Spider Play

by Lee Killough

  SPIDER PLAY

  Brill/Maxwell 2

  By Lee Killough

  ISBNs:

  EPUB 9781771458924

  Kindle 9781771458931

  WEB/PDF 9781771458948

  Print ISBN 9781771458955

  Copyright 2016 by Lee Killough

  Cover art by Michelle Lee

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any for, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Chapter One

  The device bore little physical resemblance to a spider. With laboratory lights reflecting dully off the matte surface, the image on the screen of its long, flat, mechanical body looked more like some gigantic centipede as it crawled in a spiral path around a suspended cylindrical frame. It acted like a spider, though . . . cocooning prey snared in its web. Dark strands flowed out behind the body, weaving into a continuous sheet that clothed the framework in midnight. Fascinated, a watcher observed it all secretly on a wall screen via the visor of the unsuspecting spider’s inventor.

  It obviously fascinated the coverall-clad techs around it, too. Eyes intent behind the narrow lenses of their visors and holding the frame’s guy wires for stability, they swam around the construct. Adding their multiple, closer views to the inventor’s recording. Their observations for the record or to fellow techs accompanied the recording.

  The watcher smiled at the spider. “I’m impressed. But you aren’t the only web spinner here, and mine are many and more complex. Perhaps perfect for snaring you.”

  Breaking the link to the visor, the watcher returned the screen to normal surveillance before leaving to tend those webs.

  Chapter Two

  Saturday, February 16

  The web grew from the ceiling of the Shawnee County Police Department’s Crimes Against Persons squad room. Picking her way along the strands already laid, the spider added more filaments, filling in the gossamer pattern stretching from the ceiling to the big vid screen on the wall above the coffee cart. Since its appearance one night watch years ago the screen had become such a familiar part of the background that the detectives usually ignored the quadrants broadcasting local, national, and international news, and a gossip channel. The spider’s work had not escaped notice, however.

  Detective “Call me Mama” Maxwell said, “Isn’t it exquisite?”

  Staring from her partner to the web, Janna Brill hissed in exasperation. “This is why you’ve been standing here for ten minutes while I worked on reports alone?”

  To think she had become concerned on realizing the length of his absence from the desk facing hers, and looked around from her computer to see him standing like a statue — a Dutch chocolate figure even leaner than her sinewy six-one — holding an unbroken blister of coffee gel over the insulated paper cup in his other hand.

  She ran a hand back over her buzz cut. Lately he had become uncharacteristically subdued. What was wrong? In her former partner Wim Kiest, that generally signaled domestic trouble. Had things gone wrong between Mama and his current cohab Lia, the physical therapist he met in the hospital while recovering from vehicular assault by a murder suspect? Entirely possible, given his domestic track record . . . one five-year marriage contract cancelled by his wife after two years and a one year contract with a second fem not renewed.

  Not that subdued equaled sartorial restraint, unfortunately. With the advent of 2092’s arctic weather — predicted to last well into March, according to the groundhog last week — he had given up his summer cyberskein suits and the program buttons that turned them into blinding patterns. But where she wore suitably professional turtlenecks — today’s a burgundy red — he had gone to Christmas-sweaters-from-hell. Today’s not merely red with a flurry of blue, yellow, and green snowflakes, but all the colors screaming bright. Where in the cosmos did they even make yarn those colors?

  “Mama?” She pitched her voice to carry above the voices of detectives talking on cells, slates, and computers . . . and to citizens in varying stages of irritation or anxiety.

  He did not appear to hear. The light reflection never changed on his egg-bald scalp.

  Janna had pushed away from the computer leg of her L desk to cross the room and punch his shoulder. “Mama!”

  He finally roused . . . only to remark on the esthetic value of the spider’s creation.

  That killed her concern. Exquisite? He would look exquisite . . . on the floor with the soles of her knee boots in his face.

