by Nyx Smith
Kirkland suppresses the first reply that comes to mind, and says, simply, “I’m just about to call the troops in for a meet.”
“Oh, yeah? In that case, I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Right.”
Five minutes later, Kirkland’s little cube of an office is packed wall-to-wall and halfway around both sides of his desk with half the homicide specialist-detectives of the Central Division. About thirty-eight people in all. It doesn’t seem like much against a metroplex of some three million, and that’s just the official population.
“Who’s got what?” Kirkland says.
Three or four start talking at once, then settle down to taking turns like good boys and girls. They’ve been running down the myriad leads and possibilities and tenuous ghosts of clues that might resolve the string of Exotech exec murders. So far, they’ve managed to eliminate as suspects most of the freelance kick-artists based in Philadelphia, along with most of the known yakuza, mafia, and Seoulpa gang assassins. They’ve also eliminated most of the blood relations, friends, and associates of the victims. That’s a good start, but not the kind of thing Captain Henriquez or anyone else can shoot at the mayor for a pat on the back.
Detective-Sergeant Lisa Wu runs down the current data on out-of-town killers. Striper’s name comes up, but that’s no coincidence. The name is on the list.
“We’ve got nothing much on her activities so far,” Wu reports. “A.T.F. spotted her in Chinatown about six weeks ago. A few squeals have seen her around since then, but she’s not making any waves. Not that we know of. That’s kinda weird in itself. Heavy muscle doesn’t usually sit idle. We’ve got at least one informant who says she’s playing bodyguard for some slag…”
“What slag?”
Detective Wu shrugs.
“Nice answer. You’re fired.”
“Sorry, boss.”
Sarcasm isn’t enough to vent his irritation. Kirkland sits back in his chair, stares briefly at the ceiling, “This is somebody who gets, what? Ten-kay to muss somebody’s hair? Twice that to bust an arm? She don’t bodyguard some slag. Some slag she met in a bar? Christ Almighty! Get real, people!”
Wu briefly lifts a hand to her brow, looking mildly over-awed. Others look at the floor. The air starts getting a little muggy with sweat. That’s okay, though. Kirkland’s got half of Central Command coming down on his ass over this Exotech mess. If he has to pressure people to get paydata out of them, he will. He lights another cig, then notices the one already burning in his ashtray. He ignores it. If anyone else notices, they ignore it too.
“What else we got?”
Ramirez rattles his hardcopy.
�Talk dammit!” Kirkland growls.
“We got a tentative match through the F.B.I. on hair found in the elevator where Neiman bought it.”
Robert Neiman was the first Exotech exec to bite it. It happened in a parking garage. The killer was the only one in the elevator, firing into the parking garage with a fragging Vindicator minigun. Kirkland doesn’t quibble over the point. “What hairs, matching what, and how tentative?”
Ramirez nods, swallows. “The hairs found in the elevator match hairs the Seoul P.D. found at a crime scene of a killing tentatively ascribed to Striper a couple years back.”
“F.B.I. is sharing data with Seoul? When the hell did that happen?”
“Well, actually the rumor is that some Company hacker—”
Kirkland waves a hand. “Forget I asked. How tentative is this match?”
“Almost exact. The problem is that nobody knows whose hair it is. Or what kinda hair it is. The F.B.I. ran some tests but didn’t pursue it. It’s not human or metahuman hair, not any known species.”
“So… what? It’s animal hair?”
“We don’t know.”
“What else is there?”
“Nobody knows.”
“The F.B.I. doesn’t know?”
“They said try a zoologist. Preferably one with a background in paranormal species.”
On another day, Kirkland might have smiled, if just briefly, to hear that God’s gift to humanity, the all-knowing F.B.I., didn’t have all the answers. It reaffirms his sometimes shaky confidence in mere police departments. As for zoologists he’s heard of lately, he waves his cig around, but that doesn’t help jog his memory. Too many names, too many datum.
