“Any idea who the vics are?” I asked.
“Nope. Not without the bodies. We've tried to match the dates to missing persons reports, but we can't get definitive matches. There're too many missing persons.”
I knew what she meant. Slavers smuggled Lagartans off-planet to work the belts at a steady rate. KOP probably received three or four missing persons reports a week, and that was just Koba. They didn't count the rest of the planet. Go out to the fringe towns where the warlords were in control, and there was no telling how many people went missing. Koba was the only city on the planet with even partially accurate record keeping.
I pointed at a trio of coin-sized bloodless circles on the floor. “How about those?”
“They're from a tripod.”
“He films it?”
“That, or he has an accomplice who does the filming. No way to tell.”
I felt a clap on my shoulder. “Juno.”
I recognized the voice without turning around. “Abdul,” I said, already grinning.
“What brings you here?”
I turned to look at my old friend. “Maggie asked me to come. She wanted to get an experienced detective's perspective.”
The coroner looked at me with eyebrows arched behind his superthick glasses. Abdul knew I couldn't be serious. He was well aware of the fact that I'd spent far more of my career strong-arming than I did Sherlocking. “I see,” he said noncommittally.
Abdul scanned the room, his magnified eyes swiveling through his specs. He took it all in: the blood, the block, the bloated body. “Looks familiar.”
“So I hear.”
“Got any wisdom for us, Juno?” It was Ian who was asking, a smug look on his face.
“I'll need some time,” I responded.
“Didn't think so,” he said, and he walked out, brushing into me on his way. There was a time I would have jumped his ass for even coming close to me. Maybe Josephs was right; he was no pussy anymore.
The old coroner hunched his already hunched back over the jellied body of Officer Ramos. “This could get messy,” he stated.
Maggie and I took his cue and stepped out to give Abdul and his staff some space. It wasn't easy to bag a gene-eaten body—like zippering up a human-sized water balloon.
Maggie and I walked past the uniforms gathered outside the cabin, their tough talk predictably anti-offworld. They'd been rattling away the whole time, saying stupid shit like, “If I caught the guy that did this, I'd shoot him first chance I got,” or “I'd douse him with his own gene eaters and see how he likes it.” I knew they were ticked at losing one of their own, but put one of them face to face with the offworld killer, and they'd do one of two things: drop to their knees and beg, or run faster than they'd ever run before—just like I did a couple hours ago.
There was no such thing as a fair fight with an offworlder. Their technology was centuries ahead of ours. True, Lagarto once had the foundation for a tech-rich society but that had been squandered away generations ago. Our economy was founded on Lagartan brandy, a cash crop that funded a flurry of construction during the boom. They put up a top-notch spaceport from which brandy was boosted into space by the freighterful. The freighters docked with Lagarto's orbital station, an engineering marvel in its day. The thing was huge, the size of a city. It could service even the largest of the spaceliners that made the multiyeared hauls to the rest of the Unified Worlds.
At the boom's peak, there was a freighter going up every ten minutes. They should've known how fragile it all was, an economy based on a single product. It went to hell when a lone smuggler managed to sneak a couple saplings back to Earth and published the brandy tree's genetic code. That was all it took for Lagarto to lose its market. All twenty-seven planets had the trees adapted to their own environments and began raising their own fruit and distilling their own brandy. Lagarto went deep into the red, and in order to pay the government's debts, the pols had a fire sale. They sold off the spaceport, the Orbital, and even the rights to mine the belts, which were the only things left that this system still had going for it. The bastard pols embezzled the profits for themselves and left this planet a charity worker's bonanza. We led the Unified Worlds in every category: poverty, illiteracy, starvation, unemployment, disease, infant mortality. …
Maggie and I made it back outside. Ian was there, holding a baggie with a vid inside. He was talking to a female officer who, upon seeing Maggie, said, “I found a vid, Detective.”
“Where?” Maggie asked.
“It was on the pier, in the weeds. Maybe somebody dropped it.”
“Have you watched it?”
“No. I brought it to Ian the moment I found it.”
“Good work, Officer … ?”
“Kobishi.” She beamed in the dark.
“Good work, Officer Kobishi.”
The young officer saluted and then strode across the deck, heading for the gangway. Based on the salute and the fact that I didn't recognize her, she was a definite newbie, probably at her first ever crime scene.
Holding up the bagged vid, Ian asked, “Anybody got a vid reader?”
I shook my head.
Maggie said, “No. We'll have to ask the med-techs if we can borrow their equipment when they're done documenting the scene.”
“Yeah,” said Ian as he neatly folded the baggie over the vid and tucked it in his shirt pocket. “Call me when they're ready.” He walked away, following the same path taken by Officer Kobishi.
Maggie and I stepped out of the high-traffic area of the deck and found a semidry spot under one of the age-frozen cranes.
“How's Niki?” she said.
“Fine,” I said as a reflexive kick response.
“Will you tell her I'll be by soon? It's probably been a week since I went to see her. These barge murders have me all tied up.”
I told her flat out. “You gotta duck this case.”
