ANOTHER RAINY NIGHT
By Patrick Goodman
27 October 2073
Thomas McAllister watched the city of Denver emerge below him like a bleak gray cancer as the chartered jet broke through the cloud cover on its approach. He’d never particularly liked Denver, and had someone not paid him a considerable retainer several weeks ago, he wouldn’t be going there now. The late October sky seemed dreary and foreboding from the comfort of his seat, and the pilot had informed the three passengers that it was a windy and rainy four degrees Celsius in the Treaty City that afternoon. He shivered slightly, glad that he’d brought the heavy lined coat on the seat next to him.
The two other passengers on the corporate Luxe V jet tried to engage him in small talk shortly after the plane had left Houston. Judging from their demeanor and the way they were dressed, they were mid-level corp executives who probably didn’t want to know the real reason Knight Errant was flying him to Denver, so he muttered some noncommittal pablum about being a university professor from Texas A&M&M (which was true) hired to present a special seminar to Ares senior management in the UCAS sector (which was not). Then he’d smiled a less-than-cheerful smile and let his gray eyes go slightly out of focus, looking at them as if he were deciding which one might taste better. They had quickly stopped trying to engage him in further conversation and had spent the remainder of the flight chatting quietly with one another, occasionally giving him a pointed glance which he was almost certainly not supposed to notice.
Now the crowded, ugly city was drawing closer as the plane made its final approach to the small tower that housed the regional headquarters for Knight Errant’s Front Range Free Zone Division. The VTOL-capable jet set down on the building’s roof, and Thomas and his fellow passengers rose from their seats and collected their belongings. The two executives seemed more than willing to let Thomas off the plane first, so he pulled the black leather coat on over the dove-gray turtleneck he was wearing, gathered his small duffel bag, and descended the short flight of stairs to the roof. He was greeted by a heavy-set, dark-skinned elven woman about his age, with dark brown, close-cropped hair.
“Dr. McAllister?” she asked as she approached. He nodded. “I’m Alice Bujold, Regional Commander for KE here in Denver; I’m glad you were able to come so quickly.” She motioned to the door; Thomas gathered up his bag and followed her. “It’s usually snowing here by this time of the month; you got lucky.”
“Yes,” he replied, his voice a soft Texas drawl. “Lucky. That’s just what I was going to say.”
Once inside, she bypassed the small customs station, led him to an elevator, and pressed the button for the ninth floor. “This will be number nine for you, won’t it?”
“Yes.” A brief exchange about the weather, then right to the business of death. He was fine with that. “Has her body been released to the family yet?”
She shook her head tightly, the polite smile disappearing from her face. “No. Corporate was adamant about that not being done until you’d examined her and signed off.”
“And you don’t like that.” It was clearly not a question.
“I do not,” she said as the elevator stopped and opened its doors. She stepped out quickly and turned left, not looking to see if he was following. “It’s upsetting the family, and it could create a public relations incident if she’s not released soon.” She stopped in front of a large double door labeled Morgue. “Just as it could if your theory got out, Doctor.”
He gave her a long, appraising look. She was a heavy woman, but not overly so, and her weight was distributed well. She was nearly the same height as he was. While she was short for an elf, she was still imposing. Standing there, arms crossed across her chest, she reminded him of a wall in a business suit.
“I understand that, Ms. Bujold,” he said finally. “And so do your superiors at Knight Errant, or they wouldn’t have paid me the ridiculous consulting fee I charged them to bring me here. Or to the scene in Seattle. And the governments of Tír Tairngire, the Pueblo Corporate Council, and the Sioux Nation feel the same way.” He took a deep breath and ran his hand through his dark hair before continuing. “Look, I’m not trying to stir shit up with this. I don’t want a panic any more than you do, but we need to face the fact. We’re probably dealing with the Infected here.”
She stood her ground, giving him the same appraisal he’d given her, and then exhaled sharply. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be this hostile right off the bat. I want this bastard as much as anyone. I’d just like to do it quietly, and the media is already speculating about vampires because of the blood and the tags on the walls. If they knew about some of the other killings—the ones they haven’t heard about—it would be a real mess. I’d rather that not happen on my watch.”
