by Jeff Edwards
“Uh-uh. He hated cigarettes.”
“Hmmm... Do you smoke?”
“Gave it up years ago.”
“Have you ever heard of Ernte 23?”
“Ernie what?”
“Ernte 23. It’s a brand of German cigarettes. Does anybody around here smoke German cigarettes?”
Frank turned and started fiddling with a data keypad. “Probably half the people here; this is a German company.”
“Does this Kurt Rieger smoke?”
“Yeah,” Frank said. “I think so.”
“German cigarettes?”
Frank shrugged. “I have no idea. And just to save time, I don’t know what brand of toothpaste he uses, or what kind of starch he puts in his shirts.”
“Did Michael ever talk to you about his social life?”
“No. He made it pretty clear that it was none of my business.”
“Did he ever...”
“I’ve got work to do,” Frank snapped. “If you guys decide to shoot a piece on Winter, you come see me. I could use the money. But that’s all the freebies you’re getting out of me.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you Mister...”
“Franklin. Arthur Franklin.”
“Thank you Mr. Franklin. You’ve been most helpful. If we decide to shoot the piece, we’ll be in touch.”
“Aren’t you going to leave me your card or some shit?”
I patted my pockets. “Sorry, I’m out of business cards.”
I could feel him staring at my back as I walked out.
The woman caught up with me as I was crossing the neatly landscaped lawn. She was overweight and breathing heavily when she fell into step beside me. “Frank’s an ass,” she said, “but most of what he told you is true.”
I stopped walking and stared at her. She was dressed in a baggy black pantsuit that might have been intended to make her look thinner. A name tag pinned over her left breast identified her as Lisa Caldwell.
She looked toward the evergreen trees that concealed building 6-B. “When I stomped out, I didn’t go very far.”
She looked down at her feet, then looked back up at me and grinned. “I stood on the other side of the power supplies and listened. I heard every word.”
I lit a cigarette. “Which part was a lie?”
She frowned. “Just about all of it was true. Except about Michael’s work. Michael was good, I mean he was really good. Frank’s not bad either, but he’s not as good as Mike was.”
“Would you say that Frank was jealous of Mike’s work?”
“Not really,” she said. “Frank’s ego wouldn’t let him see that Michael was a better coder. Frank was...”
She fixed her gaze on the floating pinnacle of the GWI building. “Mike was an attractive man. Frank was...”
“Attracted to him?”
“Well, yeah.”
“And Mike rebuffed his advances.”
Lisa scrunched up her pudgy little nose like a rabbit as she tasted the idea. “It wasn’t really like that. Michael didn’t actually shoot down Frank’s advances. It’s more like he didn’t even notice them.”
“Mike was hetero?”
She looked at me like I had just insulted the entire female half of the species.
“I take it that’s a yes,” I said.
She didn’t say anything.
“So, Frank was blowing smoke when he said he always had to cover for Mike?”
“No,” Lisa said. “There was some truth to that, sort of. Frank was right about one thing, Mike didn’t always show up for work. We had to cover for him sometimes.”
She cocked her head to one side. “Are you going to buy me lunch, or what? I know a quiet little cafe that serves the most scrumptious seafood.”
I wasn’t really in the mood for seafood two days in a row, but I allowed her to steer me to her favorite restaurant.
The ‘quiet little cafe’ turned out to be a dingy little hole in the wall. The decor was make-believe nautical, complete with fishing nets, lighting fixtures shaped like ship’s wheels, and trids of fish on the walls. The signs on the restroom doors read ‘Buoys’ and ‘Gulls.’
I ordered the steamed dungeness crab. Lisa ordered the same, the grilled halibut, the fried shrimp and two appetizers.
In all fairness, the crab was pretty good. I swallowed a bite and pointed my fork vaguely in Lisa’s direction. “What do you think about Frank’s theory? Did Kurt Rieger hire Michael just to get at his sister?”
Lisa shrugged. “It’s a rumor.”
“But not a rumor that you believe?”
“It could happen,” Lisa said. “I’ve seen her around a few times. She’s a beautiful woman, and Mr. Rieger’s certainly a healthy male.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
She did the rabbit thing with her nose again. “The way I hear it, she might be a bit too old for Mr. Rieger. I understand that he likes his ladies a little younger.”
“How much younger?”
Lisa shrugged. “A lot younger. Maybe younger than the law allows.”
A chill ran down my spine. “That can’t be an easy itch to scratch. Especially for a respected business man.”
Lisa made a production of squeezing lemon over her halibut. “I’ve heard that there are places in the Zone that cater to that sort of thing.”
I was reasonably certain that there weren’t any places in the Zone that fit the bill. I hoped not anyway, but I didn’t see any profit in arguing with her.
Something touched my right leg just above the ankle. It was a pudgy, stocking-clad foot. I took another bite of the crab and tried to ignore it.
“You’re not really a reporter, are you?”
“What makes you say that?”
Her plump toes slid under the hem of my pants leg and began to trace circles on the bare flesh above my sock. “You don’t feel like a reporter.”
“How so?”
