“Fair enough.”
Chris bagged the disk and labelled it with the case number. She would log it in for analysis after she had made a copy for herself back at Central.
“Let’s snag the security disk from Goodwin and get back. I want a word with Baxter soonest.”
Ken nodded and led the way out.
“Where the hell is Humber?” Captain Stokes yelled over the noise of his busy department. A few faces looked up from their comps, or broke off from conversations to point in Chris’ direction. “In my office, now!”
Chris sighed. She had barely sat down at her comp to make a copy of Vincent’s message disk. She stood up as if on her way, but as soon as Cappy re-entered his office, she sat down again and quickly copied the disk. It took less than half a minute. She extracted the original from her comp the instant the duplicate was ready. On the way to Cappy’s office, she labelled a case and tucked the original disk inside. She stopped at Detective Carlson’s desk on the way. He was reading through a stack of reports.
“Hey, Jimmy, do me a favour?”
Carlson smiled up at her. “Sure, Chris, what do you need?”
“You couldn’t get this down to the geeks for me could you?”
“Sure, no problem.”
“Thanks.” She handed the cases containing the security and message discs to him along with a request for a full analysis. “Just drop the receipt on my desk if I’m not back.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks,” she said again and hurried to see what Cappy wanted. Ken joined her on the way, and they entered the office together. “What’s up?” she asked, eyeing Baxter and the unfamiliar face beside him.
“Sit,” Cappy said, pointing at the remaining chair.
“Should I go?” Ken asked, already backing toward the door.
Cappy glared at him. “Stay!”
“I’ll just stand over here then shall I…? I’ll stand over here, Sir.”
Ken leaned against the wall next to the door.
Chris took a seat eyeing Baxter. His eyes flicked to the unfamiliar woman in warning, and a little head-shake told Chris to be careful. She didn’t know why she should. The stranger had yet to do or say anything threatening. The woman was a glowing beauty. Her high cheekbones, her posture, her hair styled within an inch of its life… she wouldn’t have been out of place in Style Magazine, but here? Ken stared as if trying to memorise the vision and Chris scowled. The outsider smiled at him gently, and then let it widen when she looked at Chris. She had perfect white teeth.
Damn!
She wore a matching pale grey jacket and knee length skirt obviously designed to radiate power and prestige. Her too innocent expression sounded warning bells in Chris’ brain, and so did the fact that it didn’t reach the woman’s eyes. They were hard and calculating. She wore makeup she didn’t need, as if trying to dull her radiance rather than enhance it. The painfully white blouse she wore was open two buttons too many, and displayed more than the heavy gold cross and chain around her neck. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
Tacky, very tacky.
“Chris, this is Special Agent Flint,” Cappy said. “Agent Flint, this is Lieutenant Humber currently assigned as primary for the cases in question.”
Baxter scowled.
“Pleased to meet you,” Flint said, not offering to shake hands.
Lord and Lady, even her voice promises sex!
“Same here,” she said not meaning it. Why had no one mentioned the Feds were involved in this? “Cases in question?”
A smile briefly appeared on Flint’s face and then fled. “I’ll let Captain Stokes explain.”
She turned to Cappy. “Explain what?”
“The Chief has expressed… concern regarding the recent spree of shifter slayings—his words. That means someone with clout has been pressuring the Mayor to do something proactive for a change.” Cappy smiled at that. “He in turn has been pressuring Chief Simpson, who pressured Commander Watson, who in turn pressured… yada, yada, yada. You get the picture. Now it’s my turn to pressure you, Chris.”
“But I’m not primary on those cases, Baxter is. I was going to give him Vincent Fairman too. I doubt the case is linked to his—”
“It is,” Baxter growled.
“—but… it is? I’ve only just got back from the scene. How can you know that?”
“All the victims spent time together in Green Haven.”
