“We're together one hundred percent,” I said. “It's you and me against the world.”
Maggie walked in after a short stint at the office.
“Did you place it?”
“Yeah,” Maggie said. “I pretended to shoo a fly off his head and dropped it in his hair.”
“Good. Let's see what we're getting.”
I made short one-handed work of setting up the recording equipment on the hotel bed. I'd spent the afternoon avoiding the hospital by getting the stakeout ready, picking a room in a high-rise but low-profile hotel, sneaking up to the roof and finding a primo spot for the receiver, placing it behind the aircon vents. You couldn't see it from the stairs, but it still had good line of sight to a relay tower. The reception would be good even in the rain. I checked to make sure that the unit was receiving a signal, then aimed the projection unit at the wall and flicked it on. The wall lit up with a view of the street that bobbed with Ian's footfalls. I found the volume control and turned it up just as Ian entered a shoe store.
“Well done, Maggie.”
Maggie smiled. “That shoe store is just down the street from KOP station.”
“He must've just left the office.”
“You were right about the cam. The image quality's not bad.”
After our meeting, Maggie and I had bought the cam from an offworld tech shop whose outrageous prices were indicative of the fact that the shop catered almost exclusively to offworld tourists. The offworld owner tried to talk us into a higher end unit, but I convinced Maggie that we didn't need to spend the extra coin, even though she was the one paying. Since the medical bills started rolling in, I'd become as frugal as my mother.
Besides, this unit had everything we needed. Even though it was the cheaper model, the unit still cost Maggie close to six month's worth of KOP paychecks. The flea-sized cam was designed to crawl through the hair and make its way to the hairline where it would attach itself to the scalp, a lot like the biomon I'd dropped into Niki's hair, except this one was even smart enough to match its shell to Ian's hair color.
Ian was going through the women's shoes, picking them off the wall and turning them over, looking at prices, stopping when he found the most expensive. He held the shoe up for the owner, who hustled into the back room.
Maggie tilted her chair back, putting her feet up on the bed. “What did you think of Adela when you met her?”
“She acted like a scared little girl.”
“Acted? You don't still think she killed her parents, do you?”
“I do.”
Maggie was incredulous. “How can you possibly think she did it?”
“I watched her confession. It looked genuine to me.”
“If she really did it, then why would Ian be so sensitive about you interviewing her?”
“I don't know. Listen, I don't know if she did it or not; I'm just saying I believed her confession. She didn't admit to being abused, but I think that's what happened.”
Maggie went from incredulous to annoyed. “Since when did you become such an expert at identifying abuse?”
And now I was getting a little annoyed myself. “Hey, you asked me what I thought, and I told you.”
The conversation ended there.
Ian paid cash for the shoes and hit the street. Heavy rain blurred the image coming from the cam as Ian approached Surf, the seafood place with a fishnet over the door. He strode through the door and into the restaurant. Waitresses were busy folding napkins and setting tables. He snatched up a towel and dried his hair, making the camera view go black for a few seconds. He tossed the towel in a hamper and walked across the floor and into the kitchen, which was alive with the sounds of prep cooks chopping squid and lizard. Fresh spices hung from the ceiling; bundles of green leaves dangled down. Ian stopped and sampled the soup bubbling in a large pot over a roaring flame. He pulled off a couple leaves from a bundle of spice and dropped them in before moving on to the back stairs, sprinting up and knocking on a door at the top.
The door swung open a few seconds later. Liz had a robe tied loosely on, and her hair was up in curlers. The camera moved in close as the two exchanged a kiss. Ian held out the shoe box.
“You shouldn't have,” said Liz as she took the lid off. “Oh, Ian, these are wonderful.”
“I thought you'd like them. You have to try them on.”
She sat down in the living room. Ian's view focused in on her partially open robe, taking a good long look at a half-exposed breast before dropping to his knees. She lifted her left foot, her robe parting, exposing her thighs all the way up to where they came together in shadow.
