Maggie and Josephs stood outside, their backs silhouetted by dim haloes. Maggie tucked her weapon into a pocket. Josephs dropped his to his hip and gave us a wave. I breathed easier. Whoever had arrived wasn’t a threat.
I could see Maggie and Josephs talking, their hands gesturing, but I couldn’t hear their voices, the sound swallowed by motors.
Engines silenced. The rope ladder tensed, rope scraping against the decking. Hands came over the porch’s edge, then a head, blocky features under wavy black hair. Lieutenant Rusedski, Homicide.
“It’s the good guys,” said Deluski, his voice solid, his emotional episode apparently forgotten. “Wanna go out?”
I weighed my options. I didn’t know where I stood with KOP. Mota had been telling lies about me, spreading rumors. The bastard had tried to implicate me in his boyfriend’s decapitation.
I half listened as Rusedski gave Maggie the biz: What are you doing here… I took you off the case… I should bounce you out of Homicide… you call yourself a squad leader…
Maggie took the punches with stoic poise. Josephs let her take the heat. Prick stood off to the side, doing the innocent bystander routine. Finally he spoke up, asked how Rusedski knew to come here.
The killer tipped them off. Called the tip line himself.
By this time, several med techs had climbed the ladder, piling up cameras and lights. Hommy dicks milled. They’d soon be ready to come inside. Lights flicked on, the porch bathed in eye-piercing bright white.
I had to make a decision: run away or face Rusedski.
KOP couldn’t be serious about me. Rusedski would have questions but nothing more. I couldn’t see it any other way. Mota’s rumor mill must’ve collapsed by now, blades falling off as Rusedski’s task force looked at the evidence. Witnesses had seen the killer eat my arm in that sweatshop. KOP would have sketches of him. They had his voiceprint too, now that he’d called in. They knew he wasn’t me.
Nothing to fear.
What else was I going to do anyway? No fucking way was I going to jump in the river again. She’d been a bitch to me.
I ducked and stepped through the window. Sore muscles creaked and moaned, made me regret my choice of exit.
My appearance silenced all conversation. Unis and med techs and hommy dicks looked at me, then the void where my hand should be, then at Rusedski, who hadn’t noticed me yet, back to me, then the rope ladder, people still coming up, eyes back on me.
I didn’t like the way they looked at me. Like I was a storm cloud about to ruin their picnic.
Deluski appeared alongside me. I gave him a questioning look. He seemed as confused as I felt.
Rusedski noticed me now, his eyes bouncing between me and the ladder. Hands came over the porch’s edge. Grabbing a cleat, a man pulled himself up the rest of the way. He stood straight, with a fine nose, expressive eyes, and a tailored uniform with a glistening badge under captain’s stripes.
My upper lip curled into a snarl, my hand into a fist.
Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.
The jungle closed in on me, its humming monotone scratching at my pulsing eardrums.
His lips curled into a smug smile.
I wanted to pound that nose. Drive a fist into his slick smile. I’d done it before, pulped that pretty face of his. Him tied to a chair, me teaching him not to cheat the chief. Teaching him four knuckles at a time.
But this wasn’t the time.
Mota came toward me. “Juno.” He extended his hand. “Truce?”
The bastard was putting on a show, acting like he was the bigger man. My jaw was squeezed too tight to speak. He and Panama killed Kripsen and Lumbela, pulled their tongues out their throats.
I felt eyes on me. Cops and med techs. Maggie and Josephs and Deluski.
And Mota-long lashes planted around bright whites. He stood there with his hand stretched out, taunting me.
I rushed him, planted my shoulder in his gut, drove my legs through the impact, and brought him down in a crunch of cracking wood. Shades hanging on one ear, I used my weight to hold down his squirming form. I wedged my stump under his chin and brought down my fist.
Fire exploded in my eyes, a thousand needles dipped in chili paste. I sucked wasps into my lungs. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. I rolled off him and swiped at my eyes with my shirtsleeves.
