Drakon

by S. M. Stirling

  A continuous rumble of traffic noise came from the streets outside the five-story brick building. She walked to the windows, feeling the numbness fading a little from her mind as she went from flight to investigation. Much taller buildings showed in the middle distance, glittering through the darkness, casting pillars of wavy-looking heat into the night. The stink of burnt petroleum was heavy; these people used internal-combustion engines for surface vehicles. Very odd. Lights went by overhead; she leaned out and filtered sound to catch the engines.

  Turbines. Combustion engines again, but that type was part of her past. She looked up. None of the habitats, satellites, innumerable artificial lights that would have shown; just stars, through light-haze heavy enough to hide most of them from human eyes. The new moon showed only darkness on its shadowed side, none of the jewel-lights of domed crater-cities.

  Strange, Gwen thought. They have optical fibers and coherent-light, but not enough space activity to notice.

  "Well."

  The apartment yielded little more of use; the owner's wallet confirmed that identity documents were many and evidently essential to everyday life. She had several sets from the warehouse, but they'd be useless—whatever passed for a Security organization here would be watching for them. Some clothes that might be handy. A little more of the currency, but she already had a large bag stuffed with that. Thoughtfully she transferred it to a zippered carryall she found in a closet; the original was rather heavily bloodstained. So was the top layer of . . . 100 dollar bills; she discarded those, too.

  "I will need a base. I've got to learn my way around here, and not be conspicuous while I do it. I'll need help."

  A quick inventory of her assets. The currency. Her plasma gun, layer knife, and belt unit, tucked in with the money. Too conspicuous here; evidently the locals didn't carry weapons on the street. One set of walking blacks, one set of underwear, one pair of boots. The transducer in the mastoid bone behind her ear; useless for connection to a nonexistent Web, but it also held the basic memory-store and comp functions linked to her brain. Without that, she would be crippled. Luckily it was quasi-organic, powered from her bloodstream and self-repairing.

  And herself. One four-hundred-sixty-year old Draka female, capable of passing for human if nobody did a scan on her body, capable of a good deal else these humans would have trouble imagining.

  Myself most of all. She went to the window she'd used to gain entrance half an hour ago and bared her teeth at the world.

  Time to go hunting.

  ***

  "It's Puerto Rican beer," Jesus Rodriguez explained. "That Anglo stuff, it loses something on its way through the horse's kidneys, patron."

  Henry grunted and lifted his own Coors. There wasn't all that much noise in the cop bar at this late hour—some, since they were mostly shift workers, after all. A fair haze of cigarette smoke, which made him itch for one himself. He took another swallow of the beer and a handful of salted peanuts. The percentage of smokers in the force was a lot higher than in the general population, just like the share of messy divorces and alkies. It came with spending your life staring up society's anus.

  I really should go home. There ought to be half a pizza in the refrigerator, if it hadn't gotten moldy. His stomach turned slightly. The death stats on divorced men were probably caused by stuff like that; men just had too high a squalor tolerance to live well on their own. What was it Angela had said about him, back in his bachelor days?

  "Men don't live like human beings. You live like bears with furniture."

  "What?"

  "Something my ex-wife said," Henry replied, and repeated it. It was only six months since the papers had come through, but he could joke about it now.

  Jesus shook his head, grinning; but then, he was a newlywed with a kid on the way. Thank God Angela never wanted kids, he thought. Carmaggio had, but he'd never pressed it—something for which he was now profoundly grateful.

  "You should find a good woman," Jesus said.

  "The only women I meet are cops, suspects, relatives of the deceased, or in body bags. Or waiting tables." The waitress came by and collected their empties. "Hey, Myrtle—Jesus says I should meet a good woman. What about it?"

  Myrtle looked at him and started laughing; the chuckles faded across the room as she walked away. They redoubled when she got behind the bar and told her friends . . .

  Thanks, partner, Carmaggio thought sourly.

  "Could be worse. Think of the ones you'd be meeting on the beat, or in Vice." Jesus prodded at the heap of newspapers on the table, covered with dark rings from bottles.