“I don’t do interviews, ma’am,” he said with a hint of a smile. “They won’t hear a thing from me. Can I see the body now?”
Bujold smiled in return; they seemed to have reached an understanding. She motioned to the stainless-steel doors behind her, and then turned and entered the morgue. Thomas followed her in. They were greeted by a human woman in her forties, leaning against a table and wearing a neat business suit. Her light brown hair was long and drawn back into a ponytail. Her badge hung on a lanyard around her neck, and an Ares Predator was conspicuously holstered on her right hip. She stood as the two of them entered.
“Doctor, this is Senior Detective Lydia Bowden,” Bujold said tersely, placing what Thomas thought was an excessive amount of emphasis on the word “detective.” “Detective Bowden is the lead investigator in the Lawrence murder; she’ll be your escort and point of contact.” Turning to Bowden, she said, “I believe you know your assignment, detective.” With that, she spun around and left.
Thomas stood there a moment, a slightly puzzled expression on his face. He found a chair and set his duffel bag down upon it. “Would it be out of place for me to ask what that was all about?” he asked.
“People work together long enough, they find some reason to like each other, or they don’t,” she said in a low, husky voice that hinted of the bayous of Louisiana. “I’ve worked with Alice for a while. I’m Lydia.” She offered her hand.
Thomas shook it; her grip was firm and dry, confident without being aggressive. He could feel the slight firmness of an induction pad in her palm. It was the only sign of cyberware he could notice, but he didn’t imagine that a smartlink was all she had installed. Even though she was a good fifteen centimeters shorter than he was, he found her just as imposing as Alice Bujold. It might have been the massive pistol, or it might have been the eyes, deep brown and constantly in motion, taking in everything around her. “Thomas,” he said by way of introduction, “Thomas McAllister.”
She nodded. “I know who you are, Dr. McAllister; I did some research when I found out I was going to be your babysitter. If they’re bringing in a noted vampirologist, things must be worse than I thought.”
He smiled genuinely. “Well, now. ‘Vampirologist.’ There’s a nice old-fashioned word for you. I don’t hear that one nearly enough.”
She shrugged. “I’m an old-fashioned girl.”
He pretended not to notice as she sized him up. He pulled his commlink out of one of his longcoat’s outer pockets and brought up an AR window. They had sent him a copy of the autopsy report, as if that was going to tell him all he needed to know. He wasn’t surprised that someone didn’t want him coming; his presence frequently indicated something bad had happened or was about to happen. He brought the report up in the open window, and put some of the scene photos in another. Looking at the rows of lockers on the far wall, he asked, “Are you just a babysitter, Lydia, or are you willing to help out?”<
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She gave him a sour look. “I work for a living.”
“Sorry,” he said. “That came out wrong. Most places I go, my escort tries to stay as far from me as physically possible. Especially on this case, for some reason. After a while …” He let his voice trail off a little and shrugged slightly. “Which one is hers?”
“This one,” she said, pulling out one of the drawers to reveal a body draped in a sheet. Thomas pulled the sheet away to reveal a young ork woman. Her body was badly bruised, cut in several places, and there was a ragged hole in the side of her neck where someone had bitten through her jugular vein.
Lydia told him some of the details of the woman’s life as Thomas looked over the body. She didn’t bother consulting her own AR display. “This is Corinne Lawrence, 24 years old; cause of death was exsanguination. She worked as a private courier, occasionally as a bodyguard, for a local firm. Well-trained, good at her job, at least according to her employment records; whoever did this was good.”
Thomas nodded. “She certainly didn’t go quietly, I’ll give her that.”
“No, she did not.” She watched as he examined the woman’s body. “Not your first rodeo, I see,” she said after a few minutes.