Green Haven was a maximum-security prison in Duchess County. Vincent had spent some time there for assault with a deadly weapon. If not for his species, he wouldn’t have been put in maximum security, but shifters were seriously dangerous individuals. Anything less than maximum security begged for escapes on a daily basis.
“And they all worked for the same man,” Flint chimed in.
“Who was their employer?”
Flint handed her a colour brochure. “Collard Freight. It’s a reasonably successful shipping company supplying various essentials to the mining colonies. They have warehousing and offices here.”
Chris paged through the brochure noting the colourful pictures of happy smiling faces working with shipping crates or loaders. The ships were idealised versions of the real thing, the sky azure blue, and the sun always shone. On the last page she found the photograph of a man sitting behind a desk smiling for the camera; the legend beneath read: John S. Hatch -- CEO Collard Freight.
“What do we know about this Hatch character?”
Baxter shrugged. “He’s clean at first glance. I’ve put in a request for a deep search into his background. The geeks tell me we’ll know more in a day or two. On the surface, he’s exactly what he appears: a wealthy businessman.”
“One who employs shifter heavies,” Ken put in.
Flint shrugged. “So what else is new? Companies using shifters instead of guard dogs are pretty common these days. Lephmann saw to that with his NSPCL nonsense.”
Chris agreed with a firm nod. Trying to take something a shifter had been set to guard was close to suicidal. Nothing but a more powerful non-human, or a human with a very big boomer loaded with silver, could hope to take one on with any hope of success.
“I’m assigning you as primary for Fairman and the others, Chris,” Cappy said. “Baxter will turn over everything he has on the case to you.”
“But I don’t want it!”
“Did you say something?” Cappy asked coldly. “Since when do you have a say in what orders you will obey? The Chief wants whatever the Mayor wants, and the Mayor wants re-election! He told Simpson to call in the feebies; Flint being here is the result and she wants you as primary.”
She turned to Flint and demanded, “Why?”
“Because of the shifter angle. Your reports on the Stanton case make very interesting reading. You tracked him, hounded him, and almost took him out. No one else has come close.”
“Stanton is dead, but even if he weren’t, you can’t tell me you believe he would dirty his hands with killing shifters.”
“Stanton is capable of almost anything, but no, I’m not saying he’s behind these murders. I’ve been tasked with helping you track down the one responsible for these deaths, and that’s what I will do.”
Flint was hiding something, but Chris believed she meant what she said. “I have a partner.”
“Now you have two.”
“Cappy?”
Cappy shook his head. “Sorry, Chris, it’s out of my hands. This is top priority. I’ll reassign your other cases.”
She drew a sharp breath. Someone else taking over her cases… Baxter maybe? She eyed him speculatively. He grimaced back at her knowing how she felt. Her files were under her personal seal, but if ordered to give him access, she would have to obey. All her sources; names, dates, everything was in there. She would have to purge those files. She couldn’t betray her weasels by allowing their details to fall into another’s hands.
She stood, preparing to leave. “If there’s nothing else, I have a lot of catch up reading to do.
”
Cappy nodded and gestured at Baxter. “Dave will go over what we know so far and get you up to speed.”
Taking Cappy’s words as his dismissal, Baxter stood to join Chris and Ken as they left. Flint made to do the same.
“Agent Flint, may I have a word before you leave?”
“Of course, Captain…”
The door closing prevented Chris from hearing anything further.
She made her way to her desk thinking about purging her files. She would make copies first, and then give Baxter access to the edited originals. No doubt he wanted to do similar things with his own files.
“Give me an hour would you?”
Baxter nodded and went to his own desk.
Ken looked back at Cappy’s door. “You really don’t like her do you?”
“What’s to like? Look Ken, I don’t know her and I don’t trust her.”
“You don’t trust anyone!”
“I trust you, and I trust Cappy. I don’t trust feds that stick their noses in my business and then play games about their reasons. Flint has her own agenda; I’d stake my pension on it… such as it is.”
“You think so? She seemed nice enough to me. A little pushy maybe, but she would have to be to make it as far as she has.”