  "How does it feel to be famous?" he said, admiring one shot of himself.

  "If I catch you on Good Morning America, your ass is grass," Carmaggio said. "Plus those vultures will eat your liver. And watch what happens when we don't catch the perp. Even the ordinary civilians will decide we're not heroes anymore."

  "Don't be negative, patron. I still think two of Marley Man's boys got away. If we catch them . . ."

  ". . . we'll have two ganja-soaked goons who shot each other in the dark and ran like hell," Carmaggio said, belching. He picked up a newspaper. "Vigilante Killer Strikes? Christ, where do these people get their ideas, the Sci-Fi Channel?"

  The other detective shrugged and moved his chin toward the TV set over the bar. The words were inaudible, but they both knew what the carefully-tousled reporter was saying. Mostly that nobody knew anything about the Warehouse Massacre.

  "And by now those two punks have probably decided that Martians are moving in on the crack trade."

  Jesus shrugged. They also both knew that there was nothing more unreliable than the eyewitness testimony of the untrained. Particularly if the witness had any time to think about what had happened; people could do things to their memories that Hollywood FX masters and film-editors could only dream about.

  "They might know something," Jesus pointed out gently.

  Henry smiled back. Getting old. Getting pessimistic. Had he ever been that bright-eyed and bushy-tailed? Not since I landed in Saigon, he decided. Mind you, that had its advantages. Even police work in New York couldn't be worse than the Cambodian border.

  He hoped.

  "Well, this case sure as shit isn't going to go away. No matter how much the Captain burns our ass. Not that he'll stop trying; too much pressure from on high."

  The policemen nodded somberly in unison and finished their beers. No doubt about that.

  "Maybe I should have kept that promise to God and become a priest," Carmaggio said.

  "?Qué es?"

  Henry shrugged.

  He'd gone out the door of the chopper fifty feet up, when the burst went ptank-ptank down the length of the tail boom and blew three holes through the man next to him. Out without knowing it happened, until he hit mud that was deep and clinging. He landed on his back, so he didn't drown like a lot of the grunts pinned down that day, but it ran into the corners of his mouth. Stunned like an ox in the slaughterhouse by the fall, spitting out a taste of oily rot, bleeding from a pressure-cut on his scalp where the helmet had struck. The reeds closed above him, the friendly reeds, four feet tall in the marsh. Hiding him from the gook snipers in the trees.

  The helicopter augured in a hundred yards away, men hanging from the skids. He could feel the heat of the explosion as the fuel went up, like sun on his face. When the .51-caliber machine guns opened up from the treeline, the slugs went by six inches from his face, and each cut reed had a perfect semicircle of glowing red at the severed end—just like touching a lighted cigarette to a piece of Kleenex.

  Intelligence thought there was one VC company in the woods. Fucked up, as usual. Two fucking battalions of NVA.

  Four hours until the fast-movers came in and laid snake and nape, two hours before the next wave coptered in. Victor Charlie moving through the reeds, singsong gook talk, shots and screams as they finished off the American wounded. Lying waiting for a coolie hat and a Kalashnikov to show over the reeds, waiting a
nd praying and promising God . . .

  "De nada," he said. "Let's get you back to your new wife."

  There were some things you just couldn't talk about to anyone who hadn't been there.

  Chapter Three

  "Detective, can you confirm that this is the work of the Warehouse Massacre killer?"

  The reporter thrust a microphone at Carmaggio's face. How would you like that up your ass? he thought, squinting into the lights. He knew that made him look like an Italian Neanderthal, but pretty wasn't his long suit.

  "We're investigating all possible leads," he said politely. The words were polite, at least. "You'll be informed as soon as we have definite information."

  So you can blab it to the perp and help him get away, he added to himself, cutting through the crowd outside the tenement with an expert shoulder-first motion. Fortunately, the uniforms were keeping civilians and the press out of the actual building, although tenants were already being interviewed in front of the cameras on the sidewalk outside. None of them would know anything, but that wouldn't stop the Fourth Estate from doing their usual thorough job of misrepresentation, bias, groundless speculation and general farting around.

