The door slid open. The lights were low, the television off. The bedroom door was open. Had he managed to come in when she was out? Maybe she’d gone home – he’d not been there yet. Maybe he should go and find her. Maybe, maybe, maybe. He came around the side of the couch to sit – and then froze. There, clothed in a white satin robe, was Angie. Sleeping away. Gray stood there for a moment, looking at her face. How peaceful it looked, nothing like the open-mouthed expression of sexual pleasure that he saw in the images. He had nothing to compare; he had only seen her asleep, next to him, with this very expression on her lovely face. His hands slid into his pockets again. His fingers closed around the wafer. His fingers squeezed it in rhythm as he considered whether or not to wake her.
Soon enough, however, she woke on her own. Angie’s eyes slowly fluttered open, millimeter after jewel-like millimeter glittering beneath her lashes as they did. They took a moment to open, lift to him – and seeing him, she smiled. It was that smile that made the decision for him. She was so happy to see him, he could see it there.
“Hey, you,” she said, her voice warm and sleepy.
Gray slid his hands out of his pockets and crouched down next to her. “Hey, you,” he replied, and he kissed her temple. “You get enough sleep?” Her scent was so wonderfully strong, the way it curled into his nostrils – musky and mingling with the traces of cinnamon and sandalwood of her shampoo. He buried his face in her hair for a long moment. Here, so close to her, the pictures didn’t matter. None of it mattered; Anderson was dead, the case was closed. He had what he wanted. Why fuck it up now?
“Yeah,” she murmured, and she turned to lie on her back and look up at him. Her gaze traveled over his face, as if seeking something. “You look upset,” she said softly. “Is everything okay?”
He could only smile at her and stroke her cheek. “No, everything’s fine,” he murmured. “I’m home now.”
Angie heaved a soft, laughing sigh. “I like the sound of that,” she said, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She looked up into his eyes now, reflecting his face. “Did you have a good day at work?”
“I did,” he said with a nod. She didn’t have to know everything, after all. “Got a new car.”
“Yeah?” Her smile widened into a pearly arc. “Wow. What did you get?”
“Um, a Cerico.”
“A Cerico?” Angie shifted to sit up, her lovely eyes flashing with delight. “Holy shit, are you kidding me? Those are amazing.”
Gray moved to sit on the middle cushion while Angie tucked her legs up under herself as she leaned into the corner. “It’s pretty much the best car I’ve ever driven,” he admitted. “I guess you’ve ridden in one before?”
“Oh, once or twice,” she said with a nod. “I mean, with past friends.”
He smiled at her, trying not transpose the word with clients. “You’re a popular girl,” he said. “I know. All the more reason why I’m so happy you’re with me.” Gray chuckled. “Confused, but happy.”
“Well, we’ve already covered that.” She shrugged, then gave him a shy, sultry look. “So listen here, Mr. Man. I wanted to talk to you about something.”
Gray sat up a bit at that. “I, er, yes?”
Angie reached over to take his hand in both of hers; he felt his skin buzz with the electric thrill of her touch. “Listen. I know that things have been very hard for you lately. And I know…you know, there’s this crazy bastard who wants me to work for him – and I said that I would. I meant it. I guess what I’m meaning to say is…I…will understand if you don’t want to…you know. Do things with me.” Her smile changed, turned into something small and girlish and brave. “Until things are settled. I like being here with you just like this.”
He stared at her. He should have been relieved, even happy – she was making things very easy for him from a professional standpoint, no point of no return dangled in front of him. Looking at her, Gray saw not the worldly woman in this moment but the shy girl she must have been before she came here. And here he was, judging her on something she’d done before he’d even known her. Gray took a deep breath and felt terribly ashamed of himself.
“All right,” he said. “I understand. But I should tell you something, Miss Velasquez.”
“Oh, Detective?” Now a smirk tugged at her lips. “It sounds very serious.”
He leaned forward, giving her a look of mock sternness as he drew close. “I regret to have to inform you, Miss Velasquez, that you’re going to have to stay in the closest of custody to me.”
