Dead Man Dreaming

by Andrew Vaillencourt

  Once in the bedroom, Manny immediately doffed his satchel and began fiddling with small electronic devices retrieved from inside. Roland and Parker went to inspect the corpse on the bed.

  “First, the penetrator entered high on the sternum,” Parker narrated. “It passed clean through the heart and spine, no deflection. It went on through the bed, the floor, the floor below, and the floor below that. That’s when it started to tumble. We finally found it lodged in a service closet sink. Aluminum-clad Inconel with tungsten carbide tip.”

  Roland looked up at the hole in the ceiling. “Even for a penetrator, that is a whole lot of penetrating. We have to assume at eight-millimeter this is a custom projectile? Who even makes a penetrator like that in eight? The delivery system would be real damn clunky, too.”

  “I’ve made some calls, and nobody makes a man-portable rig that can throw eight-millimeter this hard, Roland. Lots of mag rifles in eight-millimeter would make the shot through the ceiling, but we should have seen some spall or deflection by the time it cleared the bed. A couple novelty handguns can really wing those flechettes, too. I looked into those and the numbers don’t add up. Nothing commercially available can put a spike through this much hard material with so little deflection.”

  “Custom weapons then,” Roland grunted.

  “Yup. And it’s not like a detective can just go asking underground arms dealers about it, either.”

  “All right. I get it. I’ll look into it. What’s with the follow up shots? Victim was dead from the first.”

  Parker wrinkled his nose. “Just being thorough, I think. A penetrator like that makes a tiny hole and doesn’t produce a wide wound channel. If you don’t perforate a major organ, the target might walk away with mild surgery.”

  That seemed to satisfy the big man. “Makes sense. Not much left of the chest after the beads hit, that’s for sure.”

  At that moment Mindy and Lucia returned. Mindy’s analysis was brief and authoritative. “He jumped.”

  “Jumped?” Parker did not look convinced. “From where?”

  “Across the street. He jumped from that tall blue building with all the lights on it. Landed on the roof. For some reason he did not want to move around a lot. Looks like he hit the deck, moved right to the spot he wanted and shot. Then he turned and jumped back.”

  “How can you tell?” Roland asked.

  “It’s what I would do,” Mindy said with a smile. Then she frowned. “Of course, I could never make that jump. He might have used a grav harness or something like that.”

  Parker did not buy that. “A grav harness would be picked up by every scanner on the street. Can’t hide concentrated antigravitons. If the traffic grid sees a gravitic field not attached to a registered vehicle?” He snapped his fingers. “Cops get sent out to write you a ticket. I’ll check the records, but my gut says he would not be so stupid.”

  Lucia picked up the thread. “Manny, you into the security system yet?”

  “Almost, Boss. This one is seriously complex!”

  “When you’re in, check the pressure sensors near the roof access door. I don’t think they ever got set off, but if someone jumped from a hundred feet away, I’m betting they detected his landing.”

  “But no one—”

  Parker started to argue but Mindy cut him off. “Best to just let the Boss sort this stuff out. Arguing just makes you look silly later.”

  They looked to Manny, who finally had something to say. “Got it. I’m in. Checking.” A pause, a scowl, a snort of confusion. “Yeah, looks like something hit the roof all right. Hard to tell. The pressure sensor was never meant to read that sort of thing, but it’s a standard load cell and something pulled some resistance across it. Not enough to register as an alarm, but definitely bigger than a bird or some hail.”

  “What could cause that?” Parker asked.

  “Something heavy hitting the roof real hard nearby. These load cells use a strain gauge and any deformation changes their electrical properties. It’s how they know when they’ve been stepped on. Nobody stepped on this one, but something made it wobble hard enough to alter the waveform.”

  Lucia stated the bare facts of the matter for all to hear. “This guy knew where to leap, where to land, where to stand, and where to shoot all without setting off the alarms. He jumped over a hundred feet and put three rounds through the same hole. Then he jumped back and got away before the cops showed up. Mindy?”

  “Yeah, Boss?”