He shook his head as he leaned in to examine her neck. “I was an MD long before I was a college professor,” he said. The tooth marks were real, he figured, not the product of an appliance. “Damn. Just like the others.” He looked up at her. “Did the ME find enough saliva around the wound for DNA?”
She flipped through the report on her AR and nodded. “Yeah; it matched with some of the blood they found on her hand razors. They didn’t get any hits.”
“Did they do a Harz-Greenbaum compensation before they ran it?”
She shook her head as she searched the report. “If they did, they didn’t write it down.”
He looked up and shook his head. “Of course they didn’t,” he said. “Why should they listen to the vampire expert and run the one test he asked for?”
“Good question. I’ll try to find an answer for you.” She scanned a bit further then said, “The samples are still on file, though; I’ll make that happen.” She made the appropriate gestures in the AR field. “That shouldn’t take too long,” she said. “You know who it is, don’t you?”
He stood up and shook his head. “I’ve got an idea, but no, I don’t know for sure. There wasn’t enough DNA gathered on most of the other bodies to get an ID. It had already degraded by the time the bodies were discovered. This is the first victim to really have enough to run a comparison.” He looked at the report in his AR window, flipped through it until he found the notes on the bloodied hand razors. Reaching over, he raised her right hand and examined it more closely. Her surgeon had done some nice work; if he hadn’t known what he was looking for, he might have missed the razors altogether. “Most of the evidence I’ve been able to gather is of questionable admissibility.” He turned to face Corinne’s body directly, crossing his arms across his chest as he did so. “She’s like six of the others; she doesn’t fit the profile.”
Lydia walked up to the other side of the drawer and faced Thomas. “Which profile?”
“Most victims of vampires have light, if any, cybernetic modifications. Vampires don’t just survive off blood. They need it, but it’s not all they need. They feed off the psychic energy in a person’s aura, and cyberware eats away at that.” He looked back at the corpse. “Poor Corinne here, though, was heavily modified, as were most of the victims. If this is a vampire—and I’m pretty sure it is—then she’s not killing for survival. She’s doing it because she can.”
“She? Serial killers are almost exclusively male.”
“Just a hunch,” he said. “Excuse me a moment.” Without waiting for a response, he reached out and placed his right hand on Corinne’s cold cheek. He closed his eyes and assensed her.
The razors popped out of her fingertips as the intruder lunged for her, a fighting knife in her hand. Fast, too fast, she’s so damn fast! The knife’s edge sliced across her ribs, through the fabric of the vest like it wasn’t even there; strong and fast, a bad combination. Corinne managed to get a straight jab into the woman’s gut as she shot past, driving the razors deep into her flesh and coming away with blood on her hand. The pommel of the knife struck her in the back of the head as the bitch shot past; would have crushed her skull if it weren’t for the ceramics fused with her skeleton …
“Doc?” Lydia’s voice shook him from his reverie. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine. A little disoriented, that’s all.” He shook his head to clear it; he hadn’t gotten a good look at the killer, but it could have been her. “How long … ?”
She shrugged. “Few seconds. Learn anything?”
“You were right about her not going quietly, but that’s about all I saw. Her opponent was a woman, very fast, quite strong.”
Lydia frowned. “So you were right about the killer being female,” she said. “And I was right in thinking that you know a lot more about this than you’re telling me.”
Thomas nodded. “Like I said, I don’t get too close to most of my escorts. We don’t talk much.”
Her frown deepened a little. “I’m not most of your escorts, Doctor. If we’re going to work on this investigation together, you need to keep me in the loop.” She paused, reconsidering what she’d said. “Hell, you need to bring me into the damn loop to start with.”
Thomas was silent for a few moments. He looked down at Corinne Lawrence, and then reached and touched the hideous wound in her throat. He closed his eyes, and Lydia watched his fingertips begin to glow slightly. Beneath them, the wound closed itself, flesh stitching itself back together under his touch. In a few moments, her throat was whole again.
