David nodded. “I’ll arrange for protection. You want me to get an ambulance?”
“Can use van.”
David closed the door. “String, Aslanti is ready to go back. Call Della, and arrange some kind of guard to stay—”
“The hell he will.” Rose got out of the swing roughly, jarring Haas and the girls. She went into the living room, found Aslanti, and folded her arms.
“He stays here.”
Aslanti teetered backward on her fringe. “I cannot have the responsibility.”
Rose cocked her head sideways. “Who asked you? He’s my responsibility. He stays with me till I know he’s safe.”
“Who you?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Rose,” David said.
“Don’t get in my way, David.”
He hated it when she said that.
Rose looked at Aslanti. “He’s not your responsibility, he’s mine. Not yours either.” She glanced at David. “Dahmi went to Bellmini under security. Dahmi’s gone. I’m one person, and I have to sleep sometimes. Be a lot easier if he’s right underfoot.”
Haas’s voice drifted in from the porch. “No good to argue, David.”
David looked over his shoulder. String was peering into the open window. Cool night air ruffled his scales. David glanced down at Biachi. Surely it was too cold in here for an injured Elaki.
“He is recovering?” String said. “He is most quiet and still. This is good.”
Aslanti skittered sideways. “His abilities of concentration excellent for young one. Much is the discipline.” She waved a fin at String. “A pouchling of the chemaki?”
String leaned backward. “Am not chemaki active. Pouchling of pouch-sib.”
“Ah,” said Aslanti. “I myself am not chemaki active. It is difficult to arrange, in consideration of the work.”
There was a long moment of silence. Mel looked at David, raised his eyebrows, but for once kept his mouth shut.
“He will be safety first here,” String said.
Aslanti became still. “Best at hospital, for the safe side. Pouchling of pouch-sib. Must take care.”
“No,” Rose said.
David knew his face was turning red. But he would let String call it.
“I do not like this feel,” Aslanti said. “Am I the body technician only?”
Rose leaned against the wall. “How much do we owe you, sweetheart?”
David glanced at Rose and then Mel. There were times he couldn’t tell them apart.
THIRTY-NINE
The lights of the homicide van pulsed in the darkness. Four A.M. was a down time even in Little Saigo. David chewed his lip, keeping an eye on the ready team. They had overestablished their presence, in his opinion—too much gear, protective padding, weapons in view. It would be an outrageous display in any other part of town.
David watched a mother line her children up to watch. He thought of his own daughters, tucked at last into bed under the watchful eye of Haas.
Rose was leaning against the entrance to the tunnel. She was still, except for her little finger, tapping a hard and irregular staccato against her thigh.
“Come on, Gumby, not tonight.”
Mel’s voice. Loud. David turned to look.
String held a three-foot length of rope. “You must cut in half and I will make it restored. It is the trick of magic.”
“Aw, gee, and I don’t got a knife.”
David noticed the children, eyes round and watchful.
“Rose. Got a knife?”
She handed him a small, razor-edged flick knife, highly illegal.
David wondered when she had quit carrying the benevolent Swiss army knife that was equipped with a gentle blade and tiny scissors. He turned sideways, trying to block the blade from the view of the children. Likely, he thought, some of them carried similar knives.
The blade snipped through the rope as easily as he could break a toothpick.
“Can’t see,” one of the children said.
David stepped back out of the way. Someone—he couldn’t see who—aimed one of the spotlights at String. The Elaki held up both ends of the rope and waved them at the children.
“This a new exercise in community relations, David?” Captain Halliday had his hands in his pockets, a quirky half smile on his face.
“Beats armed robots and SWAT snipes,” David said.
A cheer went up, and two of the smallest children clapped. String held the rope high, intact now, and though there were groans from the cynical, no one moved away.
“Please to request the bucket? Is available?”
“What you going to do, Elaki-man?”
“David?” Halliday said. “What we got here?”
David turned his back on String and walked toward Rose.
Halliday made a noise. “Should of figured, with Rose in on it. We got bodies, right?”
Rose folded her arms. “Captain.”
“Rose.” He jammed his hands deeper into his pockets. “I understand we have you to thank for keeping String’s nephew alive.”
Rose shrugged.
“You have the guys that did it?”
“Elaki guys,” Rose said. “Two of them.”
“Dead, I suppose?”
“Suicides.”
The captain raised one eyebrow. “A tendency people often have when they run into you, Rose.”
“Don’t take my word for it, Captain.”
Halliday was nodding, looking back over his shoulder. “Let’s get a look.”
Rose glanced at David. “You don’t need to go down with us, David. You can—”
“I’m going,” David said flatly.
Rose lifted her chin and turned her back. David crooked a finger at Mel.
String turned a bucket upside down.
“Show must go on,” Mel said. “Want we should leave him?”
David glanced at the absorbed faces of the children. “Leave him.”
The tunnel entrance was wide, clear, and empty. The floor sloped downward immediately, and the passageway narrowed, lit by tubing that ran along the ceiling.