Mota grabbed me by the hair. My burned scalp went electric with pain. On a gust of hot air, a whisper blew in my ear: “I’ll cut your throat next.” I felt it in my ear canal, the searing burn of chemicals. It was still on his breath, whatever he’d spat in my face.
He let me go and voices gathered. Hands grabbed hold and pulled me to my feet. I tried to cough out the wasps, wracking, stabbing, excruciating pain. I let myself be led, Maggie’s voice nearby. A shove sent me over.
The river took me. She kissed my eyes with cool water. I filled my mouth, let her rinse out the chemicals, cleanse the pain. River wasn’t such a bad bitch after all.
Nineteen
I strode down Bangkok, ’mander-on-a-stick in my left. I bit off a leg and crunched it down, hot sauce sizzling on my tongue.
Rusedski had been a pain in the ass. After I’d refused to go down to the KOP station, he kept me at the scene for three hours, asking his questions, grilling me on how I knew Froelich. And Wu. What’s with you and Mota?
Why are you wearing those sunglasses? You have an eye condition?
Three hours I’d had to put up with his shit, my face still burning with whatever Mota had spat in my eyes. I did a lot of coughing. A lot of tear dabbing. Even more stonewalling.
Three hours. I was there when he chased away Maggie, Josephs, and Deluski. I was there when Mota took off with a self-satisfied wink, and when they knocked the railing off the staircase so they could carry Froelich and Wu’s shellacked bodies down, somebody’s bright idea to carry them by their skewer, three dumb-as-hell med techs on each end of the pole, hauling Froelich and Wu down the stairs like they’d bagged big game on a safari.
Un-fucking-real.
I put the stick up to my mouth and bit off the shoulders along with half of the torso. I really did need to eat more often.
Bangkok Street was prepping for a long night of partying. Street vendors arrived on bikes, umbrella-topped grills in tow. Strippers headed to work, high heels dangling from their hands, skimpy numbers on hangers. Offworld kids sat in restaurants, shopped for souvenirs, and generally acted like the pampered brats they were. Debauchery would be coming soon.
I gnawed off what was left on the stick and dropped the splinter of Lagartan bamboo on the ground. I stopped for a bag of soda and sucked it dry as I watched the place across the street. The upstairs lights were on.
I borrowed a phone from a street vendor and called Josephs. The results on Lizard-man’s tube of glue were finally in. As I’d expected, Lizard-man hadn’t been careless enough to leave us the gift of fingerprints.
I had to find another way to ID him.
I looked at the door, the door I’d come out one hand less than when I went in. Lizard-man could shift. The fork-tongued fuck could turn his hand into a steel trap. And Lizard-man wasn’t the only one who had been enhanced. Mota had his mouth modified so he could spit liquid fire without burning himself in the process. Did that mean false lips and eyes? Artificial skin?
Locals didn’t usually go for that kind of shit. Even the rich ones. Tummy tucks and tit jobs were more their style. Face-lifts and erection extensions. To shift like Lizard-man, that was something different. His skin changed texture. His ears recessed. His tongue split. That was some high-end work. Not the kind of thing you could do with a little silicone or a scalpel and a fat vac. To shift like an offworlder, you needed motors and mind jacks. Digital tissue. Fleets of minibots in the bloodstream.
They must have gotten offworld tech installed somewhere. Somewhere cheap, somewhere with low standards.
They needed the kind of doctor who wouldn’t think twice about installing a robo-snatch in Maria’s fi
fteen-year-old sister.
I crossed the street, dodging offworld pedestrians, and gave the door a loud rap. The door swung open. A teen stood in the frame, the boy assistant I’d seen here before, the one with the milky eyes. Like poached eggs with dishwater yolks.
“The doctor in?” I asked with a grin.
“No.”
“I can wait.” I stepped over the doorjamb and forced him aside.
He put his hand on my elbow. “You’ll have to come back later.”
I started up the stairs. “Doc! You in, Doc?”
“You c-can’t d-do this.”