“Who’s the woman working on the ghoul thing? The one from the Science Center.”
Detective Kyowa speaks up. “Liss. Doctor Marion Liss. I think she’s a parazoologist.”
“Make the call, Ramirez.”
“Right, boss.”
“What else? Shackleford.”
Detective Chris Shackleford is by far the shortest member of the unit, barely more than a meter tall. Minuteman Security doesn’t hold that against her, that or being dwarf, and neither does Kirkland. Shackleford’s got strong skills in computers and statistics, and, more important, what seems like an agile brain. She’s always coming up with ideas. Now, though, she shakes her head. “It isn’t Striper.”
Kirkland exhales heavily and looks at the ceiling.
“Striper’s target profile runs to drug lords and crime kings. She’ll muscle anybody, but she doesn’t ace corporates unless they’re pushing into the underground.”
“Is that your psych evaluation, Shackleford?”
Detective Shackleford clenches her lips, briefly looking as irritated as Kirkland feels. The only psych profile they’ve got on Striper is too half-assed to be worth anything. That means Shackleford’s speculations fall into the realm of guesswork.
“There’s nothing wrong with profiling from target-type and method,” Shackleford says emphatically. “There was a time when that was the only kind of profiling we had!”
Nothing’s carved in stone, as far as Kirkland’s concerned. Admittedly, what Shackleford says is true. It’s also true that things change. So do people. Kirkland has known pro killers and kick-artists to suddenly change style with the specific goal of screwing up their police profiles. “So you want Striper off the list.”
“We’ve got people in town who aren’t even on the list who’d hose their own mother for taxi fare.”
“So what are you saying?”
Shackleford doesn’t get a chance to answer. The office door swings open, the crowd of detectives parts, and Deputy Chief of Detectives Nanette Lemaire steps into the void, looking quickly around, then at Kirkland. then saying, “What’s the latest on the Exotech suit killings?”
God curse all brass.
35
Sunlight dwindles.
Shadows grow long…. The time is come when her red and black-striped fur blends to perfection with twilight patches of sunlight and shadowy dark. The time is come for hunting.
Tikki rises from her leafy hiding place, a grassy ridge in the rocky face of a hill whose trees and bushes have sheltered her from the sun and the worst of the day’s heat. She steps under one of the cascades rushing down over the rocky outcrops and briefly glories in the shower of cool water gushing through her fur. It leaves her feeling fully awake, invigorated, alert.
She lifts her nose to the air.
She knows, by the strength of their smell, that sambar deer are nearby, well within her range. She has listened to their cries throughout most of the day. The season of their mating has arrived. Their husky barks and calls carry far through the still air of the forest. Their smells come to her like an invitation. If they have noticed her or her smell, they give no sign.
Tikki flicks her ears, shakes herself off, briefly paws at her neck, which is unaccountably itchy, then makes her way down to the forest floor. She does not hasten to the hunt. A cub might make that mistake, not her. She moves with a slow, deliberate stride that carries her quietly over fallen leaves and through the green branches of shrubs and trees. High up in the trees birds exclaim, but none cries out in alarm. Perhaps none has noticed her yet.
A sudden squalling erupts, sharp with tones of fear and anger. Tikki
pauses to look up. The trees are alive with monkeys. Branches quiver and shake, leaves rustle. The monkeys screech and shriek, warning her to stay away, warning all within range of their sharp, annoying voices that danger has come.
For just a moment, she considers climbing up a tree to silence these exasperating creatures, but there is no point. She has tried that before. Her mother tried it once and nearly fell out of the tree while trying to get back to solid ground. Trees do not easily accommodate a creature of Tikki’s size and weight.
She continues on, following the smells in the air.
Before long, the sambar resume their mating calls. They are off to her left and farther away than before. She adjusts her course. Fresher scents greet her nose from the tree trunks and the ground as well as the air. She has reached the spot where the sambar were when she first moved to the forest floor.