  A detective saw a lot of crime scenes; the trip up the stairs was like a journey down memory lane. At first glance this one looked more like the general run than the warehouse had. Henry Carmaggio ducked through the yellow tape and through the door, hands carefully in his pockets. The slum apartment could have been dozens he'd seen. Even the smell was familiar, and not too bad—the window had been open for the whole ten days or so since the killing, in cold weather. The stale grease was actually worse.

  Jesus Rodriguez met him, wearing one of the new eye-videos, mounted on a headband with a recording unit. Toys, Carmaggio thought.

  The medical examiner's people were bagging the body, not Chen herself this time—a singleton didn't rate it. One of them looked up:

  "Kick to the sternum, kick to the back of the head. The heelmarks match with the warehouse."

  Carmaggio nodded. Details follow at 11:00. "Try not to—" he began, then thought better of it. "When the press ask, tell 'em space aliens did it. Or Elvis. Better still, tell 'em space aliens pregnant by Elvis did it as a Satanic ritual."

  The examiner grinned as Carmaggio turned away. Jesus took him to the window. It was going dark outside, cold and clear.

  The window was an ordinary sash type, with a protective grate of half-inch iron bars, overlooking a four-story drop to an alley, with a flat roof opposite. Two of the bars had been pulled out of their settings; nothing fancy, a simple straight pull. There was blood on the other bars, where somebody had squeezed past; Carmaggio was willing to bet the blood was secondhand. The lock on the window had been snapped, and the window left open. There was a heelprint on the windowsill; one of the Ident crew was photographing it and setting out scraper and plastic baggie.

  "Blood?" Carmaggio asked.

  "Yep. Mud as well."

  A blood spray and another large irregular stain marked the worn carpet. Carmaggio looked at the location, then back at the window.

  "Somebody climbed up the wall, pulled out the bars, and opened the window—breaking the lock in the process. When the owner came over, the perp kicked him in the chest, then in the back of the head while he was lying on the floor. Then moved him, a few minutes later."

  "Yeah, but Lieutenant—I think . . ."

  "What?'

  "I think that was just to get him out of the way."

  He nodded, and walked into the tiny bathroom. There was a sludge of dark brown in the bathtub, and marks on the walls and floor.

  "Messy. Didn't use the curtain." The tests would take a while, but he was morally certain the blood would match with the warehouse samples. Anyone who cut up twenty men was going to be coated with the stuff.

  A chalk X marked a spot near the toilet. Rodriguez held up an evidence bag. "Bingo," he said.

  Carmaggio examined it carefully. "Nine-millimeter Talon," he said. "One gets you ten ballistics show it's from a posse gun. Looks like it hit a flak vest."

  Rodriguez held up another plastic bag, this one with a pair of cheap nail scissors. "I think this was what the perp used to extract it," he said. "Quite the surgeon, si?"

  They moved to the kitchen. Papers were spread on the rickety deal table with its red-and-white checked plastic tablecloth, along with empty tins and a milk carton. Plus a scattering of one-hundred dollar bills. Ident squad officers were picking them up with tweezers and dropping them in baggies.

  "Then the perp sat and read the newspapers, ate everything in the fridge—everything—tore apart the phone, the TV and the CD player, lifted the fridge around and broke off one of the coils, got rid of the grubby soiled part of the money from the warehouse, and left."

  "And they broke off the key in the lock when they went, too. Left the window open, as well."

  Carmaggio looked over at the windowsill. "No, they had the window open all the time they were here. Maybe it's an Eskimo."

  "That's Inuit."

  "Whatever. Anything from the neighbors?"

  "Nothing. The lady next door called it, she noticed the smell." Jesus flipped open his notebook. "Maria Sanchez. Victim's name was Antonio Salazar, custodial worker, thirty-eight, single. Minor record, public intox, possession, that stuff—one step up from the steam-grate crowd. Looks like he was here about ten days before anyone noticed."

  "Which would put this about the same time as the warehouse," the detective said. Nobody notices when a janitor doesn't show up. They'd assume he was on a bender, or something. Either the perp was very smart, or they'd lucked out in their choice of victim.

