“Hmmm?”
“Amend the Constitution. It says here that the President’s amendments include removing the paranormal, supernatural, and magical classifications from the Bill of Rights. He wants to lump them all under a new one—preternatural—and give them the same rights as us. It’s unbelievable! The Bill of Rights has stood for... well, forever. He’ll start talking about repealing them next. What is the man thinking of? It was a sad day when Mitchell stepped into the White House.”
“Uh huh,” Chris said vaguely, frowning at the report before her.
She had printed relevant portions of Baxter’s files to study in her off time. Strictly speaking she shouldn’t have brought them home, but what the hell—she needed to get a handle on this case before another body turned up.
She took a bite of her toast and turned the page.
Baxter was thorough; she would give him that. Before conducting her own interviews, she had read the transcripts of his, but she learned nothing new. She had hoped for more.
“Chris?”
“What?”
“I said it was a sad day when Mitchell stepped into the White House.”
“But you voted for him.”
Mark’s face heated in embarrassment. “Well yeah, but I didn’t know he was going to do this. If this goes through Congress, everything under the sun will have the right to vote. Good goddess, Chris, we could have a vamp in the White House!”
She snorted. “Never happen.”
“It could though; by law it could.”
“Who the hell would vote a vamp into office? Be serious.”
“That’s not the point, it was just an example. I am being serious, Chris. If the amendments go through everything will change. You think you have problems now, wait until you have to protect the rights of vamps to feed on their victims.”
She just shook her head and ate her breakfast. If the government gave vamps the vote, she would defend their right to do so, even if it meant escorting the buggers to the polling station personally. She might not like doing it, but she would see it done. She enforced the laws of State and Republic; she did not make them. She had no interest in politics.
She glanced at the time and gulped her coffee. “I’ve got to go,” she said, gathering up her papers and rising to her feet.
Mark reached out and pulled her into his lap for a quick cuddle. “I love you, Lieutenant.”
“Hmmm,” she sighed in pleasure as his hands wandered under her sweater. It might have become more interesting but she had work. “I’ve gotta go.”
Mark sighed and kissed her cheek. “I know. Be careful out there. This,” he flicked a finger against her weapon where it hung from her shoulder harness, “doesn’t make you safe. This is your greatest weapon,” he tapped her temple gently.
He was right.
“I’m always careful,” she said disentangling herself from his embrace. She grabbed his head and kissed him. “There’s something on account.”
He made a grab for her when she let him go, but she danced back out of reach.
“Now you won’t be able to think of anything but me all day!” she said as she pulled on her jacket and grabbed her keys from the counter beside the sink. “Love you.”
She stepped out the door.
An accident that needed heavy lift equipment to clear, closed the highway and delayed her drive to work. Even in this time of automated vehicles and AI driven traffic control, accidents happened. She watched the crane circling overhead, waiting for its ground crew to signal their readiness. As soon as the last ambulance lifted off, the ground crew contacted the crane, and it swept in to hover over the wrecked vehicles. Its huge tilt jet engines screamed to arrest its speed, and then settled into a steady howl as the crane lowered its main sling.
Chris turned up the music and flicked on the autopilot. She could use the delay to continue her reading. Fairman’s message disk had proven to be her only real lead. Ironic really. All the data that Baxter had collected on the shifter slayings led nowhere but in a circle. Fairman’s murder—apparently unconnected at first glance—was her best chance to solve the case. Despite DD’s help in running an rigorous comp search, followed by Chris’ interviews with the victims’ friends, relatives, and work colleagues, she had failed to find Tony. The woman mentioned on the message disk, Sandy Hodges, had failed to appear for work the day of Vincent’s murder, and none of her friends knew her whereabouts.