She frowned a little and her toes paused in their wandering. A second later her features relaxed and her toes resumed their journey. “Because you’re not going to sleep with me. If you were really a scout for one of the tabloids, you’d do whatever you had to do to get the story. You’d even sleep with a fat woman that you care nothing about, no matter how distasteful you found it.”
Her fork speared a chunk of my crab and flicked it into her mouth. She swallowed before continuing. “You have... principles.”
“Can’t a reporter have principles?”
“I doubt it,” she said, “not a tabloid reporter. Anyway, you care too much. You ask the wrong sorts of questions. I don’t believe you’re scouting for a vid shoot. I think you’re trying to find out who killed Michael. I can’t see you as a cop, and that makes me wonder why you’re doing this. Were you a friend of Michael’s?”
“I’m more of a friend of his sister.”
“Oh.” Lisa’s toes retreated. “I certainly can’t compete with that.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m not sleeping with her either.”
Lisa smiled. “I’m not sure I believe you, but it’s nice of you to say that.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes.
Lisa blotted her lips with her napkin. “Why don’t you think that Michael killed those girls?”
I debated with myself for a moment and decided that the truth wouldn’t hurt. “He had an alibi for one of the murders.”
I noticed that Lisa’s eyes were unfocused, like she was staring off into infinity. “I almost wish that the bastard would kill somebody else.”
She looked up quickly. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t even be thinking it.”
“Why do you want Aztec to kill again?”
“Because it would prove that Michael was innocent. I know that’s a terrible thing to wish for. I just want the world to realize that Michael wasn’t a killer.”
“Aztec may have already killed again,” I said. “He’s probably stalking young girls in Atlanta, or Houston by now a
nd the news feeds are calling him the Reaper, or Scorpio, or something.”
I made a snap decision. “You’re a programmer, right?”
“That’s what it says on my contract,” she said.
“You can help me catch him,” I said. “Maybe we can clear Michael’s name.”
She sat up and squared her shoulders. “What do I have to do?”
I grabbed a paper napkin with pictures of whales on one side. I rummaged through my pockets for my pen, flipped the napkin over and started a list on the blank side. “I think the killer may have done this whole thing before, maybe in another city. I want you to run a search of all serial murders in the U.S. in oh, say the last ten years. Eliminate any that are unsolved. I want only cases in which the killer confessed and then somehow committed suicide.”
“It’s not that hard to run a search,” Lisa said. “Just call up your favorite search engine, and start punching in search terms.”
I shook my head. “I’m not completely helpless around computers, but they’re not exactly my strong suit. I’d rather give the job to someone who knows how to do it properly.”
Lisa nodded. “Fair enough, I guess. But why do you want me to concentrate on only the solved cases?”
“Just a hunch,” I said. “I’m beginning to think that the killer—whoever he is—likes to leave a patsy to take the blame for his crimes. With the patsy dead, the police mark the case as solved and close it. Everyone stops looking for the murderer and he’s free to move on to another city.”
Lisa shuddered, sending ripples of revulsion through her ample flesh. “Don’t the police already have databases that track that sort of thing?”
“They do,” I said. “And some of their software agents are incredibly effective. The problem is that the police AI’s may be too smart. They’re programmed to eliminate known-dead criminals from their data searches. It shortens search times considerably, and it keeps the police from trying to track down criminals who are already dead.”
I added my phone number to the bottom of the napkin. “You can reach me here, if you find anything.”
Lisa took the napkin, glanced at it and slipped it into a pocket.
“What do I call you? Your name obviously isn’t Bertram Tyler, or whatever it was that you told Frank.”
I took her plump hand in mine. “My name is David Stalin. I’m honored to make your acquaintance.”
Lisa giggled. “You have an old fashioned streak about you, David. I think it’s charming.”
I smiled at her.
She returned it. “You’re still not going to sleep with me, are you?”
I shook my head.
She stood up. “Then you can get the tip.”
CHAPTER 9
Like just about every other stationary object in LA, Lev depots collect a lot of graffiti. The Central Avenue depot didn’t have any. I don’t mean not much; I mean none. A tribute to the fanatical effectiveness of corporate security groups.
Perhaps the people who worked in Dome 11 found it comforting to be wrapped in an invisible security blanket. It made the skin between my shoulder blades itch.
I suppressed a shudder and tried to take my mind off it by concentrating on the people. At two in the afternoon, the platform was nearly deserted. A young couple snuggled and played kissy games. Two middle aged women in severe business attire conversed in low tones. An elderly Asian man with an immaculate black suit stood with a strangely shaped package at his feet. Judging from his formal samurai haircut, he was probably Japanese. His package appeared to consist entirely of colored washi paper, each origami fold crisp and precise.
The Lev slid up to the platform exactly on schedule. The electromagnetic cushion that kept it hovering ten centimeters above the track made the hair on my lower legs stand up.
I felt a surge of perverse pleasure when I saw that the streamlined carbon-laminate cars were mottled with graffiti. I don’t usually condone graffiti. I’ve always considered it a sign of social decay, but suddenly, it seemed like a breath of freedom—a sign that this train traveled to places beyond the sterile confines of Dome 11, outside the playground of corporate security Nazis and industrial ninjas.
