by Jeff Edwards
“Of course, House. And tell him we’re in the dining room.”
“Are you always right?” Ms. Winter asked.
“I’m usually right about John,” I said. “Not so much about other things, but I’ve pretty much got John pegged. We’ve known each other since we were kids.”
The quiet whining of John’s exoskeleton preceded his entrance into the room by about two seconds. “Starting without me, Sarge?”
“Not me,” I said. “It was Ms. Winter’s fault. I begged her to wait for you, but she flat-out refused.”
“Please,” she said, “call me Sonja.” She motioned John to a chair, and rewarded me with a mock steely-eyed glance. She lifted a fork full of prawn. “And since we’ve already established that I have unspeakably bad manners, I have nothing to lose by eating like a pig.”
John’s exoskeleton eased him into his chair. He picked up a fork and tasted the garlic-prawn. When he had swallowed, he nodded in my direction. “I’ll bet Sarge here told you that he cooked this, didn’t he?”
John shook his head. “Not a word of truth in it. Sarge has a two-headed dog-boy locked up in the cellar. The wretched little creature does all the cooking, while David here gets to invite beautiful women over for lunch and take all the credit.”
Sonja laughed. “Is that how it works?”
“I don’t have a cellar,” I said. “I keep the poor creature up on the roof, like a gargoyle.”
“I have to ask,” Sonja said. “Where on earth did you find a two-headed dog-boy?”
“Actually, it’s John’s twin brother,” I said. “Dog-boy got all the looks in the family, and John was so jealous that he sold the poor fellow into slavery.”
John nodded. “At least we think it’s my brother. It could be my sister. I asked Sarge to check, but I’m not altogether sure that he knows how to tell the difference between boys and girls.”
Sonja laughed again. She pointed her fork at John. “Why do you always call him Sarge? Are you guys ex-cops? Is it Sarge as in Police Sergeant?”
“Not cops,” John said. “The Army.”
Sonja turned to me. “You were a sergeant in the Army?”
“I was never a sergeant,” I said. “Just a plain old mud foot, Private First Class.”
Sonja put down her fork. “Okay,” she said. “Now I’m really confused.”
“There used to be a kid’s cartoon,” I said. “Sergeant Steel. Huge muscles, scar down his cheek, ran around with a rocket launcher in one hand, and a machine gun in the other, blowing the enemy-of-the-week into bite-sized chunks.”
Sonja touched a finger to her chin. “Was he the one with the tattered uniform that showed off his biceps?”
“That’s the guy,” I said. “John named me after him. Just a joke, really.”
“Right,” John said. “Now tell her why you got the name.”
Sonja’s eyes widened a fraction. “Well?”
I took a bite of prawn and pretended that I hadn’t heard.
John winked at Sonja. “He hates it when I tell this story.”
I swallowed. “I don’t hate the story,” I said. “I’ve just heard it too many times.”
“Well I haven’t heard it,” Sonja said.
John leaned back in his chair. “Iguazu Falls,” he said. “Misiones Province. Our squad was running flank and cover for a demolitions team. It was an easy job; the demo squad was supposed to slip a few kilos of plastique into the hydroelectric plant, and all we had to do was cover their butts. If we pulled it off, half the radar sites in Northeast Argentina would be without power.”
He took a sip of wine. “The forest must have been beautiful once, but when we were there, you could see that it was dying. The trees were gray, and the ground was covered with rotting leaves. The only real color was from patches of the stickiest red clay you ever saw. It was almost the shade of blood that isn’t quite dry yet.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’ve established a suitable air of melodrama. Now, finish it off and let’s talk about something else.”
Sonja’s eyes were locked on John’s face. She fluttered a hand in my direction without looking at me. “Ignore him,” she said.
“Always do,” said John. “Where was I?”
“The laser,” I said.
John looked at Sonja. “He’s rushing me,” he said. “But I guess we can humor him; he is getting old, you know.”
“The laser,” I said again.
“Right,” John said. “The laser.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “It was a perimeter defense unit, a big tripod mounted thing with a robotic control loop. Chinese-built, probably. Stacked plastic armor, photo-active camouflage, infrared-suppression, and enough electromagnetic razzle-dazzle to give it the radar cross-section of a grape. According to our intelligence reports, the locals weren’t supposed to have anything like that kind of technology. But the local boys apparently hadn’t bothered to read our intel.”
He smiled a thin little smile. “So the first we knew about it was when Bad Suzi Jabarra went down. I just thought she had tripped over a root or something. I bent over to help her up, and I was just realizing that she’d been hit, when the laser nailed me. I don’t know how powerful the beam was, two hundred and fifty—maybe three hundred megawatts, but it cut through two layers of woven carbon armor like it was nothing and punched a hole right between my shoulder blades.”
He took a sip of wine and looked down at his glass. “Actually, this story goes better with beer than with wine.”
He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Then I was on the ground, and my legs didn’t work. I remember being surprised that there wasn’t any pain. People were screaming and diving for cover, and the laser kept reaching out like the finger of God, burning everything it touched.”