  "More or less, patron,"

  Carmaggio grunted. Don't let what you want to be true cover your eyes. Still, the MO was suspiciously alike—and the bizarre aspects were pushing his coincidence button.

  "So," he said. "Twenty posse drug-dealers, and one anonymous janitor. Motive?"

  "Dropped in for a wash and a snack," Rodriguez said, tapping the empty milk carton with his ballpoint.

  "I think you may be right—a snack and somewhere to hide for a few hours. The distances are right."

  Carmaggio turned slowly on his heel, looking over the little roach-trap. Shitty place to die. Probably an even shittier place to live, come to that, but that wasn't his department.

  A slow burn of anger started at the back of his throat, unexpected and unfamiliar. Marley Man was no loss; and face it, Antonio Salazar was a complete loser who'd've ended up on a slab someday in the not-too-distant future. Probably put there himself with a needle; he was the old-fashioned kind and Dame Horse came with a dark rider these days. It wasn't even that the killings had been casual, probably motiveless. He saw plenty of those. It was . . . like Uncle Luigi and the rabbits, he realized.

  He'd been seven when that happened. Going over to his uncle's, and the old guy had been killing rabbits. Big hutch full of rabbits, and Luigi standing by it in his undershirt, belly hanging over his pants, suspenders dangling, a burnt-out cigarette hanging off his lower lip. Luigi was a bricklayer, and he had hands like baseball mitts. Big beefy arms, fat but with lots of muscle underneath. The big hand went down into the cage and wham a rabbit came up in it, kicking and squealing and dropping black round pellets of rabbit shit. Eyes bugged out. Then Uncle Luigi sort of wrung it with fingers and thumb—a quick cracking sound, and it kicked and went limp. A toss, and it went onto the table with the others, next to the little curved knife.

  Carmaggio had still been screaming when Uncle Luigi got him home. Dad gave him the belt and sent him to his room, but he wouldn't eat the stew anyway.

  The perp here was killing the way Uncle Luigi did the rabbits.

  The force of his own rage surprised him; and it was mixed with something else, something much more commonplace.

  Fear.

  "We're going to hear from this fucker again," he said quietly.

  Jesus took the videocam rig off his head and looked down,
snapping the cassette out of the machine. "Si. I've got that feeling too."

  ***

  Stephen Fischer woke to the sound of a quiet, burring clicking sound. His bedroom was dark and the air still, smelling of incense and a sexual musk.

  Jesus, what a lay! he thought blurrily. What an experience.

  He felt too heavy to move anything more than his eyelids, to do anything but breathe. I'd always thought "drained" was a figure of speech, he thought.

  Eerie. He'd been sitting quietly with a beer, not even trying for a pickup. Better not to try right after a breakup; girls could sense it if you were too needy. It was late, nobody there, and he hadn't been in the place for two years, not since he married.

  He'd noticed her the minute she came in. Black tracksuits weren't the usual dress for the after-work crowd on the Street, even at Fernways, which catered to the younger up-and-coming set—although the suit had a sort of shimmery quality to it up close. She'd come in with a draft of cold air . . .

  That's odd. She must have been freezing in that stuff out on the street in January.

  . . . come in with a nylon duffel bag in her hand, and given the place a once-over. God, those eyes. Big and green, in the dark aquiline face. Model looks, model walk. And she'd come over to his booth, just slid right in.

  ***

  "Order food," she said.

  And slid a hundred-dollar bill onto the table. The accent had floored him as much as the money. A German trying to sound like Scarlett O'Hara might have sounded that way, but it was thick enough to be barely comprehensible. Voice soft and deep, like velvet.

  Fischer blinked at her. This doesn't happen to guys on the Equities Desk, he thought. In fact, he doubted it happened to anyone outside the movies.

  The booth was dim, only a single candle burning on it. The underlight brought out the sculpted angles of her face; model looks, but not the neowaif type. She was dark enough to be a Latina, but the eyes were bright green and the mahogany red of her hair looked genuine.