and sore from last night’s car accident. I heard a noise, like a drawer slamming. I rolled the lady over, and as I pushed myself up there was a flash and then sharp pain shot up my spine and took hold of every nerve in my body. I coiled, my limbs as tense as wrung rope, and yet I couldn’t stop shaking, an invisible wire tied around me, squeezing.
Click, click, click, click, click.
I flopped on my stomach like a curled leaf.
No, it wasn’t The Pain.
The fucker was hiding a Taser behind the wet bar.
THIRTY-THREE
____________
“Damn you, Medina. You almost fucked up everything.”
A door slid open. Medina’s smell came in full view. More rotten and more sour. He was scared, now. “You k-killed him?”
“You think I’m nuts? He’s a cop!”
I groaned. A few of my nerves went on shaking on their own. The r
est of me refused to move.
I smelled Lyons hovering over me. Then I felt his cold touch.
“Got a good blow to the head,” he said. “He’s tough, though. He’ll come back soon.”
He went right back at it with the Taser, the bastard. Five more seconds of hell. This time I didn’t even bother groaning. I figured I was pathetic enough. He dropped the Taser, stooped down again, and slid my Glock out of the holster.
Medina’s heavy breathing, approaching from the other side. A fist took ahold of a chunk of my hair. It pulled. “You know, his DNA—”
“Forget it.” Lyons’s steps, brisk, business like, moving away.
Medina let go of my hair and stood up. “Where are you going?”
Lyons’s voice, from a different room. “Keep an eye on him!”
Water rushing—a bathroom. The tip of my fingers tingled.
Medina’s steps, softer than Lyons’s, tentative. More noises, clinking of glasses, rolling of drawers. Cabinet doors slamming closed.
“What are you doing?” Medina whispered.
Funny how he was no longer stuttering.
“I’m doing what I should’ve done all along. Potassium chloride. He’s going to have a heart attack, nice and smooth. We’ll call nine-one-one, and by the time he gets to the hospital he’ll be happily knocking at heaven’s gates.”
“What? Waste him like that? Don’t you get it? I saw his expression levels, from some blood tests he had done a few weeks ago. It’s amazing! I’ve never seen anything like that. His sense of smell, his eyesight, everything. The number of pseudogenes expressed in his tissues is comparable to that of a—”
“I don’t give a fucking shit, Medina!” Lyons’s leather soles tapped out of the bathroom. “I’m done playing your games.”
“They’re not games. My HIV vaccine—”
“Your vaccine, Medina? Yours?” The voice turned, sharply. “You fool. You’re nothing without my money and my name, Medina. Nothing. Your ideas are worth two cents without the money to implement them.”
A sharp air intake. The acrid smell of rage. A snap—latex gloves.
The tingling spread to my arms. I rushed it and moved a muscle. He saw it and zapped me again. Ten seconds, this time. Ironically, I was getting used to it. And I learned my lesson.
They stood, watching me cringe. Like they watched Amy and Laura.
“We could still use him,” Medina said. “Let me have some hair sam—”
“Shut up!” A smack vibrated in the air like a strung cord. A thump, the drag of furniture. “I don’t give a shit about his genes, okay? I should’ve used potassium chloride all along. You and your stupid super-human ideas. You had to harvest your fucking samples.” Lyons walked away then came back. “Let’s make it look like a wacko did this,” he said, in a falsetto voice. “Nobody will suspect accomplished medical professionals! Look where it got us. All I wanted was to shut their mouths, and the potassium would’ve done that. A poke and we were done.”
“You’re deluding yourself.” Medina, his voice low, near the ground. “The M.E. would’ve found the poke.”
Lyons laughed. An evil, perverse laughter. “You’re so naïve, Medina. You wanted hair? I’ll tell you what you do with hair. You hide the poke, you fool. A nice, tiny poke at the base of the skull.” His steps came toward me.
“The tox results will find it!”
The voice’s temperature dropped below freezing. “How the hell did I ever think you were so smart, Medina? Potassium chloride is naturally found in the blood, that’s anatomy one-oh-one, you stupid fool.”
A pause. Soft, unidentified noises, like nameless colors. Then Lyons’s voice, again. “Check your watch. We’ll call the parameds ten minutes after the shot.”
Lyons walked around me to the wet bar. His shoes came into view, shifting by the sink, as if he were rinsing something. No water was running, though. Behind me, Medina didn’t move. He whined like a little boy. “I could’ve used his bones. His hair at least, the lining of his nose for the olfactory receptors…”
No more noises. Only Medina’s relentless whine. “His heart, his muscle tissue. The brain, imagine what we would’ve found in his brain…”
Lyons’s feet turned and spread apart. After that, they stopped moving. A subtle click.
“Every neuron would’ve been—what are you doing?”
“You’re annoying me, Medina. You’re a genius but too much of a whiner.”
The pop was loud. A second one followed, then deafening silence and the smell of gunfire. Medina wasn’t whining anymore.