John looked at me and grinned, the way he always did when he came to this part of the story. “And then I saw him.”
Sonja cocked her head to one side. “Saw who?”
John nodded toward me. “You should have seen him, running through the trees toward that damned laser. His helmet was gone. His flak vest was half open and flapping in the breeze. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, his M-279 blazing away. And you should have seen his face.”
John laughed and shook his head. “I swear to God… Davie here looked just like Sergeant Steel from the cartoon. He would have made a perfect cover for one of those animated comic books.”
Sonja waited a few seconds for John to continue, and then asked, “what happened?”
John skewered a prawn and raised it half way to his lips. “Tell her, Sarge.”
I shook my head. “It’s your story.”
John laughed again and turned his eyes back to Sonja. “He took it out.”
“The laser?”
“Yep,” John said. “The crazy bastard went toe-to-toe with an automated perimeter laser, armed with nothing but a couple of grenades and a smart-rifle. And he took it out. He blew that laser all to hell. And that’s how he got the nickname.”
Sonja stared at me. “Is that true?”
I felt my ears burn. “John exaggerates a bit,” I said. “But the truth is hidden in there somewhere.”
“That makes you a war hero,” Sonja said.
I shook my head. “I was young and stupid. And I’m damned lucky that I got a chance to be old and stupid.”
John leaned toward Sonja and whispered, “don’t let him kid you. He’s a hero.”
I sighed. “Are we done with Story Hour yet?” I stared at them both. “Good. Let’s eat.”
After lunch, I led John and Sonja to my workshop. Before I let them in, I had House darken the room except for the pedestal supporting the new piece.
The sculpture consisted of twenty-eight bars of stringer-steel, welded together into a climbing arch that resembled a section of struts and rafters from the roof of an old partially collapsed building. I had chemically stained the steel to give it a weathered look.
Sonja walked around it slowly, h
er eyebrows drawn close together. “City of shadows,” she said.
“What?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Just some words that came to me when I first saw it. City of shadows.” She looked up at me. “Maybe that’s what you ought to name it.”
“I’ve already named it,” I said. “It’s called No Resurrection.”
John just stared at the piece in silence for a long time. Finally, he shook his head once and looked up at me. “It’s still there,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Sonja asked.
“There’s a common thread that links all of David’s work. Sort of an aura of... desperation. It’s nothing I can quite put my finger on, but it’s always there.”
“I like it,” Sonja said. “It bothers me somehow, but I like it.”
We stood around discussing the piece, the two of them ooh-ing and aah-ing, and me aw-shucksing until the wine in our glasses ran low.
Eventually, we wound up in the den, comfortably draped over my fat brown pit sofa, our glasses freshly brimming with wine.
“So tell me about this great mystery of yours,” John said. “Especially the part where Sergeant Steel here comes to your rescue.”
Sonja stared into her wine glass without speaking.
John’s smile faded. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I get so used to running my mouth that I don’t always know what’s going to come out. I didn’t mean any disrespect to your... It was your brother, wasn’t it?”
Sonja looked up. “It’s okay. I’m starting to get used to the idea.”
I wondered if she believed her own lie.
“The police aren’t having any luck?” John asked.
“They aren’t even looking,” Sonja said. “They’re convinced that it was suicide.”
John looked at me. “How about it, Sarge? Have you got any good leads yet?”
Sonja traced figure eights in the condensation on her glass with the tip of her right index finger. “He hasn’t decided whether or not he’s going to take the case.”
“What is she talking about? Of course you’re going to take the case, aren’t you Sarge?”
I didn’t say anything. My eyes were locked on Sonja’s fingertip as it continued to sweep tiny eights on the surface of her wine glass.
“Come on, Sarge. The woman needs your help. You need this too. You need to get out of this damned house and get back to work.”
My attention stayed riveted on the motions of Sonja’s fingers. Wheels spun in my head. Fingers... fingers... something about fingers.
I set down my glass and slid across the couch to sit beside Sonja. “Let me see your hand.”
She looked at me strangely, then extended her left hand. Her palm and fingers were cool and damp from the wine glass. I took it in both of mine, touching it, turning it over, examining it. Something...
My brain was straining to make a connection. I could feel an idea struggling to fight its way to the surface of my mind. Hands... fingers...
“Now, the other one.”
She transferred the glass to her left hand and offered the right. I examined it the same way. Something... damn it! Something! What was it?
I ran my fingers over the backs of hers.
I stopped, looked up. Sonja and John were staring at me. Sonja’s skin was soft... smooth... except... except for a small callus on the side of her middle finger. A writer’s callus, from holding pens and pencils.
I had one too, in the same spot. I was right handed.
It clicked. The photograph of Michael as a boy, the one with the baseball bat and glove. The glove had been on his left hand.
“Sonja, was your brother ambidextrous?”
“No,” she said. “Michael was right handed.”
“Did you ever see him do anything left handed?”
She frowned. “I don’t think so. He ate with his right hand, wrote with it...” Her voice trailed off.
I took a swallow of wine and reached for my smokes. “So, if Michael was right handed, if he ate that way, and wrote that way, and threw a baseball that way...” I looked at Sonja. She nodded. “Why did he shoot himself with his left hand?”
