Blood Will Tell

by Christine Pope

  “Of course not,” he replied. “Let’s take a closer look at our dead friends, shall we?”

  It turned out that they carried no identification—typical. What was the point of being a hired goon if you made yourself easy to track down? They both were packing holdout guns, along with an assortment of m-blades and old-fashioned plain composite cutlery, but neither he nor Jessa could find anything that gave the slightest clue as to who they were or where they had come from.

  Creel wanted to swear, but decided that wouldn’t do him any good. Besides, he didn’t want Jessa to know how stymied he currently felt, how outmaneuvered and outmatched. True, he’d been bested by Eryk Thorn, which wasn’t exactly the same as having some local street punk outsmart you, but—

  “Hey, what’s this?” Jessa asked suddenly.

  “What’s what?” Creel responded, forcing himself to snap out of the unexpected bout of self-pity.

  “Probably nothing, but this guy’s got a bunch of sand and what looks like some broken shells caught in the soles of his boots. Maybe the lab could get something out of it.”

  Frowning, Creel crouched down next to Jessa and looked where she was pointing. Sure enough, the heavy grid pattern of the man’s boot tread was caked with pale sand and larger specks of iridescent reddish material that definitely appeared to be bits of shell. Well, it was a start, anyway.

  At that moment, the sound of approaching sirens assaulted his ears. Their backup had arrived—far too late, naturally.

  “Tell you what,” Jessa said, giving him a tired grin, “you get to do all the explaining on this one.”

  Thanks a lot, Creel thought, but he managed to smile back at her. It seemed a small price to pay, considering that they’d gone up against the fearsome Eryk Thorn and lived to tell the tale.

  Somehow he doubted the man Thorn had captured would enjoy the same fate.

  “I swear I don’t know anything!” the man gasped, his pale, bloodshot eyes almost round with fear.

  After Thorn had commandeered the hired goons’ vehicle, the three of them had blown out of the spaceport with just enough haste to put a good distance between them and the two police officers they’d left behind, but not so fast that they’d be likely to attract any undue attention. The car was a large, six-seat enclosed model, new enough to be unobtrusive but certainly not flashy in any way.

  Thorn piloted it to an area largely dominated by warehouses about two kilometers from the ’port, at which time he’d hauled his hapless captive outside and into the cozy intimacy afforded by a locker unit guarded by a simple code that Miala was able to hack in only a few minutes. Just great, she thought, after Thorn instructed her to circumvent the lock. Now we can add breaking and entering to the list of charges we’re racking up...

  She hadn’t bothered to argue, though. The pasty-faced man they’d taken hostage was their only link to finding Jerem, and it wasn’t as if the owner of the warehouse was using it at this particular time, anyway. Actually, it didn’t look as if it had been used in a long time. All the packing cases around them had a liberal coating of fine gray dust.

  Their captive sat on one of those cases now, literally shaking in his boots, his hands bound behind him with more thin cable. He looked as if he were about to expire of fright. Whoever had taken Jerem, Miala didn’t think much of the caliber of people he’d hired to do it.

  “Come on, now,” Thorn said, crossing his arms and lifting an eyebrow. “You mean to tell me you don’t know anything about where they’re holding the boy?”

  The boy. No mention of her son’s name. She recalled the conversation she’d had with Thorn about how he had to stay focused, how he could only think of Jerem as an asset to be reacquired. If he allowed himself to get emotionally involved, Eryk Thorn might lose the edge that made him what he was.

  Still, that recollection didn’t make it any easier for her to listen to the mercenary discussing their son in such a dispassionate way.

  “No!” the captive said. “I never heard anything—Korvan just hired me from the street here, said it would be easy money, that I just had to go with those other two to take out someone at the spaceport—”

  “Korvan, eh?” Thorn replied. “So he’s your employer? He from Nova Angeles?”

  The man licked his lips and shot a beseeching stare in Miala’s direction. Just thinking of her son in the hands of men such as these made it easy enough for her to harden her mouth and give him a narrow look in return. He gulped and immediately glanced away.