“Oh yeah?” She leaned forward to meet him, her eyes lidded, her lips parted as she turned her face upward toward his. “You gonna use the cuffs?”
Gray’s reply was a purring chuckle. “If that’s what it requires,” he murmured, his voice deep, smoky. People often spoke like characters in a bad movie when they cared for one another, he thought – but he didn’t mind. It was his movie. She was his leading lady. They laughed together, shaking his head, and he leaned forward to kiss her.
Angie laid a finger against his lips. “Not yet,” she said gently. “Let’s see what this Vice cop says, all right? Call him tomorrow, tell him I’m willing to work with him.”
He took a deep breath, fighting back the urge to take her right there – she was right, of course. “All right,” he said, though his heart sank as he did so. She made too much sense, or maybe he was just too smitten to argue. “Yeah.” Gray sat back on the cushion and gave her a weak smile. “Well, I guess I need to get some sleep.”
“Then I’ll join you.” She rose with him, taking his hand. “Besides, I do a pretty mean massage.”
Gray smiled. “I bet you do.”
An hour later they lay in bed, Angie snoring softly and Gray staring up at the ceiling. He wanted to be angry about how the evening went – how she disarmed him, then enticed him, then shut him down. If she hadn’t made sense he might have been able to, but instead he only found himself irritated with his own perceived lack of potency. But this was how it was with women, or so he’d discovered. You didn’t get your way one way or another. He’d much rather be with her than right, anyway. He closed his eyes and surrendered to sleep, hoping that if he dreamt it would be of current events, not the horrors of the preceding week. Perhaps that was the biggest dream of all.
Chapter Sixteen
“So I’ve talked to Angela Velasquez.”
“You mean that girl you’re ‘not dating’.”
“Yeah.” Gray sat with Moody at a little place called Scarino’s up in Belltown, this little Italo-Japanese dive. Weirdest combination when you heard of it, but a common love of noodles united East and West just fine. Their table was in the back – another Vice special – and they sat talking over seafood lasagna and crab carbonara. Moody had insisted on paying, which meant they were eating real meat. Gray spooled spaghetti around his fork. “She says she’s willing to help you, though she says as far as she knows there’s nothing going on there short of some prostitution and a little light drug use. Says the owners crack down hard on anything more.”
Moody’s brows lifted. “Oh yeah?” He drank from a big bottle of Tsingtao, using it as a sort of marshal’s baton to gesture with as he spoke. “Well that’s news to me, because I was told that it was Shard that was being dealt out of there.”
“Yeah,” said Gray, “I know. But it’s like she said, you’d be able to tell. That’s a full-body joint, you know, no bullshit thongs or pasties or whatever. If someone was using over there, you’d be able to tell from a mile away.”
The Vice monster made a noncommittal sound and took another sip of beer. “Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “My man says it’s an illegal substance, said he thought it was Shard. If it’s something else, then maybe we should have this little bumba here see what it really is. Since you’re not dating, after all.” Moody grinned. “You don’t mind dangling her over the water to see what jumps out, I trust?”
I could shoot him under the table, Gray thought. Once, twice, through
the chest. Wouldn’t even penetrate his back. It worried him a little that he thought this way about Moody, but then again he figured that the senior detective had that effect on most everybody. “She said she’d help you,” he said instead, and popped the spool of spaghetti into his mouth. Better that than say what followed: but if you hurt her, you die.
“So she did,” Moody said with a nod. “So she did. I’m actually kind of impressed about that; people in her position tend to wanna try and make deals. I don’t take well to dealers, you know? Ideas above their station.”
“Mmm.” Gray chewed his bite and swallowed, tasting buttery cream sauce and crab. A faint hint of garlic. “Well, I know you want to use her to get to whatever’s going on in there, but I’d like to point out that she’s been associated with a murder victim in a recent case. I’d rather her not be ruined.”