I could feel my pulse pounding as I watched Ian slip the shoe over her foot. He fiddled with the strap, running it around her ankle, his hands playing up her calf. She switched feet and Ian took his time putting on the other shoe, petting and stroking her toes and her ankle and then finally her calf. She stood up, her robe falling back into place over her legs, hiding all but her feet. Liz walked back and forth, stopping every couple steps to look down at her feet. “I love them,” she said. “Thank you.”
She threw her arms around Ian and moved in for a long kiss, the camera showing nothing but the corner of one of her curlers for a moment before Liz ran off to her bedroom, coming back a minute later with a handful of stockings. “You have to tell me which stockings match the best,” she said to Ian.
Maggie asked me, “You up for room service?”
I looked at the time, thinking I should go to the hospital. Then I looked at Liz, who was pulling on a pair of fishnets. “Is there a menu in here somewhere?”
I swallowed the last bite of a very bland 'guana sandwich, typical hotel fare.
“He's waiting for somebody.”
I nodded. At Ian's table were two place settings besides his own.
From the vantage of Ian's scalp, we could see most of the restaurant. He'd left Liz's place shortly after the fashion show, saying he had some business to attend to. He told her he'd see her later at Roby's.
I was starting to feel sleepy. I wondered if Maggie would mind if I took a nap. It could be hours, maybe days before we caught him doing anything, but then I decided I might as well try sticking it out until I saw who his dinner mates would be.
Ian ordered a drink and flipped through the menu. The restaurant was one of those touristy places on the Old Town Square. Its walls were covered with hand-painted jungle scenes that featured masses of thick greenery with lizards on every perch, each of them lit by magical beams of sunlight that twinkled through holes in the jungle canopy. It was the kind of thing that Lagartans would call classy, but offworlders would probably find tacky. Lagartans were always missing the mark when they tried to attract tourists.
The vodka arrived, and I watched as Ian brought the glass up to his lips. My mouth watered, but I resisted the urge to pull out my flask. I didn't want Maggie thinking poorly of me. Ian set an empty glass back on the table.
The view from the Ian-cam swung to the door, and in came a heavier-than-average man who waved at Ian. The guy looked familiar despite the fact that he had a painful-looking double shiner marring his face. I was already wracking my brain, trying to remember who he was as he took a seat across from Ian. “How's it going, Ian?”
Ian said, “Not bad, boy-o. How's your fucking face?”
The man shrugged and aimed his black eyes at the floor. The guy looked like shit, and it wasn't just the black eyes. It was the rumpled clothes, the dumpy body, the nervous face.
“Don't be a pussy,” said Ian. “It'll heal.”
“I know,” he said. “But you didn't have to hit me that hard.”
Holy shit. Did I hear that right? Ian was the one who gave him the coon face? Recognition overwhelmed me, the pear shaped bod, that same crappy shirt. What the fuck was going on?
Ian said, “Christ, Yuri. I was just trying to make it look believable. It's your own damn fault. If you hadn't been so fucking sloppy, I wouldn't have had to lay you out like that.”<
br />
“I know, I know. It was my fault,” Yuri responded, spineless.
“Are you going to order a drink or what?”
“Yeah.” Yuri held up a meaty hand. When the waiter showed, Yuri looked at Ian's empty glass and asked him, “What are you drinking?”
“Christ, just order whatever you want. What does it matter what I'm drinking?”
“I just thought that whatever you were having might sound good to me.”
“It's not like we're fucking lovers who have to drink the same thing. Just order.”
The waiter stood by with raised brows.
“B-brandy,” Yuri said in a weak voice.
Ian looked at the waiter and said, “I'll have another.” When the waiter moved off, the cam squared on Yuri and stayed there until Yuri made eye contact. Then the cam's view moved from side to side as Ian shook his head at him. Yuri wilted and stared at the floor again.