Little Saigo. Proposed as an underground community for the elite, and abandoned when the idea didn’t catch on, and the cost of blasting through solid rock sank the overly optimistic contractor. Halfway constructed, several levels deep, construction tunnels and entrances winding their way in and out of solid rock and dirt—Little Saigo became a magnet for those without choices. Rent free, no government interference, it had been something of a haven until, inevitably, the predators arrived.
There were two major forces in Little Saigo. Residents aligned with Maid Marion or the tunnel rats in a system that was intensely feudal. Both groups coexisted uneasily, territory divvied up, and each looked after their own for a price.
In the dark and desperate years after his father’s disappearance, David and his mother had been allied with Maid Marion. David wondered how Marion was. She was old now, blind, but still the ultimate grandmother—strong, wise, ruthless, and enormously maternal. Police business would play her no favors. He wouldn’t seek her out.
He had the impression of movement, here and there, at offshoots and junctures. No doubt they were observed from time to time, though whenever he turned to look there was no one there. David zipped his jacket. The tunnels stayed a chilly fifty-three degrees, like caves. David wondered if Rose was cold. Her arms were bare and muscular, the summer tan beginning to fade.
She turned sharply, veering left into a wormhole—one of the access tunnels left by the construction workers. David clenched his teeth. As a child, he had moved in and out of the tunnels like a small rat. It hadn’t been the narrow corridors and small spaces that scared him then—just the possibility of what he might find, or be found by.
Sweat started in the small of his back. He took slow, steady breaths.
Mel glanced back at him. “Hang on, David.”
The way narrowed and David had to stoop. The walls were close enough t
hat his jacket scraped rock on both sides. He was hot suddenly, and wanted out of the jacket, but the passageway was too constricted. Rock slid beneath his feet, and the air clouded with the dust they were kicking up. There was a bad smell here, faint, but noticeable. They were getting close to the pump.
The tunnel closed tighter, slope sudden and sharp. The air warmed up, and the smell was strong. David had to tilt sideways. He took small steps. If he fell, the walls would hold him in place. He didn’t like being in a place so tight you couldn’t fall.
The farther down they went the warmer it got. David’s back was itchy with sweat and heat. The pump was back in operation. Pulse and vibration resonated through the rock like surf at the beach. David sagged against the wall. He closed his eyes, thinking of the press of solid rock miles over his head.
He needed air. Air and light and open space.
Total darkness ahead. The noise from the pump was louder, and the smell made him gag. He stumbled forward, trying to catch up. The passage jogged and he hit solid rock. His breath came out like a sob.
David braced his arms on the rough rock walls and went forward, feeling his way. There, ahead, a glow of light. The pump was loud here. He felt the vibration in his bones.
The passage ended in a large, open chamber, with a pit that dropped down from the center. A column of steel, ten feet thick, plunged from the levels above, then disappeared into the depths. It hissed and groaned like a gigantic lung.
The chamber was lit over the pump, the walkways around hidden in shadow. The floor was hard-packed dirt and rock. The barricade of wire mesh that encircled the pump had been torn open and thrust aside. David went to the edge.
It was something like a well, a deep cylinder in the earth dropping God knew how far to collect and be pumped out for treatment. Current accusations said the sewage went directly into local water tables.
Halliday had tied a handkerchief around his nose, and Mel was looking ill. The noise of the pumps made it impossible to talk and be heard. Rose beckoned, then disappeared behind a rock fall. David followed.
The Elaki, cushioned by loose rock and mounds of shed scales, had been tied together and neatly stacked. They were male, or females who had not borne young. They were grey and flaccid, naked and raw without their scales, like plucked birds. David was taken aback. Did Elaki always lose their scales so soon after death?
He knelt close to the bodies. He saw cuts and swells of flesh, but no wounds that struck him as mortal. The eye stalks had shut and filmed over, and the belly slits had spilled a yellow-pink fluid. David thought of poison. He poked the smaller Elaki. A movement sent him reeling backward, and he slipped from his haunches to the floor.
Not one rat, but a mass. Huge and fat, red-eyed and moving slowly. What he’d taken for rubble was a living mass of rodents and cockroaches, so huge and bloated they could barely move.
David scrambled up and backed away. Rose watched him, her eyes glassy. He thought of her down in this pump room, scrabbling in the dirt for her life.
David sidestepped the shiny, black-brown wave of roaches. Some were as long as his hand. They were feeding regularly and happily, and not on sewage. David looked at Mel, who held a handkerchief to his nose. Rose stared off into space, her arms folded.
David pointed to the mass of rats. She nodded, a shudder rippling across her shoulders.
“Why?” he mouthed.
Mel brought his light, shining it into the dark, shadowy corner. Scales and vertebra and more rats.
Twenty-seven Izicho missing. David glanced down at a rat that was so fat its stomach dragged across the rocky dirt. He thought of the old Elaki female who had stood day after day in front of his office, waiting for someone to find her son.
FORTY
David sat in Halliday’s office, picturing the moving mound of rats and cockroaches. He closed his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. He’d wanted to take Rose home himself, but he’d done good to convince the captain to let her go tonight and make a formal statement in the morning.
Mel shoved a bag of brownies under David’s nose. “Have one.”
