Dragon Rising

by Ilsa J. Bick

  Theodore’s hope died like a guttering flame. “But I wouldn’t be it.”

  “Not with the aggressive familial form you carry. I’m sorry.”

  “But there are drugs. I’d still function for awhile, isn’t that right?” Long enough to wage a campaign?

  “Possibly,” the doctor said, and then told him what the drug regimen would be. “Tono, your disease is quite aggressive. It won’t be long before you have breakthrough symptoms drugs will not control. Within six, maybe eight months. Then people will know.”

  God, right around my birthday, what a lovely gift. He saw that the doctor wanted to say more. “Yes?”

  “Tono,” the doctor began gently, “your death is many years away, but much will happen before then. You know from your mother and brother that this will be a long, slow and painful deterioration. To keep this from your wife is beneath your honor, and you must plan for the future: to ensure your legacy and that of your family.”

  Theodore stared at the doctor. My legacy. My lineage: my mother who can’t think or move, and my brother lost in his delusions. My future.

  And again, Emi: You hold our destiny in your hands. You are the only one, Brother, the only one.

  25 August 3136

  Theodore held Chomie as she shuddered in his arms, her grief so very much like the tremors he could not control. They lay on a low divan, with firm bolsters against which Theodore leaned to support them both. He’d called for lights out some time ago and had candles lit. Shadows danced in long black fingers.

  Finally, Chomie gave a long, tremulous sigh, like a child exhausted from weeping. “It feels wrong,” she said.

  Her hair smelled like roses and was smooth as spun black silk. He cupped the back of her head with his left hand, his trembling fingers massaging the delicate egg of her skull. “This is the only way, my heart. We must do this and offset what will be common knowledge within the year. Likely, I’ll invent a brain tumor.” He added wryly, “I don’t think we need yet one more Kurita suddenly called to a life of devotion.”

  Her body stiffened, and she pulled away. She was a delicate woman with features as finely chiseled as an exquisite cameo. “This isn’t funny.”

  “Chomie, I’m running out of time. I’m a warrior, but I cannot beat an enemy I cannot see, and this, my mind . . . You can’t imagine what this is like, to be losing your self, everything dribbling away, and knowing there is absolutely nothing you can do.”

  “You can fight.”

  “To what end? There are drugs I will take, but I will not win.” He reached for her, cupping a hand to her abdomen. “Yet this, the warmth and safety of your womb, this is our chance. My love, I beg you,” and now he let his tears come as he took her face in his hands, as he kissed her streaming eyes, her cheeks, her lips that tasted of salt. “Please. We’ve played this fiction long enough. Five miscarriages, when the reality is that the fetus carried the disease. This is our last chance. I will not force you. I could not. But, please, this is the one battle I cannot lose, and you are the only one, my heart, the only one who can help me, who can save us now.”

  After that, he said nothing more. Instead, he told her with his hands, his mouth, his arms how he felt, what she meant, what they must do.

  And, in the candlelight, they bound their love with their bodies and tears.

  21

  Armitage, Ancha

  26 August 3136

  0145 hours

  The nine drunk tanks were standard: three-meter cubes, faced with ferroglass, and three to a side. A single chair and table, bolted to the floor. A bench where the drunk slept it off. A drain in the middle of a concrete floor for hosing down vomit. The air always smelled like day-old puke laced with urine or feces.

  A lone uniform was dictating when Loveland and Thereon walked in. He said “Pause” to his computer and faced round. “You the guys?”

  Loveland did the introductions, then said, “You got guys we should meet.”

  “Yeah. Bill Reilly, he’s the shorter guy in the middle tank,” the uniform said. “Big guy at the end is Mack Strobel. Dockworkers, couple of priors, pissant stuff. Dust, mainly. Thing is, when I ran ’em, they’d already been tagged. But then I ran the tag.”

  “Problem with the tag?”