“A murder case that you’ve been in charge of,” Moody said. “Hence why you’re ‘not dating’, I’m sure. Company frowns on that kind of thing.”
“Company frowns on fucking over citizens that are connected with past cases,” Gray replied. “Tends to open up old questions. Or wounds.”
Moody put his beer down. He looked at Gray thoughtfully, the way a cat regards a rat who had suddenly produced a tiny switchblade – not necessarily a threat, but a bit more toothy than expected. “Dan,” he said after a moment, “Are you trying to fence with me?”
“Fence with you?” Dan shook his head, smiling slightly despite the twist of anxiety starting in his gut. “Of course not. I’m just saying, there’s two sides to this particular person, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, you let me worry about that.” Moody folded his hands behind his plate and gave Gray a long, appraising look. “You know, Dan, if I didn’t know better I’d say you were trying to protect this girl.”
Shit. “Like I said, she’s an asset.” He wouldn’t bite, but Gray didn’t exactly want to resort to open defiance. He’d keep this on the professional level. “If she ends up needing to be cut loose, well, there’s that – but I know how Vice ops go, and I just don’t want someone attached to a case of mine…”
“Getting hung out to dry. Yeah, I get the idea.” Moody reached down and picked up his fork. “You know, Dan,” he said as he carefully cut a bite out of his lasagna, “That case of yours has been closed.”
“True.” Gray reached for his glass of water. “But you never know. If Muller turns up again and there’s a trial, we’ll need her.”
Moody snorted. The ice, apparently, had been broken; he returned to his usual, casually violent way, taking a deep draught of his beer. “If anyone sees that motherfucker again, I wouldn’t be surprised if they just unload a mag in his ass. Fuckin’ ghoul, I don’t see how you people do it.”
“Well that’s the thing about homicide,” Gray said without a trace of irony. “You come to learn to deal with monsters.” And he knew, looking at Moody as the other man went about eating his lunch in earnest, that he’d have to deal with him sooner or later. He just wasn’t sure how to go about it.
Gray had a feeling it wouldn’t be easy, or even remotely clean. But he bet it would feel really good.
Back at his office, Gray sat thinking about Moody’s words. Illicit substances, he thought. Illicit substances. Anderson didn’t have anything on hand, or at least what was in the police report. Well, some tabs of Medriazine-Beta, but that had been for sex. Or had it? Was it possible that they’d missed something in the analysis?
Gray called up the case report on the network. The flat pedestal of his new terminal was all holographic, which was new; the monitors and keypanel that hovered in the air around him were a little hard to get used to, or perhaps that was just the mental static caused by dealing with Moody yet again. He hadn’t read Anderson’s report in a few weeks. Considering how quickly everything had gone down and with the discovery of Muller’s involvement, he hadn’t had the need to go back and look it over. His fingers dipped through the floating keys, drawing up Anderson’s report along with the rest of the murders. Straight away he saw something important there – toxicology tests had been scheduled for the body postmortem, but they had been suspended once the company had put a clamp on the whole thing. He called up the postmortems for Askew and Cuaron as well; their tox screens had been negative. You couldn’t go back and dig around in a closed case on company time, using company resources – that would be stealing, as far as Civil Protection was concerned. But then again…
He called down to Evidence Processing and asked for Megan Cinders. Her voice floated up from the desk. “I’m here, Detective. You need something?”
“No visual?” Gray smiled a little at the blank image panel that floated by the call display.
“I’m bent over a corpse,” she said. “One of your department’s little jobs. You want to see me take a liver out on live feed?”
Gray shivered a little. “I’ve seen enough of that lately,” he said.
“I bet you have,” Cinders replied. “That’s why they’ve got you warming up a desk, you know.”
He hadn’t thought about that. “I guess you’re right,” he said, and frowned. “Anyway, are you able to talk later?”
“Later as in what?”
“Later as in off-shift.”
She paused. “I dunno, Gray,” she said carefully, “I’m not really into close-and-personal relations with my colleagues.”