She rolled her eyes. “Stop thinking with your balls and use your brain.”
“I resent that! So she’s attractive, so what? I’ve been in the job long enough not to be swayed by a pretty face. I held out against you didn’t I?”
Chris snorted. She knew what she was, and a pretty face wasn’t it. Flint was sex on legs. Ken would have to be stone not to realise it, or any man for that matter.
She sat at her desk and furtively pinched the flesh at her ribs. Was she putting on weight? She shrugged. So what if she had a little meat on her bones? Mark liked her body well enough, and that satisfied her. She smoothed her sweater and tried to think about work. Thoughts of her fiancé she did not need right now.
“Well didn’t I?”
She smiled. “Yeah you did, now let’s get to work on this. I’ll be damned if I’ll give my sources to anyone. They trust me to protect them.”
“You won’t let them down, Chris, they know that.”
* * *
2 ~ Questions
Her second day on the case, Chris arrived at Central bright and early determined to light a fire under the geeks. Along with the unwanted participation of the FBI in the form of Agent Flint, Chris had been given the authority to requisition almost limitless manpower and resources. In some ways, it was gratifying to know that her superiors trusted her with such power, but it also had the effect of ramping up the pressure on her. The brass would expect results and fast.
She parked close to the entrance, pleased to have beaten out a claim jumper who saw the space at the same moment she did. She smirked and trotted up the steps to Central’s main doors. There was the usual weekday chaos inside. Uniformed and plain-clothes officers coming and going, civilians visiting for one reason or another, suited attorneys hurrying toward Visitor’s Reception to ask where their clients were being detained. She dismissed the chaos as normal and headed for the elevators.
Central was housed in a purpose-built building; it had been moved to its current location from 6th Street in 2026. The Urban Revolt forced massive changes in policing the city. The result of one of those changes was an entirely new Central Bureau that no longer simply oversaw operations in areas such as Newton, Rampart, and Monster Central, but instead took active control of them and many others. Community policing still had a place, but the Urban Revolt had shown that a strong centralised authority could react much faster to emergencies, and was more efficient in dispatching assets to quell public unrest. She had seen riots during her years in uniform. There was nothing worse than facing rampaging shifters. She would never forget facing them down with nothing but an assault rifle and a bellyful of fear.
Chris rode the elevator up to the second floor.
The techno geeks of the Cyber Analysis Division operated out of the second floor of Central to examine electronic evidence of all kinds. The data held on security discs, comps, and even in a robot’s memory could be critical to cracking a case. There were two kinds of geek on the second floor—the Cads and the Cats. The Cads, named for their division, were hardly cops at all. They spent all their time at Central taking computers apart, or analysing data in minute detail. In her opinion, they belonged in the crime lab across town where every other type of evidence was secured and studied. The brass thought otherwise. The grandiosely named Cyber Action Teams, or Cats, acted like cops but most agreed they were just another species of geek. They investigated cyber crime such as computer fraud or Infonet security breaches, collecting evidence for the Cads to analyse back at Central, and then acting upon what they found.
She stepped off the elevator and headed for DD’s cubicle. She had specifically requested Donna Delgado be assigned to her case, because she liked Donna and knew they worked well together. Chris threaded her way between the cubicles—most of them unmanned this early in the morning—and found Delgado slumped over her desk asleep, still wearing the headphones she habitually wore. Chris went to the coffee machine and bought two cups, before returning to awaken DD.
She lifted one earphone. “Oh Deee Deee,” she whispered, and then yelled, “wake up!” She let the earphone snap back in place.
Delgado shot to her feet blinking her bleary eyes. “Yes, sir! I’m awake, sir! I wasn’t doing… Chris?”
She grinned and sat on the corner of Delgado’s cluttered desk. “Coffee?”
“You cow, I nearly wet myself !” Delgado spluttered, but she took the offered cup and took a sip. She grimaced. “This is disgusting.” She gulped another mouthful and took off her headphones. “What time is it?”