“There, you traitor. For planting Amy’s photo in my kitchen.”
Lyons’s shoes walked toward me. He stooped down, checked my pulse. I saw his knees, his crotch. I fantasized drilling a full-metal jacket in that crotch of his.
“Nice job, Detective,” he said. He wrapped my fingers carefully around the Glock’s butt. “You caught Medina in flagrante. You shot him, all right. And then you got so excited, you had a heart attack.” He clicked his tongue in pity, his face so close to my back I felt his breath down my neck. “Too bad, isn’t it?”
Lyons made sure the gunfire from my Glock transferred to my hand, then slid it out of my fingers and took it away.
His shoes went back to the wet bar, then came back. His gloved hands held up a syringe. He grasped the hair at the crown of my head with his left hand. A drop of chilled liquid from the needle fell on my skin. I held my breath.
It felt like hauling a rock, but it was just my arm. I swung my elbow in his nose—it wasn’t a hard blow, but the surprise effect covered where I lacked. I sent him rolling off, then slid the revolver out of my ankle holster, pulled the trigger and blew his face off. And then fired again.
“There,” I said. “Two for Medina, and two for you. Next time remember that cops always carry a backup gun, you idiot.”
And then I collapsed backwards, tension washing off from my body like summer rains. My jaw started chattering. It was an eerie sound. Kinda funny, actually. Idiot forgot to check for my backup. I tittered. My teeth rattled.
I rolled on the floor and laughed my head off. And that’s how Satish found me.
How much later, I couldn’t tell.
THIRTY-FOUR
____________
Wednesday, July 22
There were two loud pops, then a thump, then the crackling of static.
It was more of a rattling rather than a crackling, but the recording was bad enough that nobody but me noticed. Which was good.
Lieutenant Gomez pressed the STOP button, removed his reading glasses, and rubbed his bulging eyes. His pate shone under the fluorescent light. The little hair he had at the sides of his head stuck out. He smelled of chamomile and interrupted dreams.
A fan spun silently on the ceiling. From the top of a dented metal filing cabinet, the fax machine whirred and spit out the ad for a one-in-a-lifetime Hawaiian dream vacation.
Satish sat in the chair to my right, one leg bent, the other stretched ahead of him. He rested his chin on the L between his thumb and his index finger, so he could look straight ahead at the Lieu and not at me.
To my left, cozily settled in the two chairs against the wall, were my old pals, the FID officers—Force Investigation Division. They smelled of nicotine and doughnuts and convenience store shaving cream. I got to spend some quality time with them last year, over another couple of officer-involved shootings. They were my guardian angels. Every time I squeezed the trigger, they came down from heaven.
One sat with his arms hooked at the back of the chair, his legs crossed, and a sneer plastered on his face. He rocked slowly on the hind legs of the chair. The recording of the Taser clicking made his sneer widen. His pal took notes throughout the recording. From time to time he lifted his head, pointed his pencil and asked Gomez to rewind the tape. He had some issues when Lyons and Medina walked off to the bathroom. Their voices came and went in distant barks, so I had to repeat to him the conversation as best as I could re
call it. He took notes, tapped his pencil, took more notes.
At the end of the recording there was a moment of silence, after which Gomez swiveled back in his chair and inhaled. His wide and short hands clutched the edge of the desk. “The wire?” he said to me. “Good idea.”
I offered a smile.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t smile back. “Confronting the suspect by yourself?” He leaned forward across the desk and locked his eyes into mine. “Fucking dumb.”
The FID dicks snickered. The taller one pushed the chair backwards and leaned it against the wall. He wasn’t wearing a tie, only an electric blue shirt, the collar unbuttoned to show a thick, bull-like neck that widened into flaps every time he flexed his muscles. Specks of dandruff glistened on the electric blue.
Gomez’s eyes shifted to Satish. My partner didn’t look at me. There comes a time when your partner is not allowed to cover your ass. Satish cleared his throat. “We had a—divergence of opinions.”
Gomez’s brow shot up in his bald forehead. “You advised your partner against this—” He waved his reading glasses at me. “—suicidal mission of his?”
“Correct.”
Gotta love my agency. You can do a thousand things right, but if you make one mistake, sure as hell, it’s the one mistake they’ll never forget. I didn’t know what was worse, the FID dicks snickering behind my back, or my partner tale-telling me to the LT.
To hell with all of them.
“I was right about Lyons,” I said. “And Medina was the Volvo driver I’d chased down Valley. I’m sure when our people will crack Medina’s computer at the hospital, they’ll find—”
“Two men down, Track!” Gomez’s face turned the color of red beets. “You could’ve been one of them!” He swallowed, slid on his reading glasses, then took them off again, pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes closed. “Will you ever—ever—be able to close a case following the usual police procedural, Detective Presius?”
I opened my jaw then closed it again. “Is that a rhetorical question?”