  “No,” the man said. “He’s a Stacian.”

  “Ah,” said Thorn, and glanced over at Miala.

  Well, that made sense. This whole thing had felt a little too personal, and if the late, unlamented Murgan had been related to the kidnapper, then she supposed it made sense that he had struck out at her by taking the thing she valued the most. In this instance, however, that desire for a more intimate revenge could end up biting this Korvan in his big yellow ass, because by taking Jerem he’d unwittingly pulled Eryk Thorn into the plot.

  As she stared at Thorn, he smiled suddenly. A sudden hum caught her attention, and she watched with some trepidation as he pulled a small but very efficient-looking molecular blade from his pants pocket.

  Even from where she sat, Miala could see the lump in their captive’s throat give a convulsive movement as he stared back at the mercenary.

  “You know, it’s too bad you didn’t hear anything worthwhile,” Thorn said, his tone so casual that Miala knew something very, very bad was about to happen. “If you don’t actually use those ears of yours, then maybe I should just get rid of them for you.” And he brought the blade up against the man’s right ear, near the top where it connected to the skull. A few drops of blood, almost black in the dimly lit warehouse, began to well up as the blade touched flesh.

  “I swear I don’t know!” the man shrieked. “I swear I don’t! Nobody told me—” And then he broke off into a sort of inarticulate gargling screech as Thorn continued to press down.

  Bile rising in her throat, Miala looked away. She knew they didn’t have time for anything more humane, but that didn’t mean she could coolly sit there and watch as Eryk Thorn tortured another living being.

  “I don’t believe you,” Thorn said, still in that off-hand tone. “Right now you’ve just got a big cut here. Not much of anything, really. But I could make it worse—” The m-blade begin to make a high-pitched whining noise, as if it had suddenly met more resistance than mere skin and flesh. Probably it had begun to cut into cartilage.

  The screams intensified. Miala wanted to put her hands up to her own ears to block out the horrible sounds, but she knew she shouldn’t betray any weakness in front of their captive. So she sat very still, reminding herself that this man had been in league with the people who had stolen her son, and that he was most likely the only chance she and Thorn had of recovering Jerem.

  Suddenly she heard a terrible little thud, and risked a quick glance over at their captive. Blood streamed down the side of his head and neck. He stared down in horror at the fleshy lump in his lap, a lump which up until that moment had been attached to his skull.

  You will not get sick, she told herself, you will not...

  “So,” Thorn said casually, “any thoughts pop into your mind now? If you get to a hospital in the next half hour or so, they’ll probably be able to attach that ear. Of course, I can’t let you go unless you tell me something.”

  The man was crying, Miala realized, his face streaked with a dreadful mixture of tears and blood and snot. But he remained silent, and Thorn sighed and lifted the m-blade once more.

  “I can keep doing this, you know,” he remarked. “There’s your other ear, and all your fingers—and other portions of your anatomy you’ll probably miss even more.”

  “All right, all right!” the man screamed.

  Thorn lowered the molecular blade the merest fraction of a centimeter and waited.

  “I—I never been there,” their captive gasped. “But I
overheard Rogin say something about meeting up later at Stony Point Park. That’s all I heard. I swear.”

  The mercenary looked over at Miala. “You ever heard of a place called that?”

  “Yes,” she replied, thanking God or whatever power governed the universe that she actually had. “It was an amusement park out on Rendarlin Point. I think I took Jerem there when he was three or four. It’s been closed for the past few years, though—they kept saying they were going to give the place a major overhaul, but I think the deal fell through. Last I heard, some developers were trying to buy up the place for a high-priced housing development.”

  “But it’s empty now,” Thorn said.

  “I think so. That is, the place has had a security perimeter up for at least the past two standard years, and it sure looks abandoned.”

  “Great place to carry on a clandestine operation,” the mercenary said. “No prying eyes, no one to see what you’re up to. Isn’t that right?” he added, fixing his captive with a flat, black-eyed stare.