  “Naw, it’s legit, except it belongs to a patrol officer who skipped out eight months ago, name of Josh Petrie. Nice wife, cute kid. Girlfriend’s what everyone figures. Thing is, the tag clocks in on twenty-eight February at oh-two-hundred-forty-five hours, but the wife reported him missing sixteen February. And get this.” The uniform called up a file. “Spaceport says he left for Murchison on twenty February, eight days before these guys swear up and down it was a cop tagged them.”

  “Hunh,” Loveland said. Taggants were microscopic, chemically inert compounds whose residua could last on skin for several years. Suspects were subjected to a sniffer: an ultra-sensitive device that could pick up as little as two parts per million. The catch was that patrol taggers were fingerprint-activated. Only Petrie could’ve activated the device, but if he was gone . . . “That doesn’t compute. Did they say where and why?”

  “That’s where things got a little interesting. The way they were talking, I think they ran into that homicide I heard you been working.”

  “What about the cold hit, the DNA?”

  “Sorry. These guys don’t match, and it’s not Petrie’s.”

  “Okay. Let’s talk to these guys,” Loveland said.

  “Sure. Which one you want first?”

  Loveland and Thereon eyed the two men in their rumpled coveralls. The men stared back, but when Loveland walked to the middle tank, the little guy’s eyes slid away. Loveland aimed a finger. “That one.”

  * * *

  They used a small interview room, the kind with a one-way mirror, two chairs, a table and nothing else. Wrists in plasticuffs, Reilly was definitely sober now and reeked of day-old dust—a cloying, burnt-caramel scent. His eyes were red-rimmed; his nose was a roadmap of ruptured capillaries; and he had a duster’s tremor in both hands.

  His memory was just about as good. “Look, we was pretty messed up. I don’t remember. But we ain’t done nothing to that slag. She was all banged up, said a johnny done bashed in her mug.”

  “Yeah?” Loveland leaned back against the door while Thereon held up the near wall. “If she was as messed up as you say, you should’ve offered to help her, right?” He looked at Thereon. “I’d have helped her.”

  “Me, too,” Thereon said.

  “But you didn’t help her,” Loveland said to Reilly. “Plus, you and your friend got tagged. Now the only reason I can think of why a cop does that is because you were doing something to that woman you shouldn’t.”

  “We didn’t do nothing bad. Last time I seen her, she was okay.”

  “Was this before or after you raped her?”

  “We was just playing round. Oi, Pie done me before. Wasn’t like we wasn’t acquainted.”

  This man wasn’t their killer, but Reilly had contact with Petrie and that interested Loveland a lot. Otherwise, Loveland didn’t really give a rat’s ass about Reilly. “Listen,” he said, “I don’t really give a rat’s ass for either you or your friend in there. I want to know about the cop.”

  Reilly screwed up his face like he’d finally got a whiff of himself. “And you ain’t gonna try to pin this on me?”

  “Not if you didn’t do anything.”

  Reilly got a canny look. “What about tonight?”

  “Can’t help you there. Not my jurisdiction. You cooperate, I’ll put in a good word. Best I can do.”

  His best was apparently good enough because Reilly thought for another moment, then leaned forward, as if to impress Loveland with his earnestness. “It happened just like I said. Me and Mack, we was hanging out by them old warehouses down by The Loading Dock.”

  “Loading dock?” Loveland said. “You were at the spaceport?”

  Reilly shook his head. “No, no, The Loading Dock. It’
s a bar west end of town. Pie used to work it. Anyway, we was hanging round, not doing much.”

  “Really?” Thereon’s smoky eyes looked sleepy, as if Reilly’s story were of no more interest than a weather report. “February’s pretty cold here, right? Can’t see why two guys would just hang around.”

  Reilly reddened. “Mack and me, we’d scored a coupla lines, and we was hanging round, you know. And we was using, not selling.”

  “Oh, well,” Loveland said, “that’s a relief.”

  Reilly pushed on. “Anyway, Pie happens by. She was messed up just like I said. She told us what happened and then . . .” He trailed off.

  “Yes?” Loveland prompted. “And?”

  “Well.” Reilly swallowed again. “Things got a little rough.”

  “How rough?”

  “Rough enough.” Reilly clamped down on the end of the sentence. Unsure if it was useful to go after the grisly details, Loveland eyed Thereon who made a minute keep rolling gesture.