Sonja sat bolt upright. “My God! You’re right! I wonder why I never noticed.”
“That’s why you hired a detective,” John said.
Sonja looked at me. “Have I? Hired a detective?”
I took a sip of wine. If I was going to bow out, now was the time.
The case intrigued me, no doubt about that. I didn’t know whether or not Michael Winter was innocent, but I knew that his death had been more than a simple suicide. I nodded slowly. “I guess I’m on the case,” I said.
Sonja closed her eyes. After a second, a single tear ran down her left cheek.
I started to say something when I realized that Sonja was sobbing softly. “They called me this morning,” she said. Her eyes remained closed.
“Who?”
“Gebhardt-Wulkan. Or rather, their law firm called me. I have until the end of this month to pay off Michael’s contract. They have a court order requiring me to report for duty on September the first if the contract isn’t liquidated.”
Jesus. No wonder she’d been crying when I called this morning. She must have just gotten off the phone with those bastards.
“Don’t give up yet,” I said. “I’ve got a few leads and a few ideas.”
She looked up with a sniff. “You do?”
“Of course he does,” John said. “Our David is one of the best PI’s in Los Angeles.”
“I wasn’t all that sharp when I was in the business,” I said. “And now I’m rusty as hell.”
John stood up, the servos in his exoskeleton throbbing heavily as they lifted him to his feet. “Got to get back to work, boys and girls. I’ve got a series-three articulated surgical remote lying in pieces back at the lab.” He looked at Sonja. “Don’t worry. Sarge has a tendency to sell himself short.”
“So I’m discovering,” said Sonja.
“He’s good,” John said. “You’ll see.”
“I’m glad he’s good,” Sonja said. “He’ll have to be. The police have Michael’s files sealed, right along with the rest of the Aztec case.”
John nearly flinched. “Aztec? Your brother was that Michael Winter? He was Aztec?”
“Michael was not Aztec!” Sonja snapped. “The police are wrong!”
John looked at me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I understood that it was an airtight case. I didn’t realize there was any room for doubt.”
“There isn’t any doubt,” Sonja said. “My brother was not a killer.” Her voice was thick. She was on the verge of tears again.
“Once again, I apologize,” said John. “I spoke out of turn. What little I know of your brother’s case, I learned from the news media: not exactly an unimpeachable source.”
He gave Sonja a sad little smile. “I hope you find your brother’s killer. I really do.”
Sonja sniffed and tried to smile back. “Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I guess I’m a little sensitive about the whole thing.”
“Rightly so,” John said.
He looked at me. “Come on, Sarge. You can walk me to the door.”
I stood up and followed him out of the room. When we were out of Sonja’s earshot, I said, “what do you think?”
“She’s gorgeous,” John said. “If you have any sense, you’ll lock her up on the roof with my two-headed sister.”
We stopped at the front door. “What do you think about the case?” I asked.
John sighed. “On the one hand, I’d really like to see you get back to work. It would be good for you...”
I could hear it in the tone of his voice. “But not on this particular job?”
“You need a case that hasn’t already been solved,” he said. “I was being polite back there. Your lady friend is distraught. She can’t come to grips with the truth, but the fact of the matter is, her brother was a killer, plain and simple. He knew i
t. The cops knew it. The press knew it.”
John leaned his head in the direction of the den. “Probably everybody in the world knows it, except for her.”
“And me,” I said. “I’m not sure one way or the other yet.”
John smiled and turned toward the door. “Okay, Sarge. You go chase the bad guys. I have to get back to work.”
“Thanks for coming,” I said.
“Any time, old buddy.”
Sonja was still pretty upset when I got back to the den. I spent ten minutes calming her down and then another hour bringing her up to date on the case: what I knew, what I could prove, what I suspected. I owned up to raiding her apartment’s database. I ended with Holtzclaw’s murder, and my morning encounter with Dancer and Delaney.
Sonja pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed at her eyes. “Is there any chance that Mr. Holtzclaw’s death is related to the case?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope not. I’d hate to think that I led the killer to him.”
Her eyes widened. “The killer? You’re saying that the killer is still out there somewhere?”
“Maybe,” I said. “If Michael was innocent, and I’m still not convinced that he was, the real killer is still running loose.”
“Well, at least he can’t afford to keep killing. I mean, the police would find out that he’s still alive, wouldn’t they?”
“Not necessarily. If the killer is smart, he could change his style, move to another city, and start another spree next month, or tomorrow.”
I watched the awful possibilities register in her eyes.
“Or yesterday, or last week,” I added.
Sonja inhaled sharply. “He could be killing again? Already?”
I nodded. “Worse. The Aztec spree may not have been his first time out of the box. He may have played out this scenario two or three times, using different MO’s, in different towns. If he has, there’s no telling how many people he’s killed.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes.
I used the time to turn over the implications of the things we’d discussed.
I found my thoughts drifting. The wine, my full belly and the soft couch conspired to remind me of how little sleep I’d had. I closed my eyes for a second.