I ignored his stutters. “Doc? Where are you, Doc?” I hit the top of the stairs and started down the hall, pushing open doors on the way. “Doc?” I threw open another door. Tanks on tables, tanks on the floor, stacked all around. Body parts were growing inside, flesh clinging to circuitry, growing around it, enveloping it. Fingers. Hands. Legs. Suspended organs swam in fish tanks.
“Who the hell are you?” A woman’s voice.
I spun around to face her. “Hey, Doc, it’s me. Remember?” I waved at her with my half-arm.
“I tried to stop him,” said the teen, his milky eyes gone sour.
She motioned her servant away with a toss of her hand, kept her eyes on me. “What are you doing here?”
This woman cut off my hand. Cut it off without asking me. But I needed information. Needed to know if she’d done the work on Lizard-man. I needed that name. I capped the well of anger inside me with a casual smile. “I had time to rethink this missing hand. Sorry I was so rude before, but it was quite a shock, losing a part of me.”
She squinted suspiciously, her crow’s-feet sinking deep into the sands of her face.
I opened my mouth, words stalling in my throat. It wasn’t too late to play it straight. To drop the charade and ask my questions like I was a regular cop. Except I wasn’t a cop, meaning she had no reason to talk to me.
“You still got that replacement hand?”
She nodded like she’d expected that question. “Have you had your dressings changed?”
“No.”
“Come.” She stepped down the hall.
I took a last look at the lab, a shiver tickling the hair on my neck. I followed her into an exam room. It could have been the same one I was in before, but muddled memories made it difficult to pin down. I sat on the padded table and unbuttoned my shirt.
She was dressed most undoctorly-silk shirt, tight pants, like she was ready for a night on the town. But the stressed buttons and taut fabric of her shirt didn’t fit right over her rack.
Her shirt was wrong. My brain scratched at it. I was missing something.
I took off my own shirt, and she pulled up a stool. Seeing the bloodstained bundle of bandages, she spoke with a scolding tone, “What happened here?”
“Got in a bad scrape.”
She let it pass with a head shake and an unfriendly smirk, her chilly bedside manner on full display. Made me want to ask what she thought she was accomplishing with her glasses and salt-and-pepper hair. Why play the middle-aged doctor when you weren’t going to back it up with a warm personality? Or any personality at all.
She yanked tape and started unraveling. “I know you said you don’t do work to order but-”
“I don’t,” she interrupted.
I continued on as if I hadn’t heard her. “In my line of work I could use something with a little punch, if you know what I mean.”
“Be more specific.” Her face stayed flat when she talked, her voice unreadable.
“I’m talking weapons.”
She took her eyes off the bandages and looked square at me.
“Maria told me about some of the work you do for her hooker friends, so I figured maybe you do stuff for bodyguards like me?”
“You’re a bodyguard?”
“Bodyguard. Bouncer. Whatever pays.”
She pulled off the last of the bandages, exposing the blood-caked cap affixed to the end of my arm, and the viny tendrils holding it in place. She dug scissors from a drawer and clip-clipped the air.
“Those sterile?”
“I’m a pro. I won’t cut you.”
I tensed as she leaned in and snipped the first tendril. She pinched the severed piece in her fingers, and I felt a tug as it pulled free. Barely felt it at all.
“So you want a self-defense system?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve done weapons before.” I waited for her to elaborate, for her to say she once did a hand that could morph into a steel trap. She snipped another tendril. “You never told me how you hurt your arm.”
“Didn’t Maria tell you?”
“No.”
I had a lie ready. “I took a day job at a bottling plant and got my hand caught in the machinery.”
“Bad luck.” She dropped another tendril in the trash.
“So what can you do for me?”
She snipped at the tendrils. “I don’t take directions from my patients.” Her tone was as sharp as her scissors. “I go where inspiration leads me.”
“But Maria told me you’ve installed very specific equipment for some of her hooker friends.”
“I let them tell me what area of the body they want me to work on, but that’s all. My practice is not a lunch buffet. Only an artist can be trusted to shape the human body.”
She pulled the cap off the end of my arm. I didn’t look. Didn’t want to know what was down there after so much neglect. I kept my gaze focused on her, pictured her with a saw in her hand, going at my arm. My arm. I breathed deep, gritted my teeth. Get a grip.