  The man gulped. “Uh, yeah, guess so. Like I said—”

  “—you’ve never been there. Yeah, I got that part.” Thorn glanced over at Miala. “Looks like we’d better get going.”

  Immediately she stood, taking care to keep from looking at the blood-smeared face of the man Thorn had tortured. Even though she supposed that the torture had proved useful, she didn’t feel any better about it.

  “What about me?” the man asked. “I told you what you wanted to know. Aren’t you going to let me go?”

  “No,” Thorn replied, pulling out his gun. As Miala looked on, horrified, he shot their captive directly in the head. At once the man slumped over, and slid off the packing crate and onto the dusty ground.

  Although she didn’t remember doing so, Miala realized she must have made some sound of protest. Thorn glanced over at her, his face expressionless.

  “But—why?” she managed at last.

  “I don’t leave messy loose ends. He could have I.D.’d us.” Moving purposefully, he grasped her by the arm and pulled her away from the dead man, back out through the entrance to the warehouse. Then he re-entered the security code to lock the door. Afterward, he pulled a piece of silky gray cloth out of his pocket, wiped down the keypad, and gestured for Miala to get into the commandeered car.

  It was only after they’d left the warehouse complex that he spoke again. “I’d rather you didn’t have to see that. But these things are necessary.”

  Yes, she supposed in his mind they would be. Everything else had to be subordinated to acquiring the target. If that meant torturing a petty criminal who was clearly in over his head, or killing him in cold blood when he was no longer useful, then so be it. It certainly wasn’t the first time she’d seen Eryk Thorn kill someone—and she suspected it probably wouldn’t be the last—but she still felt shaken by what she had witnessed.

  For a long moment she said nothing, and merely watched as Thorn piloted the aircar through Rilsport’s streets. He didn’t seem to have any apparent destination, but she knew better. No doubt he was simply making sure that they weren’t being followed.

  Finally she cleared her throat and said, “Just get our son back.”

  He gave her a long, searching look, no doubt seeing in her face the inner struggle she felt over having to accept what he had done as an ugly necessity. When he spoke, he sounded supremely confident. “You know I will.”

  Miala wondered how high the body count would be by the time Thorn accomplished his goal. At what point did one say the cost was too great?

  Never, she realized. Not when it’s the only way to save our son.

  And with that grim resolution to steady her, Miala reached out and placed her hand on top of Thorn’s, where it rested lightly over the gear shift. He said nothing, but she could feel his fingers wrap around hers and squeeze gently. Taking strength from his touch, she let him drive them forward into the night, as they headed toward a confrontation she couldn’t begin to imagine.

  XXVI

  Some days, Rafe Creel thought, I’d really like to tell my bosses what they can do with their “police procedures.” But frustrating as the routine might be, he knew there was a reason for all the painstaking care that had to be taken at a crime scene like this, all the slavish following of departmental policy. Still, right now he just wanted to tell them where to stuff it.

  He watched glumly as Jessa Kodd stood a few paces away, apparently having a polite but heated debate with Dax Trandis, a fellow Homicide detective. As Creel was technically a member of Internal Affairs, he had no official connection to the investigation of the two dead men Thorn had left behind in the docking bay’s corridor. After the initial questioning was complete, he had shuffled off to the side while Jessa dealt with the less pleasant fallout of their involvement in the firefight. Although she seemed to be keeping her cool, he could tell she wanted nothing more than to reach out and give Trandis a good smack across the jaw.

  It would be worth seeing, Creel thought, but he knew Jessa would never blow a gasket like that.

  So he shifted his gaze from the two bickering officers to Thorn’s battered-looking ship. If it even had been Eryk Thorn after all—the man hadn’t batted an eye when Creel called him by his real name, but that didn’t mean much. Of course Thorn would have to be a pretty cool customer. But you’d think the galaxy’s greatest mercenary would have been a little more...impressive. Oh, sure, the guy had gotten the drop on Creel and Jessa without much trouble, but up until that point he hadn’t seemed particularly fearsome. Just average height, swarthy, features somewhat coarse—this Captain Marr, or whoever he was, didn’t seem the type to attract someone as beautiful, talented, and rich as Mia Felaris. So what was the deal?