  “Can you do any of that?”

  “I can’t jump a hundred feet, and I don’t think my legs could take the impact of the landing even if I could. I might be able to make those shots with a PressPoint, but I’m not real confident there, either. I figure security and cops showed up in what, five minutes?”

  “More or less,” Parker agreed.

  “I don’t think that’s enough of a head start for me to outrun an Uptown dragnet.” She bobbed her head from side to side as if weighing the options. “Maybe. I’m pretty good. I’d go to a lot of trouble avoiding having to try, though.”

  “There’s the rub,” Lucia said. “We have a killer who can do some fairly impossible things. Mindy is the best there is, and even she doesn’t think it’s doable. Nobody could do what this guy did.”

  They all looked to Roland because the next part was obvious.

  “No one except me,” Roland growled. “Jumping a hundred feet is no problem, and I could make those shots easily enough if I was wearing my helmet. I wouldn’t have any trouble handling the kind of weapon capable of blasting through four floors and a rooftop, either. Yeah, I could make that jump, make those shots, and run off exactly the way this guy did.”

  “But you also light up every scanner on the street,” Parker added. “You’d have never gotten close, leaping rooftops or otherwise.”

  “And he weighs a thousand pounds,” Lucia added. “The landing would have left serious damage up there. There is none. Whoever did this was a lot lighter than you, Roland.”

  “So not Roland.” Parker wiped his face with a weary hand. “But some other top-secret cyborg super-killer?”

  “Looks that way, Detective,” Roland agreed. “And you and I need to have a serious conversation about your files on me.”

  Parker shook his head briskly, and his face took on a distant distracted air. “Where?” he asked no one. It took a moment for Roland to realize the man was speaking on his comm. “Oh, shit. All right. I’m on my way.”

  He looked at Roland while the rest of the team stared blank-faced questions at him. “Yuri Granovich is dead, Roland. Looks like our guy got him.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  They had covered the corpse with a sheet, at least. Sam Parker lifted the corner to examine the body, finding himself unsurprised by the carnage beneath it. The old man had a single entrance wound in the middle of his forehead, and the back of his skull had been removed by the exiting projectile. It was a gruesome and brutal death, delivered to a harmless old man in a quiet residential neighborhood. He lowered the sheet. There was nothing to see here that he could not piece together on his own. Lonnie Pritchard had materialized at his back and chose this moment to speak up.

  “This look like our guy?”

  “Yeah,” Parker sighed. “It’s our guy.”

  “Next of kin is here. She’s pretty torqued up.”

  Sam swallowed hard. He had been avoiding seeing Elena since he had gotten out of the academy. The thought of what may have changed between them frightened him in an adolescent way. He hoped she did not look at him differently, though he feared she must. Sam wanted her to see him the way they always were. Two kids growing up in a tough neighborhood, playing in dirty alleys and dreaming big dreams under a broken streetlight. He remembered stealing his first clumsy kiss from her, and how she had blushed and called him silly over the botched attempt. Her face when he left home for the academy was etched into his memory, too. Her delicate features locked by iron will into an expression poorly concealing how
confused and hurt she was. She had been proud and angry and sad all at once. But they were just kids, then. Neither of them knew any better.

  Now he had to tell her that her father was dead, murdered by a cyborg assassin for no reason anyone would ever comprehend. Pritchard coughed.

  “Right. I’m going,” Parker said as he stood. “Secure this scene, and do it right. I am going to string this fucker up by his balls, and if you fuck up my case I will string you up with him.”

  Lonnie’s eyes went dark and angry. “Don’t you take a tone with me, rookie. I outrank you, remember?”

  Parker matched the look, and his glower was all the more convincing for the conviction in his voice. “You don’t outrank the dirt under that dead man’s boots, Pritchard.” Their eyes met, and Sam squinted into the red-rimmed pupils of his partner. “Goddammit, you’re blazing right now, I can tell! Outrank me? You’re a junkie and shit cop, Lonnie. But lucky for you I’m stuck carrying you on this one because I want this case solved more than I want to see you run the hell out of my department.” His gaze jerked away from Lonnie, but Sam was not finished berating the man. He passed Pritchard with a rough shove and grumbled a final point. “Never forget where I’m from, Pritchard. Pull rank on me again and I’ll show you how I dealt with shit like you before I became a cop.”