Tony had mentioned three men: Danny, Marty, and Jay. Baxter had positively identified Daniel Bryce as the first victim. Marty and Jay had thus far failed to turn up. The other two victims, Steven Derrico and Andrew Fain had worked with Bryce and Fairman at Collard Freight, just as Baxter had maintained. Everything appeared aboveboard, but it hadn’t convinced Flint. She still thought Hatch and his company were a front of some kind. It was possible, so Chris hadn’t objected to Flint using her contacts to dig into its business.
Nothing had yet come of it. Flint was still hopeful.
Once passed the crash site, Chris’ car picked up speed until the tyres were humming over the pavement. She would be at her desk in no time. She quickly reassembled her papers into the folder, and then turned off the autopilot. Driving manually took her mind off work for a while.
Mark had brought up the wedding again last night. He wanted to set the date for eight weeks this coming Sunday, but she wasn’t sure. She wanted to marry him, she was certain of that, but he wanted the works—white wedding, bridesmaids, huge cake—the real deal. Ten year marriage contracts with options for renewal were pretty much standard, but Mark wouldn’t hear of it. He was so retro in his thinking sometimes, just like his parents.
She would have been happier signing a marriage contract in the presence of a lawyer and AI like a normal person. It would certainly be easier and more comfortable, but Mark wouldn’t even talk about it. As far as he was concerned, the marriage wouldn’t be real without a priest saying the words with dozens of friends and family as witnesses. At least a big old wedding would make his parents happy. They were a little uncomfortable with their boy marrying a cop in the first place, let alone having him do it by signing a simple contract.
She had made the mistake of telling them about her work once. Thank the goddess she hadn’t related to them one of her more harrowing cases. Instead, she had chosen to tell them about her time in uniform and her special kids. They had listened in uncomprehending silence as she told them how she had befriended some of the children running around Monster Central.
Mark’s parents couldn’t conceive of children running in packs like animals, and hadn’t believed her when she explained how they survived. They couldn’t imagine the violence she saw in her life. It had no place in theirs, and she was thankful for that. It still amazed her that there were people living in the city who had never witnessed a violent act. The Grinelys had been married almost their entire adult lives and were the perfect couple. Sometimes, when it got bad and she wondered what the hell she was doing, she would imagine them safe at home laughing together. It got her through.
Chris parked her car outside Central and headed in, but before she got halfway up the steps to the main doors, someone hailed her.
“Chrissy!”
Only one person ever called her that. Andrew Norris—called J-bone by his friends—a gang name he had never explained. He was one of her weasels and usually more circumspect. Chris trotted back down the steps and met him at the corner where he loitered.
“What the hell are you doing here, J-bone?” she hissed and shoved him around the corner before someone saw them together. “You know better than this. You’ll be no good to me if we’re seen together.” She hurried him toward a place she knew. “You pawned your link again didn’t you? Didn’t you? I told you to keep it on you!”
He was supposed to pass her information using his link, not hang around Central looking for her. She supplied second-hand links to all of her kids to prevent this kind of situation. Ken called her kids her little waifs, or s
ometimes her weasel brigade, but even he didn’t know the whole of it. Gangs were common enough that no one bothered to learn who they all were. Well she had bothered, and now had dozens of them living throughout the area like extra pairs of eyes. It only cost her a link and a few dollars now and then… and besides, they needed someone willing to listen to their troubles. She had a special relationship with her kids, one not normally shared between a cop and her informants. She didn’t want it widely known how much she cared for them, and she didn’t dare let Cappy find out about some of the things she had done in the past to protect them. Not if she wanted to continue carrying a badge.
“I’ll get you another one,” she said, pushing him into the doorway of the coffee shop.
J-bone waved that away. “I’ll get it back after we’re done here. I just needed a little extra cash yesterday. You know what I’m saying?”
“I know what you’re saying all right. I thought you were clean.”
“I am!” he said a little too fast for Chris to believe him. “Look, don’t sweat it. I done good. I got something real good for ya. Swear.”