  How did she ever forget that her partner of seven months — which sometimes felt like a lifetime — was brainbent, wickers, totally over the brainbow? Always marching to his own drummer. Exemplified by his excruciating fashion sense.

  She punched him again. “Mahlon Sumner Maxwell . . . being partners means we share all the work of this job, including reports! Not just the thrill of the chase!”

  His eyes rolled. “You’ve certainly turned bitchy since Sid married the man of his dreams and moved out.”

  A spasm of guilt momentarily cooled her irritation. Had she? Well, maybe, but damn it, she and Assistant Medical Examiner Sid Chesney had cohabed for nearly six years. Had been like sisters. The apartment felt desolate without his warmth and humor. Without someone who cared whether she came home or not.

  Then anger hissed back through her. “I’ll be even bitchier if I have to keep writing up reports alone. While we’ve got this weather. . .” She waved toward windows frosted nearly opaque. “. . . keeping Topeka’s criminal element off the street and saving us from the usual Friday night carnage, let’s make the most of it. You can admire nature on your own time!” She reached up to brush away the web.

  He caught her wrist. “Hey, Bibi, she’s not doing any harm, just looking for a place out of the cold, like everyone else.”

  “Except them.” Janna pointed at the national news quadrant of the vid screen, where Pennsylvania’s Governor John Granville Hershey wore a presidential hopeful’s smile amid the drifts of Iowa.

  “Everyone with sense.”

  Janna had to grin.

  The challenge of the new administration will be dealing with Africa, ran the crawl line under Hershey’s image. Recognizing that the warring tribes of yore have become educated, self-sufficient nations of distinct character. One size does not fit all. At the same time, the Union of African Nations reflects their shared interests and must be taken seriously or it could become to the export of African resources what OPEC was to Mideast oil in the last century.

  Mama finally popped the coffee gel cube through the back of the blister into the cup of hot water and as it dissolved, twisted the tops of the creamer and sweetener dispensers to add gel tabs of those. “Much as I hate to agree with any politician — or rather, the insightful staffer who researched and wrote his speech — he’s right. More than that, according to the Wall Street Journal the UAN is almost synonymous with the African mega-corporation Uwezo — that means ‘power’ in Swahili — whose officers are high officials in over a dozen African governments.”

  Surprise wiped away Janna’s irritation. When did Mama find time for the Wall Street Journal. He must watch its vid channel while he ate breakfast and prepared for bed.

  “Enjoying some slack time?” came a voice behind Janna.

  She swore silently and turned to face Pass-the-Word Morello, their Knows-All-Tells-All unit clerk. Was he looking for an idle detective to hand a new assignment? Why had she ever left her computer? “I’m just getting coffee. We’re still finishing up reports on the Molina assault and Corrigan murder.”
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br />   Morello’s foxy face twisted in a smirk. “While other leos still have to work the street — Crimes Against Property, for example — because not all felons are huddled inside around heaters.”

  Now Janna understood the smirk. He had a story bursting to be told. Sometimes she wondered about Morello’s home life. Popular chop said he and his wife shared a house with his mother and two sisters, one of whom worked in the courthouse. Since he passed on items he must have heard from the rest of them, were their evenings one endless, ecstatic gossip session, with a chance to repeat and embellish all the stories from here for his circle of listeners?

  “What’s CAPP involved in then?” she asked.

  “A hearse hijacking.”

  Mama wheeled away from the spider and the half-frozen smiles of the candidates on the screen. “What!”

  The foxy grin broadened. “Driven by Ms. Beta Nafsinger from the Nafsinger Family Funeral Home. You’ve probably seen their TV ads.”

  Janna had. The compassionately solemn Samuel Nafsinger and wife sitting in a peaceful garden amid their three blonde, apple-cheeked daughters with Greek alphabet names.

  “Yesterday morning while she waited for a light on south Topeka Avenue, two gangers pulled her out, then sailed off with the hearse.”

  In this weather?