  “Okay, so things got a little rough,” Loveland said. “Then what?”

  “Then . . . well, Mack, he was holding Pie still-like, and I was . . . anyways, all a sudden, this Bob appeared outta nowhere. Only he didn’t feel like no cop.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Reilly’s features arranged themselves into an approximation of what he must imagine passed for deep thought but only succeeded in making him look constipated. “Gets so you know who’s a cop. It’s like this sixth sense, see? This wanker, whatever he was, he wasn’t no Bob.”

  “What was wrong with him?”

  “He was just . . . there. He shouted, and then Mack, he done run off, and I tried getting away, only then he got me round me neck. That’s when I knowed there was something wrong. After he touched me, after he had his hands on me, I was happy to clear out. Only it wasn’t about not getting caught. It was about him. His hands.”

  “What about them?”

  “When he broke us up, when he hauled back on me neck, his hands,” Reilly said, “they was ice cold.”

  “So? It was a cold night.”

  “No, they’s cold,” Reilly said, “and then, they’s dead. This Bob, he were a dead man walking.”

  22

  When they were done with Reilly and Strobel, Loveland and Thereon went to a break room in the basement. The break room was empty except for two round plastic tables and mismatched chairs, vending machines, a microwave. The place smelled like burned popcorn. Loveland studied his vending machine choices, didn’t like any of them, settled for a chocolate bar and black coffee. There were worse things than getting jazzed on caffeine and sugar.

  “What do you think?” Thereon swigged from a cola can, then belched soundlessly. “You think Petrie’s the one we’re after?”

  “Naw.” Loveland unpeeled the chocolate bar and stared at a mottled, whitish discoloration speckling the candy. “DNA doesn’t match.”

  “That’s butter separating from the cocoa,” Thereon said, catching his look. “It should taste okay.”

  Loveland decided to pass. He tossed the uneaten chocolate onto the table. The plastic was scored with orange cigarette burns. “You like him?”

  “Petrie? No,” Thereon said. “Like you said, not his DNA. Only I can’t figure that tag. No way to fake that.”

  “Unless our guy picked out Petrie first, got a sample print and then found a guy to do the microsurgery.”

  Thereon made a face. “Here’s what bothers me. Our unknown subject didn’t have to call attention to himself. The unsub didn’t need the tagger. He didn’t need to mess with those two guys. He could’ve waited until they were gone.”

  Loveland stared at Thereon. “You’re saying he wanted us to look at Petrie.”

  Thereon nodded. “I think so.”

  0845 hours

  Cheryl Petrie lived in a modest neighborhood on the south side of town. The house was a low, well-proportioned clapboard with a neatly fenced yard, flower boxes in the windows, a fire-engine red tricycle on the porch. A FOR SALE ticker was tacked to the lawn, its red digital display flashing like a strobe.

  Cheryl Petrie was an attractive honey-blonde of about thirty-five, with light blue eyes. She worked as a bank teller but had agreed to meet them when they called from the hotel at seven.

  “Do you believe what the department’s saying?” Loveland asked. “That your husband ran off with a girlfriend?”

  Pain arrowed through her eyes. She crossed her right leg over her left leg, tugging at the hem of a black pencil skirt stretched around shapely thighs. “Josh and I had a rule. We never went to bed angry, ever. We always talked it out. Sometimes it meant we were both very tired the next morning. But that’s the way our marriage was, Detective. And Josh was working toward a law degree. Did they tell you that at the station?”

  Loveland shook his head. Thereon said, “He went to night school?”

  She nodded. “That’s why this doesn’t make sense. The night they say Josh left the planet . . .” Her mouth worked, and she pulled in a tremulous breath. “Josh was in school. At least, I know he started out for school. He had dinner with us, helped with the dishes, then read to Suzy, our daughter. When he left, he had his books.”

  Loveland wanted to believe her. “Did he show up for class?”

  Her lips wobbled. “No. But that was the first time, Detective, the only time.” She added faintly, “The last time.”

  “When did you involve the department?”