She pushed him inside and sat him down at a corner table. When a waitress came by, she ordered two coffees and a doughnut for J-bone. His eyes lit up like a kid. It was so pathetically easy to keep him happy.
“Give.”
“Not so fast. Money first and then we talk. I need a hundred.”
“A hundred!” she hissed in outrage. “Since when have your prices doubled?”
“Since shifters started croaking left and right, and since I know you’re looking for a certain chicky named Sandy.”
Chris’ eyes narrowed. “Describe her.”
J-bone grinned. “I thought you trusted me…” he broke off as the waitress returned with their order. He took a big bite of his doughnut. “It’s good!”
“Glad you like it. Describe Sandy or no hundred.”
“About my height, brown eyes, and dark hair, but she usually wears a blond wig. She’s half Mexican or something—has a real nice tan all over. She has a neat tattoo on her right thigh.”
It sounded like her, though Chris hadn’t known about the tattoo. There were probably lots of woman matching the description, but she couldn’t take the chance of this woman being the one and passing up the opportunity. She pulled out her Dad’s old wallet, and plucked a pair of fifties from her stash. She always kept some cash on her for just this kind of thing; she made a note to put a voucher on Cappy’s desk to replace it.
She slid the money across the table.
J-bone made the notes disappear. “I was fooling around with the guys last night. You know how it goes, one of us follows someone, and another bumps into him—”
“Don’t tell me this; I don’t want to hear this!” she said trying to shut her ears to his crime. If he told her, she would have to take him in. “Get to the part where you know where Sandy is.”
“I’m getting to it. Anyway, we was fooling around and having a few laughs, when I heard this screaming. Nothing unusual about it, there’s always something going down, but we decided to have ourselves a look. What do you think we saw?”
“Sandy?”
“Yeah. There was this dirty great big dog chewing on a guy on the ground, and Sandy standing in the corner of the alley screaming her head off. She was almost climbing the walls trying to get away. I charged the thing and smacked it a good one with this bat I had… I mean that I found. It ran off.”
She tried not to look sceptical. J-bone wasn’t hero. If the other guy carried a knife, he wanted a tank before he would get himself involved.
“Sandy was real grateful, I mean real grateful,” he said with a leer. “She told me all sorts of stuff afterwards. That’s how I knew you would pay.”
“What about the guy?”
“Dead,” he said with a disinterested shrug. “Probably still there.”
“I need a location for the alley, and I need Sandy in my hands right now,” she said intently.
“No problem. I left her sleeping at my place.”
“She better still be there.”
“She will be. I doped her up pretty good. She ain’t used to it. Probably be out for a couple of hours yet.”
“Good.”
Chris made certain she had J-bone’s current address, and made him draw a map to the alley. With plenty of prompting from her, he produced a half decent map. She added one or two landmarks—clubs and bars they both knew, to make sure.
“Here? You’re certain?”
J-bone pointed to the map. “This here is Lost Souls, and this Jumpin’ Jaks. Frankie’s Bar and Grill on the corner of Main and Sixth is here. You can’t miss.”
She folded the napkin. “Okay. Don’t go back to your place until it’s over. As far as you’re concerned, we raided the apartment below yours. Okay?”
“Good doing business with you, Chrissy.” He rummaged in his pocket and produced a metal key. “You’ll need this. Leave it in the door when you go, I ain’t got nothing worth stealing. I only locked it to keep the silly bitch in there for you.”
Chris took the key and left him eating another doughnut.
Chris knocked once and entered the office to find her captain sitting behind his desk reading a report on his comp. “Sorry to disturb you, Cappy, but I need a favour.”
Cappy sighed and looked at her glumly. “Why does everyone that comes in here say that?”
“Maybe they think of you as a father figure?”
He snorted and waved her into a seat. “What do you need?”
“I’ve found Sandy Hodges… maybe,” she said hedging. “I’ve got an address where she’s supposed to be, but I need a warrant and I need it fast. I don’t want her disappearing on me.”