Gray snorted. “I’m not asking you on a date, Megan,” he said, “I’m just asking you to drop by my office. I have something I want to talk to you about.”
“Ah.” She sounded relieved. “About what, specifically?”
“Just some paperwork,” he replied, doing his best to sound casual. “Concerning the Anderson case. You can talk about that, right?”
“I can,” she said. “But I can’t go back and crack him open again or anything. It’s been a few weeks since the case was closed.”
That was a warning, he felt. Certainly the case had been closed a few weeks ago. But it had only been a few weeks, and Anderson didn’t have any family. His body would still be in cold storage while he was being processed for release to civil authorities for burial in keeping with his company policy; these things took forever when you didn’t have anyone to push for it to be expedited. The dead really didn’t have much of a place of importance where the company was concerned. “We’ll talk about it when you get up here,” he said. “I appreciate it.”
“Yep. Talk to you then.” She hung up, leaving Gray to reflect on the exchange. Her tone was very guarded, which intrigued him. It also made him more than a little anxious. What if she reported this little exchange to the head of Evidence Processing? Megan was a shift coroner, which made her a Tier Five employee like Gray was. Her boss was a Tier Six. Techs in a single city didn’t go beyond that unless they were coordinating regional efforts or in charge of research, which would put them back at headquarters or in a city with a laboratory complex, like in New York or Toronto. Most police firms were like this, and it was probably why they tended to defect to other companies after a while. Now that he thought about it, though, he hadn’t heard of a single defection from Civil Protection during his time here. He checked the clock. It was nearly three. They’d both be off in a few hours.
Gray got up and poured himself a cup of coffee from the little Braun brewing unit that had come with the office furniture, then sat down behind his desk again. He thought of going home. Would Angie be there, or would she be busy? She didn’t have a key, after all, just clearance from security to buzz her in. Maybe she’d be working tonight. Working for Moody, the fucker. Christ, he hoped she didn’t end up getting killed over this.
And then there was the fact that he was acting like such a soppy idiot. Last night he was ready to throw her out over those fucking pictures, and then the moment he saw her…well, he hadn’t been in love like this before. Maybe that was part of it, disintegrating what people would consider their best judgment. It was in the past, right? And it wasn’t like he
could open the Anderson case again. And they weren’t having sex because of the whole ethical tie-up with Vice, right? Maybe. He just hoped this wasn’t going to be another fucking letdown. Gray didn’t know that he could handle it.
Well, nothing more to do but to finish off some paperwork…and then hurry up and wait.
Megan Cinders came up to Gray’s office about half past five, by which time he had switched over to a glass of the Islay malt that he’d been given by Administration as a welcome gift to his new position. It was good Scotch, very peaty, and he sipped quietly on it as he watched the news. Megan ducked her pretty head into the doorway, hair braided into a mahogany cable that hung from her shoulder. She had shed her work scrubs in favor of a plain gray sweater with a thick cuffed collar and black slacks, the designer of either he couldn’t identify. Her short-heeled boots were dark and similarly unimpressive.
“Yo-ho, Detective,” she called, looking at him. “You still need me?”
Gray blinked at her from his monitor and nodded. “Yes,” he said with a nod, “Please, come in. Close the door behind you.”
“Well…” She drifted off, looking around the office. She seemed impressed. “I wasn’t going to stick around the office. I was going to get dinner. Why don’t you come with me?”
He blinked at her again. “Beg your pardon?”
Megan gave him a flat look. “Look, Detective, I don’t plan on being here any longer than I have to be. I’ve been cutting up dead people all day, and I just want to get a cup of coffee and relax. C’mon, I’m sure you don’t want to stick around here all evening, right?”
Gray looked at her. She was looking at the ceiling – or rather, making a determined effort to to look as though she was – and a thought came to him. “Well, all right,” he said with a smile, getting up and putting the bottle of Scotch back in the desk drawer from whence it came. “Did you have somewhere in mind?”
Bone Wires Page 19