  A single hand was all Parker had needed to send Pritchard stumbling back several steps and crashing onto his rump. The stupefying haze of a good blaze burn had lent the dirty cop a courage unshaken by the obvious physical discrepancies between the two men. The growing bruise on his chest and the cool feel of concrete under his rear end made it clear that Parker could break him like a twig any time he chose to. A pragmatic and healthy fear now cooled the flame of recklessness burning in his guts.

  The brawny detective stalked away without a backward glance at his rising partner. He snapped, “Now go do your job and try not fuck it up.”

  A fuming Sam Parker pressed his way through the cordon and saw Roland Tankowicz first. If his own mood was not so black, he might have been more cognizant of the big man’s posture. The wide face sat in its prototypical impassive mask, but something in the stance and heft of the glowering fixer spoke to a deep and uncompromising animosity.

  Their eyes met for a moment, and Roland spoke first.

  “I do not like that man.”

  “Pritchard? You and me both.”

  “This our guy?”

  “It’s our guy,” Parker said with a defeated nod of the head.

  “Why Yuri? What the hell does he have to do with anything?”

  The detective shrugged. “No idea. But it will have to wait. Where’s Elena?”

  Roland jerked his chin over a shoulder. “Back with Lucia. She’s good at this stuff, but Elena needs you right now.”

  “Me?”

  “Oh, come on, kid. They say I’m obtuse?”

  Sam Parker was one of the toughest men Dockside had ever produced. He was big and strong, smart and hard. He had cut his knuckles on neighborhood bullies and criminals alike and he brooked no disrespect from anyone. He would have happily fought a hundred cyborg murderers with his bare hands at this moment if it meant he did not have to face Elena Granovich. But he was no coward, so he straightened his shoulders and stepped past the wide body of Roland Tankowicz to confront the only thing he truly feared.

  Roland followed the young detective to where Elena stood with Lucia. Manny and Mindy were off gathering intelligence, leaving them alone for the moment. Elena was tall, much taller than Lucia. Her hair ran down her back, long and straight and pure gold. She was thin and graceful, with smooth skin and delicate, almost elfin features. Her eyes, normally bright blue and beautiful, were now puffy and red. Tears had run salty tracks down her high cheekbones her small button nose was florid from sniffling.

  Sam’s heart caught in his throat at the sight of her. Her pain, her loss, her sadness hit him with a tsunami of guilt and shame. His job existed to stop this sort of tragedy from happening, and on his watch the first and only girl he had ever loved mourned her murdered father.

  “Elena...” he started, but his voice faltered, the words impossible to find. She looked up from Lucia’s shoulder, saw the defeated and terrified young man, and a sob burst from within her chest. Fear froze the detective in place. He was certain she hated him, hated his failure, hated his weakness. He was that silly teenage boy again, clumsy and stupid and useless.

  Then the thin blond girl flew to his arms, clutching him tightly and bawling in great heaving gasps. Her arms felt like tiny steel cables, squeezing and crushing the breath from his chest and her cries pressed on him with the weight of an avalanche. She was smothering him, drowning him, and he did not know what else to do but crush her back. He clutched at her desperately and repeated, “I’m so sorry...” over and over again. Yet still she cried.

  For long minutes they stood in the middle of the dirty street, just swaying in place while a daughter cried out her love for a dead father. Soon, the moment passed and the tall woman pushed back from Parker to look him in the face. “It is good to see you, Sam,” she said, wiping her eyes with her hand. Her voice had only barest hint of her father’s accent.

  “I’m going to get this guy,” he promised her. He knew in that moment that he did not care how or what methods had to be employed in this endeavor. “I’m going to get him.”

  “I know,” she replied. “You had better, at least.”