She opened up a small pack of gauze, bunched it up in her hand, and poured some alcohol into the center.
I kept my arm still, fighting the urge to jerk free. This butcher cut off my hand.
“Doesn’t look too bad.” She took a deep whiff of my wound. “You’re a lucky one. I don’t smell the rot, but I’d like to get some antibiotics into you just in case.”
“Sounds good.” I tried to sound cool. Calm.
“Be right back.” She went out the door.
I wanted to get out of here, jitters tingling in my feet and legs. I didn’t want her touching me again. But I hadn’t scored any info yet. I told myself I was being paranoid. Just some antibiotics. You need the antibiotics. I knew damn well how regular antibiotic injections kept my mother alive a year longer than most.
I could do this. A quick injection, and it would be over. I’d never have to let her touch me again. We could get back to talking about a new hand. Back to steel traps. I could con her into giving me Lizard-man’s name as a referral.
A figure appeared in the door. The teen with the clouded eyes. He had a syringe in his hand. “I have your antibiotics.” He stepped forward, the syringe filled with clear liquid.
Clear. A sick twinge rolled in my gut. It should be brown. I’d injected my mother plenty of times. Always brown.
“I’ll need an arm,” he said.
I pointed at his hands. “Wash those things first.”
“I already did.”
“Wash ’em again so I can see you.”
He nodded glumly, turned around, and moved to the sink, setting the syringe on the counter before running the water.
I slipped up behind him, slow, silent. He shut off the water, reached for a towel. I nabbed the syringe, bit off the cap with my teeth. He spun, tried to back away, but I’d already sunk the needle into his thigh. He let out a squeak as I dropped the plunger. Antibiotics my ass.
Milk-filled eyes curdled. His balance shifted. Legs noodled. I left the needle in his thigh and eased him down into a crumpled mass of angled limbs. Couldn’t afford to make noise.
I moved to the door, listened first, peeked out second. I crept into the hall and headed for the stairs, the sound of a hushed voice ahead. I pressed my back into the wall, moved toward an open doorway, shoulder blades sliding over bumpy plaster.
“Just get down here.” The doctor’s voice.
She spoke again. “I’m putting him under until you get here.”
I stopped at the edge of the door frame. The stairs were so, so close, but I stayed where I was, afraid to cross the open doorway. I couldn’t let her see me. Couldn’t give her the chance to unleash whatever offworld tech she had inside her. Recessed lase-pistols? Plague pins? Who the fuck knew?
“Bye.”
Shit. I should’ve gone for it already. I heard footsteps. Fuck. I backed down the hall, away from the stairs, and ducked through a door. A bathroom. Stalls and urinals. A shower. Three sinks.
I went for the window, turned the handle and pushed open both sides. I looked out, sized up the drop. Two stories down to a dimly lit alleyway. An ankle-breaker if I ever saw one. Damn. Damn. Damn.
“Juno?” I heard her call from the hallway. She’d found her assistant. “Where are you?” A door slammed down the hall. Then another that sounded closer. “Emil Mota told me who you are. Where are you?”
If I was going to jump it had to be now.
But it was too high. Too damn high. I took off a shoe, dropped it out the window, and ran into the shower.
“I wish I’d known who you were the first time you came in. I wouldn’t have stopped with your hand.” She was in the bathroom, her voice so near, so cold, so cruel.
Heartbeats pounded in my chest, my ears. I peeked through the gap between the mildewed shower curtain and the mossy wall, dewy water soaking into my shirtsleeve.
I could see her now. She was at the window, leaning through to get a good look down. See the shoe and believe it. Please believe it. Lungs ached to keep up with my double-timing heart, but I kept my breathing slow and constrained, breaths squeezing in and out of my mouth.
She pulled her head back inside the window. Believe, bitch.
Seconds passed. Long, super-stretched seconds.
“It’s me again,” she said. “He’s gone. Bastard jumped out the window.”
KOP Killer k-3 Page 17