He opened his eyes to see Lydia almost smiling at him. “That’s tampering with evidence,” she said quietly
Thomas almost smiled back. “The autopsy was completed yesterday, and the family’s waiting to bury her. That’s hard enough in any circumstance; it’s worse when there’s such an obvious wound.” He motioned to the rest of her cuts and bruises, as well as the autopsy incisions. “These can be covered up, but that one….”
“I didn’t say I disapproved,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said. “Magic doesn’t bother you, then? It makes some people a little jumpy.”
She shrugged. “Not my first rodeo.”
Thomas pulled the sheet back over Corinne’s body and slid the drawer back into the wall, a thoughtful expression on his face. He then retrieved his duffel bag and headed for the door. “I’ll fill you in on things in the car,” he said as he passed Lydia.
She grabbed her own jacket and pulled it on. “Where are we going?”
“To the crime scene. I need to see where she died.”
Lydia turned her beat-up red ’62 Ford Americar onto I-70 and headed east. She drove herself, not turning control over to the autopilot and the city’s GridGuide system. Between the crappy weather and the crappy drivers, traffic was worse than usual for this time of day. She radiated irritation as the drive continued—cursing under her breath, muttering things like “You’d think these people would know how to drive in rain.” She looked over to the passenger seat when McAllister pulled an Ares Viper slivergun out of his duffel bag. He’d shed his longcoat before they got in and had pulled on a well-worn shoulder holster rig as they left the parking garage.
As he slid the pistol into the holster, she said, “I just know you’re licensed for that.”
“As a matter of fact, I am,” he said. “And a few other things, as well. Knight Errant was kind enough to arrange for my CAS licenses to follow me into UCAS territory. Wish the Sioux had been as cooperative.”
She sighed and shifted in her seat. “You’re expecting trouble, then.”
“Yup,” he said, exaggerating his drawl to try and sound like a western hero. “Afraid I am.” He pulled a bracer onto his left wrist. It was too short and unadorned to be a T
iffani Élégance; it looked like one of the many self-defense sprayers on the market.
She inhaled sharply, swore under her breath again, and engaged the car’s autopilot. She punched in an address, and then turned in her seat a little to face him and said, “Time to open up. What are we walking into?”
He stared into his duffel bag, closed it, pulled his longcoat back on as best he could, and deliberately did not look at Lydia. They sat in the car. The noise of the engine and the steady beat of the windshield wipers fending off the rain were the only sounds. She was about to prompt him again when he began speaking, softly, almost to himself. “About ten years ago, there was a young woman in one of my ‘Vampires for Laymen’ courses at the University. Bright girl, very focused and very enthusiastic. Aced the course. Maybe I should have known. Maybe she was too into it. Maybe something should have warned me that she was a little off-kilter. But I get all sorts in those classes. One enthusiastic twenty-something didn’t set off any alarms for me back then.”
“What do you mean by ‘off-kilter’?”
He raised his head and looked at her. His eyes were wide, his mouth a limp frown. “She had grown up fascinated with vampires, glamorizing and idealizing them in her head. She was hardly alone in that, of course, but she certainly had one of the worst cases I’d ever seen. She also had certain ideas about our relationship that weren’t grounded in reality, something else I completely missed at first.”
Lydia nodded. “I had a thing for an archeology professor I had back in college, but I got over it. I’m guessing she didn’t.”
He shook his head. “No. And I was oblivious.”
“Strange how often that happens.”
“Yeah.” He sat there silently for a little while as the car wound its way through residential streets. Neither of them had even noticed when they left freeway. The car brought itself to a halt in front of a small apartment building and parked itself. The two passengers stepped out into the freezing rain.
Lydia made a gesture to arm the car’s security system, then led her charge up a small flight of steps and through the building’s front door. Silently, they took an elevator to the eighth floor and then made their way to the end of the corridor. They came to a doorway crisscrossed with yellow crime-scene tape. Flashing AROs attempted to warn them away, but Lydia walked right through them. She pulled a passkey from her pocket, opened the door, and stepped under the tape to enter the apartment. Thomas followed.
Shadowrun: Another Rainy Night Page 1