“I can't do that. I've been working this for too long.”
“How many have there been?”
“Tonight's the thirteenth. This guy's a serial.”
Even more convinced, I said, “You've got to get out. The killer's an offworlder.”
“So?”
“Don't play stupid, Maggie. You know what can happen if you try to arrest an offworlder.”
She resisted looking at my bobbing hand. “Don't worry about that, Juno. When I find him, I'll bring a whole squad.”
“So what if you do. You can bet that if he's got the money to buy gene eaters, he's got the money to buy the judge, too.”
Maggie looked away out over the water, her face now in total shadow.
I knew she didn't want to hear it, but I kept up the pressure. “And what happens when the press gets a hold of this? You've been lucky so far that nobody gives a shit about a bunch of nameless victims, but that won't last much longer. There's a dead cop for chrissakes. Eventually, somebody's going to leak the fact that an offworlder has killed thirteen people including a cop. The public will throw a fit. They're already pissed about how fucked up this city's gotten over the past year. They'll demand to know what the police are doing about it, and you're going to have to stand there and say you don't know squat. How will that look on your record? Trust me, Maggie, you need to drop this case.”
“I can't, Juno. Ian's gung ho on this one. When it was clear we weren't getting anywhere on it, I told him we should step aside and let some fresh eyes have a look at it, but then he got all territorial about it.”
“So ask for a new partner. You don't like that prick anyway. Get yourself out and let Ian take this one.”
She turned back to me, her face barely lit. “I already asked for a new partner. Lieutenant Rusedski wouldn't hear it.”
“Why not?”
Maggie let out a frustrated sigh. “Rusedski wants Ian to get the squad leader post. I had no idea Ian was even interested until he put in for it right on the deadline. For weeks, I'd been after Rusedski for a letter of recommendation. He kept promising he wou
ld do it, but he never delivered. Then Ian submitted his application with a letter of recommendation from Rusedki. That's when it all made sense why Rusedski made Ian and me partners. You see what I mean? Rusedski wanted to put Ian through for that job all along, but he knew that the brass liked me better because of my case-solved percentage. …”
There was no need for her to go on. I could see what Rusedski had been doing. By partnering Maggie with Ian, they'd share all their collars. Her successes would be his successes. It was only a matter of time before their case-solved percentages converged. “Still,” I said, “you don't want to be out front on this one. Just drop it. Let Ian be the one to put his ass on the line.”
“I hear you, Juno, but somebody's killed thirteen people. I can't just let it go.”
I shook my head. What could I do? She still believed in right and wrong. I changed the subject. “What's this job you want me to do?”
“You shouldn't have come here, Juno. I doubt Ian believed that crap about getting a second opinion. He's got to be wondering why you're really here.”
“Sorry. I didn't know it had anything to do with him.”
“I know. I should've told you. I thought that if we met at The Beat, it would look like we were just hanging out, and I could point out Ian's crew.”
“His crew?”
“He's at the center of a clique with some guys from homicide and a few beat cops.”
“And you think they're up to no good?”
“I know it. What I need is proof. I called you in because I want you to check into the Juarez case.”
“Juarez? The vid station exec?”
“Yeah.”
I remembered the case from the news: Vid station bigwig and wife cut up by their teenaged daughter, a hot little vix with a wicked streak. “But you solved it months ago.”
“I don't think the daughter did it anymore.”
“Isn't it a little late? Wasn't she executed?”
“Not yet. Her conviction was just last week. She's scheduled for the fifth of December.”
I worked it out in my head. Today being the twenty-ninth, that was nine days away. It would only be six on the standard Earth calendar, but our months are each three days longer in order to make up for the fact that each of our days is two hours shorter.
“Why the change of heart?” I wanted to know.
“The day after sentencing, I got a call from a woman who said the girl didn't do it.”
“Who's the woman?”
“It was anonymous.”
She had to be kidding me with this. “And you believe her?”
“I know it sounds thin, but she said she knew who really did it.”
I couldn't keep a sarcastic tone from slipping into my voice. “Let me guess, she knows who did it, but she can't tell you who it is.”
Maggie shot an annoyed look out of the shadows. “That's right.”
“Didn't you take the girl's confession?”
“No, Ian did that on his own. We don't really partner on much, Juno. We each pretty much do our own thing.”
“And you think he lied about her confessing?”
“No. She confessed. It's all on vid. But he must've coerced it out of her somehow.”
“If you think he framed her, why don't you just check it out yourself?”
“Because I don't want anybody finding out I'm investigating another cop.”
That I understood. There was no faster way to end a career. “But if people find out I'm checking into your partner's cases, they'll still guess you're behind it.”
“Guessing is different from knowing. I can always deny I had anything to do with it. As far as the brass is concerned, it'll be good enough.”
“It won't be good enough for the average uniform.”
“When I'm a squad leader it won't matter. They won't have a choice.”
Now that sounded like a future chief. Maggie made no bones about the fact that she had her eyes on the KOP top spot. She was after me all the time, trying to get me to become her consigliore. She'd say, “Who better to help me take over KOP than somebody who's already done it once?”