I tried, but couldn't make sense of why Ian was having dinner with the cameraman, the one from the Libre, the one Ian and his boys had roughed up on the pier. Ian had just told him he had to make it look good. He said Yuri hadn't done his job right. What job? The three little circles on the cabin floor, made by a tripod. The scope of the Juarez case exploded in my mind.
“Where's Horst?” asked Ian.
“I don't know,” said Yuri. “He said he'd be here.”
“You didn't tell him we were meeting at the bar in the basement did you?”
“No. I told him we were meeting at the restaurant, just like you said.”
“Go check the bar.”
“He's not going to the bar, Ian. Horst knows we're meeting here.”
“Don't make me say it again.”
Ian watched as Yuri meekly complied, the cameraman's pudgy frame disappearing down a staircase a few seconds later.
Horst. He was the offworlder at Roby's, the one who was all hands with Liz. And he was coming to the restaurant. That wasn't good. I forced my scattering mind to focus in on the problem at hand. An offworlder's head was sure to be riddled with implanted tech. He'd be detecting our camera as soon as he got in range. “Shit.” I placed the call. I could hear the ringing in my ear at the same time it was echoing from the projector. “Turn off the volume,” I told Maggie.
Ian ignored the ringing and looked at the door. “About time,” he said to himself. Just inside the door was the offworlder, waiting to check his raincoat and umbrella. Pick up already. Ian finally answered, his buff holo appearing in front of Maggie and me.
Maggie was up out of her chair, staring me down. I put up a finger to say, “Wait.”
“Ian. It's Juno. We need to talk. Now.”
“Okay, boy-o. What's up?” The camera on his head was aimed straight at the Holo-Juno that stood next to his table.
“You've been bugged.” I said.
Maggie went wide-eyed.
Ian said, “What are you talking about?”
“You're in a restaurant with jungle paintings, and you were just sitting across from a guy with a bruised face. I can see everything.”
“Where are you?” The camera view wheeled dizzyingly around the restaurant floor. The offworlder was approaching.
“Are you listening? You've been bugged. You remember Maggie shooing a fly away? She dropped a bug in your hair. I'm looking through the cam right now.”
“You're shitting me.”
“Ask the offworlder. He might be able to detect it.” I clicked off. My guess was the offworlder had already picked it up. Those people seemed to have more circuitry under their skullcaps than they did brains. Maggie's cam was surely lost, and this whole stakeout setup was already shot-might as well take the opportunity to prove my snitch skills.
Ian led Horst into the men's. We caught a super-close-up of the offworlder a second before he picked the cam out of Ian's hair and the projector went blank.
Within seconds, my phone was ringing. Holo-Ian asked, “Where the fuck did she get this thing?”
“She's rich, remember? She said she picked it up from an offworld shop.”
“Are you saying she's been watching me?”
“We've been watching you together, ever since you left KOP station. She just ran out to get some food when I called you. It was the first chance I got. Listen, Ian, I gotta go. I need to finish erasing our conversation from the recording before she gets back. She's going to be suspicious as hell. I don't know how long I'll be able to keep her trusting me.”
“I'm not done with you, boy-o. Come to Roby's tonight,” he ordered before hanging up.
Maggie was staring at me.
“Sorry about the cam,” I said. “The offworlder would've found it anyway.”
“You don't know that for sure. That unit was pretty high-end.”
“Never underestimate an offworlder,” I said with the authority of somebody who had been burned before.
Maggie sighed. “We got nothing.”
“We got plenty, Maggie.” I paused, prolonging the moment long enough to give proper emphasis to what I was about to say. “That guy with the bruised face, he was at the barge the other night. The unis caught him trying to sneak onboard to steal some footage. Josephs told me he was a cameraman for the Libre. I watched him get his ass kicked by Ian and company right there on the pier, and now we just heard Ian say something about how he'd been sloppy-”
“What are you saying?” she asked with a shocked face. “Are you saying Ian's involved in the barge murders?”
I nodded, my mind crackling with the possibilities. The plot was already forming in my mind. Horst: the offworld serial killer. Yuri: the documentarian. And Ian: the cover-up man. The three of them having dinner together: maybe a celebration dinner, or maybe they were getting together so Horst could pay them their fees.