  “Which gang?” Mama asked.

  “They wore red, yellow, and blue stars around their eyes.”

  That sounded like Orions . . . though south Topeka was well out of their Oakland turf. Which concerned Janna less than the sudden gleam of Mama’s eyes. A gleam she hated to see . . . always preceding one of his wild leaps over the brainbow. Thank god the hijacked hearse belonged to CAPP. Though why did it? Jacking counted as assault. Not that she cared to challenge CAPP for the case. “Interesting. You let us know how it turns out.”

  Morello wiggled his brows. “You tell me. The lieutenant wants to see the two of you.”

  Janna hissed as she headed for Hari Vradel’s office. So much for the case being left with CAPP.

  The burly unit commander had company. Lieutenant Dominic Applegate, the lanky commander of Crimes Against Property, sat in one of the visitor chairs with two of his detectives leaning against the wall behind him: Galen Quist and “Teddybear” Roos. Her nickname earned by her blue-eyed, freckled, cuddly look. Misleading, because the chop on her said in a fight she became more grizzly bear.

  Applegate and the detectives stared as she and Mama came in.

  A familiar reaction to the two of them. Both six feet plus and wiry lean, but reverse images of each other — her blonde, him dark . . . with his bald scalp lacking only smeary paint or tattoos to differentiate him from the trippers down in Narco.

  Then Quist grinned. “Isn’t there a statute of limitations on how long after Christmas you have to wear the sweater?”

  Annoyance sparked in Janna. Not for the remark, so similar to those she herself made, but because as Mama’s partner, only she had the right to make them, not Quist with his heavy brows and perpetual five o’clock shadow making him look like he ought to be wearing restraints rather than a badge.

  “You know Detectives Brill and Maxwell,” Vradel said.

  “Yes.” Applegate’s flinty glance toward Mama hinted at knowledge more personal than the official record of reasons for shuttling Mama through in every division in the department before promotion to Investigations and Vradel taking him on here.

  “Brill’s had experience with the Oakland area gangs,” Vradel said. “Brill, Maxwell . . . you’re teaming with Quist and Roos to help locate the Orions who jacked a hearse yesterday. I’m assuming you’re familiar with the details.” Passed on by Morello went unsaid, being assumed.

  “Out of curiosity,” Janna said, “how did CAPP catch the case?”

  “Because the initial complaint just reported a stolen hearse,” Quist said. “We didn’t learn more of the circumstances until we interviewed the victim.”

  “And she denied being injured, refused to press assault charges, and only cared about getting back the hearse,” Roos said. “So we were treating it as a property crime.”

  “Which a Traffic cam actually recorded.” Vradel swiveled his computer screen toward Janna and Mama, then picked up a pencil and began his famous doodling . . . sketching a face on his blotter.

  Janna studied the screen with Mama breathing down her neck. Thousands of the city’s million eyes monitored streets and intersections. The time/location ID of this vid placed it at Twenty-ninth and Kansas, looking south, at eight-eleven am.

  Roos said, “Between the weather, the jackers facing away from us, and the hearse being the third vehicle in line, we have a shit view of the jackers, but—”

  “The victim provided a good description of them,” Applegate said. “Two males with stars around their eyes . . . points going up, down, and sideways, in bands of red, yellow, and blue.”

  Orion colors all right.

  The Traffic vid showed the action clear enough. The jackers appeared as two dark, bundled figures dashing from the crosswalk down the traffic line to the driver’s side of the hearse — not a black vehicle but grey . . . making it almost invisible in the swirling snow.

  “The time between red lights at the intersection tells us they hit the Walk button to make sure the hearse stopped.”

  On the vid, one jacker tapped on the window. After a moment the door slid back and the driver leaned out. When she did, the figure jerked her into the street.

  “What did he say that made her open the door?” Mama asked.

  Roos said, “That an access cover on a fan was loose. She looked out to check.”