Soon she has them in sight, a small group, several males and females ranging around a small clearing. Tikki moves very carefully now, hunching low to the ground, using every snatch of cover. Abruptly, the sambar pause, heads held erect. She freezes, half-concealed by a jumble of rocks only a stride away from the clearing’s edge. Have they seen her? Have they smelled her? She advances another stealthy step, then another, then suddenly some bird high up in the trees begins to scream. As one the sambar break, turning in flight.
By then, Tikki has launched herself from the brush and is hurtling across the clearing, paws tearing at the earth.
Now a million birds begin to scream as the sambar scatter in every direction. The first shriek of warning made them panic, rushing straight at her. Before they realize their mistake, she is among them, snaring one’s rear with her claws, dragging it down, seizing its throat between her jaws.
That is her death grip. The kill is a certainty now. Her weight alone is enough to pin the animal to the ground, no matter how desperately it struggles. Tikki would not be surprised if the creature died of fear alone. It’s happened before. Some prey seem to realize that once she has them in her grip there can be no escape. She has only to squeeze with her powerful jaws and perhaps twist her head to the side for the creature to strangle or for the bones of its neck to split and break.
That is what should be happening now, but something strange occurs instead. The sambar continues to struggle. The desperate gleam in its left eye becomes a spectral glow that spreads across its body. Tikki snaps its neck and still it struggles. She claws at its flesh and still it struggles. She rips at its body till its blood gushes over the ground and its organs split and burst around her claws and still it struggles to escape.
She tears its body into ruins, and then…
Abruptly, Tikki wakes. She is lying on the floor of her doss in northeast Philly, hearing her mother’s words about what to do when things go wrong: cut your losses, get out. Get clear and never look back. Never mind about money or what it might cost your rep. Survival is paramount. There’s always another sprawling metroplex with any number of hungry predators willing to pay for her kind of talent, and most of them care only about what she can deliver.
She lifts her head and looks around. Late afternoon sunlight fills the room. The mattress beneath her is in tatters. Bits of foam and white bedding cling to her claws.
The building around her is quiet.
She seems to be alone.
Time then to change. She forces herself back into human guise. It’s easier in the light of the sun, but this soon after the full moon it’s never easy. Tikki feels like she’s changing from a creature of near-indomitable strength into a little pip-squeak of a two-legged weakling. It’s like surrendering a kill to a more powerful predator. She knows that she must, but it so fills her with anger and frustration that a very human-sounding growl comes from her throat. The change leaves her lying on the mattress and staring up at the ceiling, wondering what she’s going to do now. What should she do? So much seems wrong. The feeling that her situation has somehow gotten out of hand gnaws at her relentlessly.
She feels… confused.
For some reason beyond her ken, Tikki recalls the last man she killed for Adama—Tomita Haruso—how he continued to move even after he should have been dead. Had she not known better, she might have supposed that the man was not really a man, but some paranatural creature, perhaps even a Were such as herself. She might have suspected that magic was somehow involved. The only reason she did not suspect any of that was because everything smelled so right at the time. The humans smelled human. The air smelled of blood and terror and death. Only the evidence of her eyes indicated that something peculiar was occurring, and Tikki still does not know what to make of it.
One thing is certain: she won’t resolve any of her uncertainties lying around naked in this doss. She applies her red and black paint and dons her red and black synthleather, assuming her Striper guise. She spends a moment checking the Kang—one shell in the chamber, a full clip securely installed—then slips it into the holster at the small of her back.
Late afternoon is slipping into evening as she steps onto the street. A blue and white Minuteman Security bus grinds up the block, heading toward the House of Correction. The blare of air horns and a low rumbling signal the passage of a train along the tracks off to the west. She walks that way, west. A few blocks and she’s at the Hunan Mayfair, a little storefront restaurant mashed between a German deli and a pizzeria. The display in the window flashes the words “Kung Po Beef! Hot! Stir fried with water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, and peanuts in hot & spicy pepper sauce!” She steps inside, takes a seat at one of the plastic booths, and orders a plate of the Kung Po.