Cappy nodded and started making the call to the Assistant District Attorney. Chris gave him the address of the apartment and waited for the warrant to be authorised. Five minutes later, the hard copy printer chattered, and she stood to receive what she needed. She checked the details including the date and signature. All was in order.
“Thanks, Cappy.”
He nodded and turned back to his reports.
Chris tucked the warrant in her pocket and left his office. She found Ken and Agent Flint chatting like old friends at his desk. Flint had ditched her power suit on her second day in favour of more rugged working clothes—black jeans, black sneakers, and red polo-neck sweater. For weapons, Flint favoured a double shoulder rig, and carried a pair of Glock needlers. She wore a leather jacket that could have come from the same rack that Chris’ came from. It hadn’t though. Flint’s was real leather.
Chris approved of Flint’s choice of working clothes, but not her choice of weapon. Needlers were exclusively military hardware, used primarily off world where weapons with more stopping power could rupture a dome or breach a ship’s hull. They were non-standard even for the Feds. For someone like Flint, who preferred two weapons, Chris would have expected her to carry a police issue stunner like all uniformed officers carried, partnered with a federal issue K6 Remington. Chris used a K6, but carried a Sharpe’s Defender II at the small of her back as a backup. Defenders had a short range, but they packed a hell of a punch. If she ever needed to use it, she would be in trouble in more ways than one. They were illegal as hell.
“We have a lead,” she said quickly to prevent questions. “And we have to split up. Ken, I want you to check out this alley,” she handed him J-bone’s napkin and pointed out the right spot. “Ask Cappy to let you have Jimmy for a couple of hours. He’ll go for it.”
“And what will you be doing?”
“Agent Flint and I will be picking up a certain doped up young lady.”
Flint’s ears figuratively pricked. “You found Sandy. How?”
“You’re not the only one with contacts. Let’s move.”
They moved.
Chris drove. Flint didn’t object—they’d had it out the first day. Flint was on her turf and in her vehicle, so she drove. Simple. She manoeuv
red the car through traffic as if piloting a missile. Flint drew a sharp breath a couple of times, and Chris grinned.
“Are you trying to kill me or yourself?”
Chris shrugged. “When I try to kill you, you’ll know.”
“It’s obvious you have a problem with me, but do you even know why?”
“I don’t like people sticking their noses in my business.”
“That’s all this is... professional rivalry?”
“That’s all.”
Flint frowned. “You don’t think it has more to do with Ken and how he sees me?”
Her knuckles whitened on the wheel. “Don’t flatter yourself. Ken doesn’t need anyone to tell him how to run his life. It will take more than a bitch in heat to turn his head.”
Flint’s eyes widened and she would have retorted, but something else must have occurred to her because she calmed abruptly. “That’s what you think of me... a bitch in heat? You don’t think that Ken might see something different?”
Chris slapped the autopilot on and turned to face her unwanted partner. “Look, I really don’t care what he sees. I know what I see: someone with her own agenda and a rather large opinion of herself, messing with my partner, my case, and my fucking life! I don’t need you and I don’t want you, but I’m stuck with you until I close this case. I guess I’ll have to deal with it.”
“That’s plain enough. If you don’t want me with you, why am I here?”
“You’re here so I can keep an eye on you. I could have sent you off with Jimmy to collect our latest victim, but Ken is my partner not Jimmy. This case is as much his as mine.”
“And you want to keep him away from me.”
Chris smiled. “That too.”
J-bone lived in a dilapidated dump dating back to before the Urban Revolt. If space hadn’t been at such a premium and its owners so tight fisted, they would have torn it down and replaced it with something a little more livable. It didn’t have security at the front doors, and it certainly didn’t have its own AI... it barely had running water. J-bone’s apartment did have the basics to sustain life—a lockable door, four walls, and the standard communications and entertainment centre, but that was about it.
Shifter Legacies Special Edition: Books 1-2 Page 56