  Nafsinger had barely hit the pavement when the pair climbed over her into the hearse.

  “She reported that the jacker pulling her out said, ‘Pluto, it’s a fem,’ like he was surprised, and the second jacker said to shut up, shoved jacker number one over, and climbed into the driver’s seat. Stars plus Pluto definitely makes them Orions.”

  With the door still open, the hearse rose off its parking rollers . . . revving fans adding to the swirl of snow around it and over the victim . . . and slewed sideways across the outside lanes into the parking lot of the Zinzer Drugs on that corner. Carrying a Kansu Bonsai runabout with it in the process and spinning a Stratford cycle ninety degrees by side-swiping its front wheel. Then it gunned past the Bonsai through the lot and onto Twenty-ninth, heading east.

  Janna said, “Are we being brought in now because Nafsinger changed her mind about prosecuting for assault?”

  Mama said, “I’m thinking it’s additional information. Maybe that she was transporting a body?”

  Oh, shit.

  Quist grunted. “Yeah. A detail Nafsinger left out when finally telling us how the hearse got stolen.”

  “Then when we learned about it,” Roos said, “and called to ask why she didn’t mention it, she claimed she’d forgotten in her zeal to describe her assailants. Turns out she’d been to Forbes to collect the corpse of one Paul Stanley Chenoweth, who died Tuesday in a construction accident on the Lanour-Tenning space station.”

  Applegate said, “Bodies from stations come back to the aerospace port closest to next of kin. His body was to be held at Nafsinger’s until his family in Emporia made arrangements.”

  Quist’s lip curled. “‘Forgot’, I’m thinking, because she didn’t want it on public record that Nafsinger’s lost a dear departed.”

  “How and when did you learn about it, then?” Janna asked.

  Applegate grimaced. “A call from our Director Paget about five am this morning. He’d been woken fifteen minutes earlier by a call from the station director — a Leonard Fontana, who’d apparently been informed of the situation by Nafsinger even as that intel was withheld from us — asking what we’re doing to recover his late employee.”

  Mama murmured in Janna’s ear, “I didn’t know the Lanour Corporation carried such clout down here in Kansas.”

  Applegate eyed Mama. “I don’t really expect to ac
complish any more than Quist and Roos can alone, but with a corpse, involving CAPR will look like due diligence to the brass, and Lanour-Tenning.”

  The sketched face on the blotter developed a scowl, but Vradel said only, “Oh, I think we can do better than that, Dom. Four pairs of legs always cover more ground than two.” A mild tone Janna recognized as the one Vradel used with fellow lieutenants in front of subordinate officers.

  She said, “Isn’t it likely the Orions will dump the hearse as soon as they’ve had their fun, and Nafsinger will have it and the body back.”

  Quist eyed her sourly. “They hadn’t dumped it by evening. Who knows if they’ve stripped it and tossed the body in a snowbank where it won’t be found until spring.”

  Vradel laid down his pencil to send laser stares at her and Mama. “We need to prevent that.”

  In other words: Get the hell out of here and find that body and wrap those Orions!

  Janna headed out the door with Mama and the CAPP detectives.

  In the squad room, the national news quarter of the vid screen still covered presidential candidates but someone had turned on the sound. Senator Scott Early’s deep voice rolled across the room. “Part of this nation’s metal shortage must be attributed to the colonial movement’s ships. A moratorium on colonization should be a sacred goal of the next President, applying not only to this country but world-wide, until such time as asteroid mining supplies the needs of people who remain loyal to Earth instead of abandoning her.”

  Quist nodded. “I’d support that.”

  Mama said nothing but Janna read disgust in his turn away from Quist as they picked coats off the back of their desk chairs. Though he never proselytized, she knew he sympathized with the Diasporists, who saw in colonization the ultimate survival of the human race . . . in case this planet proved poisoned beyond reclamation.

  Janna lowered her voice. “What kind of trouble did you have with Applegate?”