David stuck his hand in the bag. The brownies were iced, chewy, full of nuts. A little bit stale, but who was he to complain?
“Where’d you get these?”
Mel grinned slowly. “Found them sitting on Della’s desk.”
David snatched his hand away.
“Coward.”
The brownies were small. David took two more.
“Heads up,” Mel said. “Eh, String.” The Elaki was moving slowly, midsection sagging. “You get Aslanti squared away? How’d it go?”
String faltered. “Aslanti, medical does not like me. A sentiment I share in she direction.”
“Sure,” Mel said. “That’s why she drove eighty miles in the middle of the night to look at your nephew.”
“Is her calling,” String said. “Human doctor would not do also?”
“Would not’s about the size of it,” Mel muttered. “Maybe you should have showed her a couple magic tricks.” Mel winked at David. “I got a few tricks I like to show my sweethearts. Like you say she’s got a flower in her shirt pocket, and she says no I don’t. So you bet her she does, and you stick your hand in there, and by golly—”
“I talked to Rose a couple minutes ago,” David said. “Biachi is resting.”
“Not awakened?”
David shook his head.
“Best to rest,” String said.
David offered the bag of brownies. “Have one, String. Chewy chocolate cake things.”
“Ah, chocolate. Most prized among human females.”
“Shit,” Mel said. “Hide the bag.”
David looked up. Pete had come into the bullpen. He stopped by Della’s desk.
David slid the bag behind his back just as Pete stuck his head in the door.
“Hey, Pete,” Mel said. “Been waiting to hear what you guys have come up with.”
“The forensics team is still down there.” He leaned against the wall. “But Della and I are doing records with the Elaki-Three. We’ve been spinning the implication wheel.”
“Yeah?”
“You know these leaks? The sewer leaks from Little Saigo? We called up the EPA analysis, and we got fragments. It’s a protein soup—part Elaki, part shit.”
“Why didn’t anybody let us know?” David asked.
“They did. They filed memos. Probably stacked in somebody’s reader right now.”
Mel looked at the ceiling and forced air between his teeth. “We going to catch hell on this one. How many bodies you think been dumped down there?”
“Who the hell knows?” Pete said. “But no question somebody’s been dumping Elaki down there and doing it wholesale.”
“The jewelry,” David said.
Pete looked at him. “Jewelry?”
“String, do Elaki always shed their scales when they die?”
“Depend. After some kind of death, or certain period of time. Depend on what stage of molt Elaki scale cycle in.”
“I saw an article,” David said. “In that local magazine Saigo City!. And they had a piece on some woman from Little Saigo.”
“Little Saigo?” Mel said. “In a chamber of commerce promo rag?”
“She was selling jewelry made of Elaki scales.”
“Most bad taste,” String muttered.
“I was just wondering,” David said. “Where she got all the scales. Pete, call the magazine and find her. Bring her in.”
“Nastier and nastier,” Pete said. “Listen, you guys seen—”
The telephone rang.
“Homicide,” Mel said. “What. Yeah? Sleeping like a baby. Thanks, Vanelli. Nah, hell, don’t disturb him. We’ll be right down.”
David looked at Mel. “Got one?”
“You bet.”
“Which?”
Mel frowned. “They forgot to tell me.”
“You forgot to ask.” David stood up and grabbed the jacket from the back of his
chair. The empty brownie bag fell to the floor, scattering crumbs of chocolate.
Pete picked up the bag and looked inside. He was quiet for a long moment. “Do I have to be the one to tell her?”
“Blame it on String. He said the magic words, and we made them disappear.” Mel followed David out the door.
“Make me disappear,” Pete muttered. “Hey, where you guys going?”
“Basement. Bunco.”
“Is dangerous?” String asked, sliding close to Pete. “Coming between the female and her chocolate?”
FORTY-ONE
A row of holding cells lined the far wall of the Bunco bullpen. The first three were locked up tight. Biachi had gone through three market stalls after he’d been picked up in the EDC. Halliday had pulled in one human employee of each stall. More justice, David supposed, in picking up the Elaki owners. But Elaki were hard to arrest, and David and Mel had no idea how they would react as prisoners.
There would be a number of extortion charges, after the day’s work in the market. Halliday had gifted the collars to bunco, so long as it was understood that homicide had dibs on the perps who snaked in and around the extortion sideline as a cover for Izicho murder.
Few of the merchants would be involved in the deaths. One, David figured. Maybe two. Which one or two was the problem. David headed across the squad room, String rolling along behind him.
Vanelli looked up from her desk and waved at David. She scooted her chair back and grinned, face enormously round. She stood up, a supple and graceful fat woman, balancing on very high heels.
“Where’s Mel?” she asked.
“Went to take a look on the observation deck,” David said. “Wanted to see which one was asleep.”
Vanelli pointed to the door on the far left.
“That one,” she said. “Name of Jon Cryor.”
David nodded, wishing he’d forgone the last brownie. He was feeling queasy again.
“You ask them a lot of questions? Let them get a feel on what’s up?”
Vanelli nodded. Her neck overflowed her shirt collar. “All about extortion, intimidation. You know the drill.”
“Nothing about murder?”
Alien Eyes Page 19