  Roland’s voice broke over their moment. “We will.”

  Elena turned to smile at the big man. “Hi, Roland. I’m glad you will be here to help get this bastard.”

  “For Yuri? Of course. You were just a baby then, but he was the first person to take a chance on me in this town. He was one of my very few friends, Elena. This guy is going down. Hard.”

  A small smile, thin and weak, creased the woman’s face. “The two toughest guys in Dockside on the case? The fixer working with the police? It’s a new day in Dockside, isn’t it? Papa would be proud.” Another wave of sobs overtook her at this. Roland did not know what do in times like these, but it seemed Sam had the situation well in hand. He pulled Elena back into his arms and wrapped her tightly. This appeared to be exactly what she needed, because she dug her face into his neck and cried there quietly. There was a soft tug on Roland’s sleeve and he turned. Lucia stood there, the look on her face communicating in no uncertain terms that this was not his moment and he should leave them to it.

  “Right,” he grunted. Then he moved toward the body under the sheet. He did not think he would find anything there that Sam had not already figured out. He needed somewhere to be, though. This seemed as good a place as any. Pritchard intercepted him. The sloppy detective stepped in Roland’s path and held up a trembling hand.

  “Hold on, pal. You and I need to talk.”

  In the history of human conflict, there existed many classic stories of great tactical blunders. Gallo’s trouncing at the hands of Hannibal, D’Albret’s stupidity at Agincourt, and the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade were etched in infamy for their foolishness. Lonnie Pritchard found himself in the company of these storied men of yore in the cold pre-dawn hours of this Dockside night. His palm made contact with Roland’s chest and something inside the big man snapped.

  Lucia gasped in terror when a huge right hand closed over most of the detective’s neck, enveloping the top half of his chest in the process. Pritchard’s feet left the pavement and he was swept upward with enough speed to crack his neck were it not locked in the iron grip of a giant cyborg. Roland put the man into the wall of a tenement building with far too much force. The impact tore a throaty wheeze from the man in his hand.

  “Talk?” Roland growled it like an animal. “You and I need to talk?” His other hand struck the wall mere inches from Lonnie’s head, smashing into the masonry blocks up to his wrist. “What do you and I need to talk about, Pritchard? Dirty cops? Drug addicted assholes who pretend to serve and protect while they turn a blind eye to the
misery around them?” Roland sent the detective to the ground with a dismissive sweep of his hand. Pritchard yelped in pain when his head bounced off the sidewalk.

  “Roland!” Lucia’s voice had a hint of warning in it. “He’s not worth it.” Then she turned to the assorted police and bystanders attracted by the commotion. “Nothing to see here, folks. Better move along.” Docksiders were a canny and jaded lot. It was common knowledge that when the fixer was working, wise folk found somewhere else to be.

  Oblivious to all of this, the big man stood in the shadow of the tenement building, chest heaving with a rage so pure and hot it felt like a reactor on overload. “No,” he said finally, never taking his eyes of the wheezing detective. “He’s not worth it. Not worth anything. Definitely not worth the thousand creds a week it costs to rent him, anyway. You want to talk, Pritchard? Go ahead. Talk.”

  Lonnie looked up from the sidewalk, up at the shadowed bulk of the most feared man in Dockside. His last burn was wearing off and he could feel the chill in his fingers as the sweet focus of blaze began to bleed away. He was forgetting what he needed to tell this man, and that was bad. If he wanted more blaze, he needed to make good on his obligations.

  “The kid!” he blurted. “You’re supposed to stay away from the kid!”

  “What?” Roland snarled through a scowl.

  “Parker! They want you to leave him alone.”

  “Who the fuck is ‘they?’”

  “Shit,” Pritchard spat. He was not supposed to say that. If only he could focus. “Doesn’t matter. You gotta leave off if you don’t want things to go bad for him.”

  It was Lucia who filled in the blanks. “Sounds like ‘they’ refers to the rest of the cops, Roland. I guess Dockside PD doesn’t appreciate having an honest officer in the ranks.”