  Still, the ship did match the description of the mercenary’s fabled Fury, even with the serial numbers scraped off the hull and a number of other heretofore uncatalogued custom touches in place. Several officers had tried to get near it, and immediately a series of internally mounted pulse cannons had bristled forth, obviously ready to take out any intruders. Since the ship hadn’t been directly involved in the firefight, the investigating personnel had decided to leave it alone for the time being. Creel wondered if they’d ever be able to get inside.

  Of more pressing importance, however, was getting the dead man’s boots taken to the lab and analyzed as quickly as possible. At the rate the crime scene team was handling the investigation, that wasn’t going to happen before Mia Felaris and her mysterious companion were long gone, but Creel refused to give up hope that the shell samples might yield some sort of valuable evidence.

  At last, though, Jessa stepped away from Trandis and headed over to where Creel leaned against the rough concrete of the corridor’s wall. “Hope we’re not boring you,” she remarked.

  “Not at all,” he replied, standing up straight and giving her a quick grin. “I was about to start taking bets on how long it would take before you ripped out Dax’s jugular.”

  “I wish,” she said, and then gave a disgusted shake of her head. “Talking to him is like trying to explain Marland’s third law of thermodynamics to a service mech.”

  Creel almost laughed, took a closer look at her tired face, and decided against it. Instead, he dug in his pocket for the little plastic case of gum and handed it to her. “It really does help.”

  She didn’t bother to protest, but instead shook one of the pale blue oval tablets into her hand and popped it in her mouth. “At least I finally managed to convince him that we could take one of the boots over to the lab, so as soon as they’re done tagging it, we can get out of here.”

  “Great,” Creel said, but with a lack of enthusiasm that was obvious even to him.

  To his surprise, she gave him a quick pat on the arm before saying, “I know it’s not much, but we do what we can, right?”

  He had to remind himself of that during the excruciating minutes that followed, right up until the time the precious boot was finally released to them, and J
essa was able to beg a ride for herself and Creel back to the station. The evidence labs were located on the fifteenth floor of RilSec’s headquarters, and luckily they were staffed around the clock.

  As he and Jessa entered the the main lobby, Creel gave a quick glance at the chronometer that hung on the wall above the reception desk and tried not to shudder. By now it was almost 0100, and he guessed the night was going to drag on for a lot longer than that. His work didn’t usually require him to run around at all hours of the night, but he was going to see this through to the end, even if it meant being up for fifty standard hours or more.

  They showed their badges to the woman at the reception desk and went on into the maze of hallways that connected the offices and workrooms of RilSec’s crime labs. Jessa seemed to know where she was heading, so Creel followed her lead. Her job required dealing with physical evidence, whereas his work of late had mainly involved conducting interviews and sifting through innumerable computer records.

  After going around several corners and down one long corridor, Jessa stopped in front of a set of double doors. She pressed the button on the intercom and said, “Howard? It’s Jessa. I’ve got something I need you to look at.”

  The right-hand door beeped, then swung inward to admit them. Creel raised an eyebrow at Jessa. “Howard?”

  “Howard Dael,” she replied, and paused. “My ex-husband.”

  He felt his mouth drop open slightly, then said, “Oh.” After that he gave a small mental groan: Real suave, Creel! How the hell had she managed to keep such an important piece of information hidden from everyone in her department? He worked in a different division, true, but if something like that had been common knowledge, Creel would have eventually found out.

  Jessa’s own mouth curved slightly in one of her patented “I’ve got a secret” smiles. All she said, though, was, “Let’s go.”

  Still feeling a bit off-kilter, he followed her down a narrow hallway that had a faint chemical smell he couldn’t quite identify. From there they entered a large room lined with all sorts of complicated equipment and a number of computer displays, both flat-screen and holographic.