Maggie's face knotted into a tight mask of concentration as she worked through the same possibilities. “That would explain why Ian's so determined to work the barge case.”
“That it would,” I said, stone sober. I was amazed at how quickly Maggie recovered from the bombshell. Here she just found out that her partner was likely involved in thirteen more murders than she'd thought, and already her mind was back in high gear. My worldview must have rubbed off on her more than I thought. She was finding it all too easy to believe the worst in people. That, or her opinion of Ian was so low that even thirteen murders weren't far beyond the reach of what she thought he was capable of.
“And you think Yuri is our filmmaking accomplice?” she asked.
I was already nodding before she finished the question.
“He must have vids of all the murders,” she said.
I suddenly remembered to ask, “Hey, did you ever watch that vid, the one the rook found on the pier?”
“It was blank.”
“Erased?”
“No. It was blank, never been used. Ian thought some tourist probably went down to take some shots of the old barges and then lost it in the weeds trying to change discs.”
It sounded plausible, but I didn't believe it, and I could see in Maggie's eyes that she didn't believe it either. A tourist visiting the pier? The barges were hardly a top tourist attraction. And at this time of year? Way too rainy. I was shaking my head.
“He's full of shit,” Maggie said hotly.
“Was the vid molded over?”
“No. Just wet.” Which meant the vid hadn't been exposed to the rain for long, a couple days at most.
“So unless an offworld tourist went down there recently to film those rusted-out hulks in the rain, it was the cameraman who dropped the vid.”
“And if that's the case, Ian was dead on about him being sloppy. The cameraman must've realized he'd muffed it so he came back and tried to sneak onto the pier to retrieve it.” Maggie's cheeks were flushed, and the smile on her face made her look like an animal baring its teeth. She had a lead, her first in a case she'd worked for months, and it led straight to her partner.
I took a hit off my flask and held it out for M
aggie. I wondered how long I'd had the flask out.
She put up a no-thanks palm. “But why bother coming back if the vid was blank?”
My mind tangled up into a tight little knot. I thought about it for a minute and said, “I don't know.”
“Maybe he was afraid we'd find prints.”
“Did you?”
“No. It was clean. I don't get it. He had to know it was impossible to sneak around that pier without getting caught. There was a dead cop on that barge. A whole squad was crawling around down there. Why take the risk?”
“Like you said. Maybe he was afraid he'd left his prints on it. Maybe he didn't know it was clean.”
Maggie gnawed on her lower lip, totally unsatisfied by the explanation. “It still doesn't make sense. Say we did find his prints on the vid. He could've beaten any wrap we tried to pin on him. There's probably a thousand ways he could explain it away. Especially if he really works for the Libre. He could say he lost it some other time. Who knows how many stories he's covered down on that pier? It's not like we found the vid in the cabin, or even on the barge.”
Maggie's words barely echoed in my head. I felt like there was a doubled-up rubber band squeezing down on my brain. Why did Ian make such a show of knocking the guy around? Why not just have the unis escort him off the pier? But instead, he made a big production out of it, all under the guise that he was trying to keep the case from going public. Why? The answer was close, so close… But I couldn't pin it down. I felt like I was trying to grab hold of smoke.
Maggie kept the theories coming. “What if he didn't know it was blank? Maybe the camera broke down on him without him realizing it, and he thought he had filmed the murder, but he really missed the whole thing. Or maybe he just got the blank vid mixed up with the real vid of the beheading. If he thought he'd dropped the beheading vid, he'd have plenty of reason to come back for it, even if it was the wrong one.”
I took another swig of brandy and tried to tune her out. Her words were clogging up my thoughts. I closed my eyes and tried to relax away the clutter in my head. Fragmented ideas rattled around my skull. Maggie was still talking, her voice seeping into my consciousness. She was saying something about how it was just our luck that he dropped the blank vid instead of the real one.
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