I ended up in the second car from the rear. It was empty except for three teenage boys crammed into one seat at the back. They all wore electrostatic necklaces that made their hair stand on end, crackle, and emit sparks. The old Japanese gentleman followed me in and took a seat in the middle of the car.
I slid into a spot near the front, and leaned back in my seat as the Lev glided out of the station. The Lev accelerated smoothly, reaching its cruising speed just as the corporate enclaves of Dome 11 gave way to the stacked apartment modules of Dome 12.
There wasn’t a lot to see in the way of scenery. Rectilinear concrete walls rocketed by my window at 150 kilometers an hour.
My attention drifted to the graffiti that peppered the inside of the Lev car. Most of it seemed to be the usual gang symbols, boasts, and epithets.
I spotted one in yellow paint-stick that I’d never seen before: two curved lines, arcing upward like ski-jumps, and crossing each other near the top. At first I took it to be a stylized ‘X’, but then it struck me that the two arcs looked more like statistical distribution curves than a gang symbol, as though two mathematical variables tracked over time were destined to intersect and create some sort of critical condition. Below the X-curves, the tagger had written ‘Prepare for the Convergence’, in the same yellow paint-stick.
The Convergence? What in the hell was that?
I glanced up at the ceiling into the friendly electroptic eye of a security camera. A blue LED next to the lens told me that the camera was on-line and that my fellow passengers and I were safe under the watchful gaze of LA-Trans Security. Of course, the cameras hadn’t stopped vandals from scrawling graffiti all over the inside of the car. Probably, they were only monitored at random intervals.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the window.
The world exploded just to the left of my head. Not really, but it certainly felt that way to me.
I know enough about physics to realize that all of the things that happened next must have been so nearly simultaneous that the human brain couldn’t possibly distinguish the timing.
Screw physics. My brain captured those events in a certain sequence, and every time I drag out the memory and replay it, everything happens in exactly the same order: a flash of red light, bright enough to be seen through my eyelids, visible to both eyes, but much stronger in the left. A wash of heated air over the left side of my face. A pinpoint of searing pain in the fleshy part of my left ear. The distinct odors of singed hair and burnt meat: mine.
Laser!
I’d seen enough of them in the Army to recognize one when it trimmed the edge off my ear.
It took me about a nanosecond to cram myself down between my seat and the front wall of the car.
My heart shifted into high gear and my adrenaline level skyrocketed as my body kicked into fight-or-flight mode.
I had three major problems…
#1 — I didn’t know if the guy with the laser was in front of me or behind me. The window set in the sliding door at the front of the car was transparent enough for the laser to have passed through it like sunlight through water. If the shooter was in the next car, he could have fired through the window without leaving a mark on it.
#2 — I didn’t have a clue what the mystery person looked like. Male? Female? Old? Young? Tall? Short?
#3 — I couldn’t get to my gun.
As tightly as I was jammed into the small well between my seat and the wall, no amount of wiggling was going to get my fingers on the butt of my Blackhart. The closest I could manage with my right hand was about ten centimeters. To get any closer, I’d have to bust a hole in the shell of the Lev or voluntarily dislocate my right elbow. My left arm was pinned against the seat.
I listened for a few seconds, trying to catch some kind of clue to the location of the shooter
. I could hear the muffled chattering of the teenage boys at the back of the car. I hoped they were smart enough to take cover. I couldn’t hear anything from the old Japanese guy at all. He might be hunkered down behind his seat in silence. Or he might be lining up the laser for another shot at me.
I strained to hear any sounds from the next car. If the shooter was up there waving a laser around, people might be screaming. For the first time in my life, I regretted the quality of the soundproofing in MagLev trains.
The sound of my own heart pounding swelled until it filled my ears. I tried to think…
If the shooter was in front of me, in the next car, he could only see me through the windows in the doors between our cars. The laser could shoot through the windows too, but at least his field of vision would be limited. I could crawl out of my hidey-hole, pull the Blackhart and jockey for a better position. As long as I stayed below window level, I’d be safe.
However, if the shooter was behind me, he’d burn me the second I tried to move.
I tried to remember what I knew about lasers. They need power. A lot of it. The big swivel mounted jobs (like the one that had sliced up John’s spine in Argentina) were usually plugged into a good-sized generator, or a major power grid. The little hand-held types had to depend on battery packs. Most of the ones I’d seen were reasonably bulky, small enough to fit into a backpack or a large purse, but much too large for a pocket. Which meant that my shooter was probably carrying a largish bag or package.
Who did that leave? Somebody already on the train? Uh-uh. No one could have possibly known exactly which Lev I would catch. Whoever it was had followed me to the Lev station and boarded when I did.
The two business women were probably out; neither had carried a briefcase or purse.
The Japanese man, with his origami package, was a strong candidate. That would put the laser behind me.
The young lovers were also a possibility. I couldn’t remember whether the woman had been carrying a purse or not. If it was the young couple, the laser would be in front of me.
My attempts to reason my way through the problem had taken me full circle. I still didn’t know if the laser was in front of me or behind me.