  “Josh was like clockwork, home by quarter after twelve. When one-thirty came and went, I called the precinct. Then, the next morning, Josh’s lieutenant and sergeant came to the house.” Her blue eyes were suddenly liquid. “You have to understand. When a cop’s wife sees a city car pull up, she thinks . . .” She broke off, knuckling away tears.

  Loveland did know what wives thought. He’d been along on some of those rides. “Just a few more questions.”

  “Sorry. I try not to cry. It’s not good for Suzy.” She smeared away runny lines of mascara with her fingers. “Josh’s lieutenant came to tell me that Josh had resigned and left a forwarding address on Halstead Station.”

  “Halstead Station?” He and Thereon exchanged glances. Loveland said, “Did you try to contact him?”

  “Of course. I was frantic. If not for Suzy, I would’ve left for Halstead Station on the next shuttle. With the HPGs down, it was two months before I heard anything. The message was very matter-of-fact. He’d met someone, he wanted a divorce. He even left the number of an attorney here with whom he’d already filed. He said I could have everything. I was so stunned, I didn’t know what to do at first. But then I contacted the attorney, and he showed me the papers. It was Josh’s signature all right. I wouldn’t sign them. That’s the last I heard. I sent a follow-up message to Halstead Station, but Josh never answered. The department checked into it, but . . .” She spread her hands, a helpless gesture. “They let it go. I guess men leave their wives all the time.”

  Loveland thought of his two failed marriages, then weighed Cheryl Petrie against them. Maybe it was unfair, but he couldn’t see anyone leaving this woman. On the other hand, the department eventually would’ve shrugged it off. Like she said, people left people all the time.

  Thereon said, “There’s a For Sale sign in your front yard.”

  “I just put it on the market. I can’t afford the mortgage anymore, what with child care added in. The department’s under no obligation to provide anything. So I have to sell.” Her eyes filled again. “It feels like giving up.”

  * * *

  They walked down the porch steps, across the tiny, neat yard, past the sale ticker. Thumbing the remote, Loveland went around to the driver’s side as the locks popped.

  Thereon said, “What do you think?”

  Loveland paused. Behind Thereon, he could see Cheryl Petrie watching them from the porch. A little girl with blond ringlets stood on her right, a forefinger plugged in her mouth.

  Loveland looked at Thereon. “I thi
nk she’ll be getting that death benefit.”

  * * *

  It was Thereon’s idea to follow Petrie’s beat. “Canvass the neighborhoods. Someone’s got to remember him.”

  Petrie’s beat was northeast, a neighborhood where the buildings got shabbier, the broken windows more numerous and the graffiti more frequent. No one—especially not the men squatting on stone steps and either smoking or drinking, or both—remembered seeing Petrie that far back. By three in the afternoon, Loveland’s feet were screaming, and he was swimming in sweat. He dropped into the driver’s seat and cranked up the air. “There’s a reason I went for detective.”

  “What, you don’t canvass?”

  “Yeah, I canvass. I just don’t do this many.”

  “Well, cheer up. I predict our witness will be in the last place we look.”

  “Christ, you’re killing me,” Loveland said as he pulled away from the curb.

  On the seventh floor of an eight-story apartment building, they found their witness. She was an extraordinarily frail woman named Edwina Jeffries who looked about two hundred years old. She wore a tatty sweater even though the temperature in the apartment had to be near eighty. The apartment smelled as if the walls leaked cat pee and onions.

  “Oh, yes, I remember Officer Petrie.” She spoke with an old woman’s quaver. “A very nice young man. He usually came around at about the same time as my meals.”

  “Meals?” Loveland asked.

  She explained that she received hot meals once a day from a local charity. “Officer Petrie used to bring my meals up. Not all the time, maybe six, seven times a month. Just to say hello, see how I was getting on.”

  That sounded like the man Cheryl Petrie described. “And the last day you saw him?”

  The old woman tugged her wattle as she thought. “Sometime in February, late, I think. I remember because I thought then that maybe he was sick.”

  Loveland’s ears pricked at that. “Sick?”