“Make it hot,” Tikki tells the old man who takes her order.
“Ehh?” he says, frowning.
She removes her shades and meets his eyes. An Anglo would probably see only the red and black-striped mask painted onto her face and hair. Perhaps the old man sees more. A quick flash of surprise shows clearly in his eyes. Tikki guesses that he has noticed the subtle Asian cast to her eyes. For a man who is obviously Chinese, it would make a difference.
“I want it hot,” she says in Mandarin.
“Very hot,” the old man replies in the same tongue, flashing a smile. “Hot as you like. You’ll see.”
She nods, and the old man bows and withdraws.
A combat biker match between the Texas Rattlers and the L.A. Sabers is playing on the tiny pyramidal trid set into the center of her table. She switches to News Now 38, and listens to a replay of the story about that Neiman suit who got hosed in a parking garage. They still aren’t saying anything about the yakuza getting smoked. Why does that bother her so much? Perhaps because the story about Neiman includes many details that recall her assassination of Ryokai Naoshi in a parking garage, and she has known the media to spill stories despite court-ordered blackouts and the efforts of the cops or the corps to keep certain incidents quiet.
She wonders if Adama could have been lying to her about the identities of those she has taken as prey. Could she have been tricked into murdering ordinary citizens? It seems unlikely. Tikki always verifies the information given her. To deceive her, Adama would have had to use magic on her, and Adama is no mage.
The meat arrives, Kung Po beef, hot enough to burn. The food helps settle her mood, making it easier to think. She considers ordering a second plate, but this is no time for gorging herself. She needs to think. Think clearly. Think smart.
Someone has marked her, put a price on her head. Never mind how they figured out that she’s the principal weapon in Adama’s ambitious rush toward dominance over the Philly underworld. What should she do about it? That’s the point.
Be prepared for the worst.
Pick up her money.
Tikki doesn’t like the idea of running, but if necessary, she will. And if and when the crunch comes, she may not have time for a trip to the bank.
The “bank” in this case is located beneath the ruins of the Northeast Mall, a quick taxi ride from the restaurant to a district called Holmesburg. The
parking fields are littered with trash, junk, and burnt-out autos. Fires burn in metal drums. Five Minuteman patrol cars with flaring turret lights sit before the main entrance. A dozen gangers with cycles are holding a party on the west side. Around the north side of the mall, Tikki finds an open fire door that gives her access to a stairway down to the sublevel concourse.
It’s dark down here, dark as night. The air smells of kerosene and petrochem. Laser light flares, flashlights gleam. Music roars, half a dozen discordant melodies, conflicting rhythms, throbbing, pounding. A racing bike whines, hurtling up the center of the concourse. Humans and metahumans, a few elves, orks, even some trolls, gather in groups or wander around, talking, laughing, shouting, crying out. Some drink, others doze. A pair in black synthleather writhe and rut on one of the marbleized benches along one side. Garbage and other debris make the footing treacherous in places. Vomit and other droppings mingle with the garbage and add to the rank smells fouling the air.
The shops lining both sides of the place have been converted to various purposes. One offers pirate simsense chips and tapes—all Better Than Life. Guaranteed. Another specializes in mind-altering chemicals. Several have a great variety of merchandise on display, all undoubtedly stolen. Most places are guarded by artists with guns, mostly automatic weapons, including machine guns.
Toward the middle of the concourse is the store now used as the headquarters of the Death Angels, one of the city’s most powerful biker gangs. Many members are cheap muscle, low-rent kick-artists, and killers. Minor talent as far as Tikki is concerned, but worth treating with a measure of respect, worth watching if only out of the corners of her eyes.
One of the gangers hanging around the headquarters entrance lifts a bottle of liquor toward her and calls, “Hoi, Striper!”
“Yo, suit!” she growls.
The ganger cackles with laughter, then makes a fist and pumps it back and forth from the hip, growling, “El numero uno!”