She glanced at her watch. “Half seven.”
“In the morning?”
She nodded.
Delgado groaned and slumped into her chair. “I did it again.”
“You slept over?”
Delgado nodded miserably and winced. She massaged her neck. “I have no life.”
Chris took Delgado’s empty cup and replaced it with the full one. “Drink this, and you’ll feel better.”
“I’m serious, Chris. I have no life. I live in this cubicle twenty-four hours a day and for what?”
“Six-fifty a week after tax?”
“Yeah.”
“Stop beating yourself up, DD. So you’re a geek, you can’t help it.”
Delgado snorted and drank her second coffee. “If I worked in the private sector, I could rake in ten times what I’m earning now. I was head-hunted once!”
Chris grinned. Delgado always fell back on that. Techtron—one of the biggest corporations in the computer industry—had apparently asked Delgado to join them straight from college, but she had declined. She had been hot to join the force and catch bad guys, but the academy instructors had other ideas. They were trained to spot talent, and Delgado had it coming out of her ears where tech was concerned. So here she was, and here she would stay.
“You’re the best, DD.”
“Damn straight.”
“Besides, that you have no life works for me. It means I know where to find you.”
Delgado growled.
“Seriously. It’s reassuring to know that when I need a geek, you’re always here for me.”
“Don’t rub it in.”
She smiled. “Okay, let’s get serious. You’re mine for a while. Did they tell you that?”
“Dick called me into his office and gave me your stuff. That’s why I’m still here and not in bed. You owe me big time.”
“Hold that thought.” Chris spotted a chair in an empty cubicle and snagged it before its owner arrived to claim it. She wheeled it into Delgado’s cubicle and sat. “Nail me a suspect, and one of my tickets for the Kings vs. Islanders’ game is yours.”
Delgado’s eyes widened. “Bullshit! You haven’t got ’em. They sol
d out weeks ago.”
Although Mark preferred baseball, she had planned to take him to the game in an effort to teach him the error of his ways. Ice hockey was one of very few things they didn’t see eye-to-eye on, and the next game was an important one. The Kings needed a win, and the NY Islanders were still holding a grudge after their last defeat. Like Chris, Delgado was a big Kings’ fan.
“Oh, I’ve got ’em all right. I’m taking Mark.”
“You don’t want to do that, Chris. He’s no Kings’ fan. Besides, you’ll look too eager to please. Now I on the other hand—”
“Can be bought?”
“That’s harsh. I was about to say that I would kill to see that game!”
They laughed together.
“Give me something good, DD, and I’ll take you to see the Kings beat the Islanders. Deal?”
“Deal,” Delgado said and reached for a folder. “Look at this.”
The folder contained fuzzy photographs of the corridor outside Vincent Fairman’s apartment. The lighting had been bad, and the security system in his building wasn’t the best on the market, nor was it the second best. It was trash, and the stills taken from the disk were little better than useless. She flicked through them and stopped when she found Vincent unlocking his door. Although the picture was fuzzy, she recognised him by his clothes. The time printed on the photo indicated he had arrived home in the early hours of the morning. No surprise. The next few photos showed other people coming or going; she would need to track each one down and eliminate them as suspects. The last few pictures showed a man wearing a dark coat and navy-blue cap stopping outside Vincent’s door, and reaching toward the lock with something in his hand.
“Can’t you clean these up?”
Delgado snorted. “They are cleaned up.”
Chris looked at her in disbelief.
“I used my own enhancement program on it, but that’s the best I could do.”
“But I can’t see his face!”
“That’s not my fault; he’s covering up. Look at the angle of his head. He’s diddling the lock without looking at it and keeping his face turned away from the camera. Nothing short of a fully integrated AI system would have nailed him, and maybe not even then. He could just as easily have worn a mask—he didn’t, but he could have.”
Shifter Legacies Special Edition: Books 1-2 Page 54