At first, I didn't believe it was in the cards for her. Number one: she was a woman in a male-dominated police force. And number two: she had a good heart. Either handicap might be possible to overcome, but the two together seemed insurmountable. Even so, she was doing her best to disprove me. Her work was top-notch, and her family had high-placed political connections that she worked to her advantage. She was the youngest detective on record and was already trying to angle her way into a squad leader post. From there, sergeant wouldn't be far out of her reach. The only serious hurdle she'd hit in her career so far was her association with me. The traitorous Chief Banks tried to keep her pigeonholed in the records department, but she was too smart and too well-connected to stay exiled for long.
No, I wasn't a believer yet, but I was on the verge of becoming her first convert.
“Why would he coerce her confession?” I asked. “Weren't you and Ian already partners then?”
“Yes.”
“So your performance records were already linked, which means he wasn't just trying to pump up his solveds. What other motive could he have?”
“That's what I want you to find out.”
“Listen, Maggie, let's cut the bullshit. If you want that promotion, just say the word. I'll take care of Ian.”
Maggie got in my face. “This isn't about that, Juno. It's not about what I want. It's about that girl who's going to get gassed for something she didn't do. How can you think I'd put a stupid promotion above that?”
“What do you expect me to think? The way I see it, Ian's going to steal that promotion out from under you, and you know you deserve it more than he does. I can't help but think that's why you're so ready to believe some woman you don't even know before your partner. Who knows who that woman was who called you? She could be the girl's aunt or something. That's hardly enough reason to believe Ian coerced that confession.”
I was glad Maggie's face was mostly in shadow. It cut down the glare she was sending my way.
“Maybe you just want it to be true,” I said. “That way you can throw some dirt on Ian and take him out of the running. Listen, if you want that squad leader job so bad, let's skip the goose chasing and take Ian out of it ourselves.”
Maggie came at me all righteous. “I don't work that way, and you know it. I wouldn't be going through this trouble if I didn't think there was a chance that the girl didn't do it. A good chance.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Maggie leaned in close, forcing me to tilt back in order to keep my brandy breath under wraps. “I never really believed she could've done this,” she said. “I interviewed her the morning she found her parents' bodies. I'm telling you, she was genuinely upset. I didn't think there was any way she was faking until Ian found the murder weapon with her prints on it. And then when Ian got her to confess, I went ahead and signed off on it even though I never really believed it. I should've trusted my gut. I mean, think about it. What kind of girl kills her parents? She'd have to be delusional. Don't get me wrong, she's your typical troubled teenager, but she's not crazy. There's just no way she could kill her parents, Juno. Do you see what I'm saying? I know she didn't do it. I just know it.”
I tried to reconcile Maggie's image of the Juarez girl with the one on the news. Where Maggie saw an innocent child, everybody else saw a manipulative little bitch. Maggie was way off on this one. “She confessed, Maggie. Leave it at that.”
“I know she confessed, but I'm telling you, Ian must've forced it out of her.”
I ran my hands over my face to keep from screaming at her. Sometimes she could be such a fucking Pollyanna. She was acting like it was some universal truth that children don't kill their parents. She had no idea that I'd spent most of my childhood fantasizing about different ways to kill my father. I would've done it, too, if a bad batch of shine hadn't beaten me to it. The SOB died in my
mother's arms of methanol poisoning. Far better than he deserved. Even now, after all these years, I could feel my pulse quicken at the thought of my mother with black eyes.
Maggie let out a long exhale. “At least go talk to her, Juno. Get a read on her, then tell me if I'm crazy.”
Frustrated, I said, “Dammit, Maggie, why can't you just accept that she did it?”
“Teenaged girls don't just go off and kill their parents, Juno.”
“The hell they don't!” Niki wasn't much older when she went and did exactly that. I took a deep breath. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe her parents were abusive?”
“Don't you think she would've told us if they were? Why are you being so stubborn about this?”
I wanted to go home and drink myself to sleep. “I can't help you.” I started for the gangway.
Maggie stopped me, her hand clutching my arm. “Why not?”
“I just can't.”
Niki and the Juarez girl began to melt together in my mind, their stories intermingling. Emotions began to cycle through me rapid-fire—guilt, shame, anger, regret.
“I'll pay you,” she said.
Her words barely registered. In my mind, I'd flashed back decades. The sight of Niki's freshly slaughtered parents dominated my senses. I couldn't take this case. I couldn't handle it right now. It cut way too close to home.
Maggie said, “Did you hear me? I'll triple whatever the rags are paying you.”
I put my flask away. I didn't remember getting it out. Then I said, “You'll pay triple?”
I slipped as I stepped off the gangway. My camera went tumbling along with the tripod. I barely avoided the same for myself by grabbing hold of the rail. A circled group of hommy boys turned toward my commotion and quickly dismissed me, but one of them came over—Josephs. “Looks like you need a hand, Juno. Let me show you out.” He grabbed my elbow, tight.
Ex-KOP Page 3
