Spider Play

by Lee Killough

  Mama frowned. “Not me. He just blamed me. As a uniformed sergeant in the Sherwood division he had a Solari for his personal vehicle and someone covered the solar receptors with black plastic. He spent ten or fifteen minutes cursing and the kicking the car before he discovered the fact.”

  “Why did he blame you?”

  “When he had all the lockers searched, they found a roll of that plastic in mine.”

  She eyed him. “But it wasn’t yours. Someone framed you.”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t keep incriminating evidence.”

  They joined Quist and Roos at the squad room door. Together, they headed for the escalator at the far end, pulling on their coats as they followed the hallway around the building atrium — the light in it gray today under the snow-covered skylights.

  “Where did our jackers elude Traffic surveillance?” Mama asked.

  Quist scowled . . . apparently interpreting that as: How did you lose them? “We tracked them out Twenty-ninth to California, then as far north as Twenty-first. Then they ducked in behind a tronics store, E-World. It’s out of business and doesn’t have active surveillance, but we know that’s where they went because checking the surveillance of area businesses, we caught the hearse on the edge of California Dreamin’s cam range at eight thirty-one. That’s a salon and day spa south of E-World. We lost them then because the spa’s rear surveillance focuses just on their rear entrance and loading area.”

  Roos said, “Architectural Salvage had a van behind E-World, but no crew inside working, so . . . zero witnesses there, either.”

  Janna said, “I remember several of those parking lots opening onto Swygart behind them.” Which had a traffic cam only at its intersection with Twenty-first.

  “Yeah.” Roos nodded. “We figure they left that way, then crossed to Market through the parking area of the apartments on the other side of the street.”

  Quist said, “That time of the morning most area residents would have been leaving for work or school, so we canvassed in the evening, but no one home remembered a hearse.”

  “If they’d even notice a vehicle that color in the snow,” Roos said. “We ran the tag through Traffic but it hasn’t been recorded anywhere on the street in the past twenty-four hours.”

  “The hearse doesn’t have Sat-care?” Mama asked.

  Which could have located the vehicle and let a satellite signal lock it and shut down the drive.

  “It does, but . . .” Quist snorted. “. . . by the time the Nafsingers thought of implementing it, the jackers had apparently disabled the GPS.”

  Mama frowned. “This jacking feels . . . off. A street gang joy riding in this weather? And if they were, I’d expect them to go after something like a Vulcan or Cheetah rather than a hearse.”

  “Maybe they did it for a frisk,” Roos said. “Or initiation for a new gang member.”

  “Not off their turf,” Janna said.

  Quist said, “More likely they have a job planned and a hearse is somehow the right vehicle for it.”

  Mama shook his head. “Except they have a funeral home in the neighborhood, Ridder-Yoneshi. Or it was there when I worked the Oakland Division.”

  “It still is,” Janna said.

  “And they made no effort to hide their faces.”

  Quist blew his breath out. “Who the hell cares why they did it. They’re gangers. We just have to find them and get that body back.”

  At the escalator, he swung between the hand rails to take the stairs three at a time in impatience, with Roos scrambling behind.

  “I care why they did it,” Mama said as he stepped on. “This is wrong. The whole thing smells . . . clear up to the Lanour station orbit. We have to find out why.”

  Janna agreed the Orions had acted uncharacteristically . . . but the orbit worrying her was the one Mama seemed about to go into . . . and drag her with him.

  * * *

  At the garage level they put on their bovi visors. Quist and Roos rolled their eyes in disbelief at Mama’s.

  “What the hell’s that?” Quist said.

  While the rest of them wore the department-issue body video . . . narrow, frameless lenses with broad, flat temple pieces . . . Mama had large lenses enclosed in black frames, so much like eyeglasses from the twentieth century she had trouble thinking of them as anything but glasses.

  He replied as he had to a similar challenge by her the day they teamed up. “The regs don’t prohibit customized equipment for officers not in uniform as long as its functionality conforms to department specifications. These are fully compliant.”

  The temple pieces snugged to Janna’s head as the biometrics ID’d her. Com’s auto response came with it: “Brill, Detective Janna, on-line.” The rest of them were receiving a similar message, she knew.

  They pulled on hats — Janna’s a fleece-lined hunter’s cap with ear flaps, Mama’s a stocking cap in stripes matching his sweater colors — and stepped into the garage.

  It gave Quist’s voice a hollow boom. “God, I hate going out in this shit again. Sometimes I wonder why I ever became a leo.”

  “You wanted a legal way to race an Electro-Harley down city streets.” Roos lifted her brows at Janna and Mama. “How shall we divide Oakland?”

  “What did you cover yesterday?” Janna asked.

  “All the places we thought Kiel Jarrett might be while we waited to do the evening canvass of the area behind E-World.”

  Janna nodded. Jerrett being the Orion leader’s legal name.

  “We checked his fem’s apartment, and his mother’s. We checked Orion hangouts . . . where we located several Orions. They all had verifiable alibis, unfortunately, and of course denied any knowledge of Pluto’s whereabouts. So, suggestions anyone?”

  “Maybe check the salvage yards,” Quist said. “Jerrett might be at one of them stripping the hearse.”

  Mama pursed his lips. “Not in this weather. Let’s hit the obvious places again. He may figure you won’t be back. I’d go for the fem first.” He grinned. “Weather like this, if I weren’t working, I’d be warding off the cold with shared bodily warmth.”

  Roos glanced inquiringly at her partner.

  He frowned. “I don’t know about all of us going to one place. We’ll have a better chance if we spread out and hit all his holes at once.”

  “The trouble with Jerrett isn’t finding him. It’s keeping hold of the slippery rag,” Janna said.

  Quist considered, then nodded. “The fem’s Maris Kriegh. Lives on South Garimond.”

  They headed for their cars, both Kansas-manufactured Smiths, which the SCPD used exclusively for their fleet. Though instead of a Konza like the CAPP team, Mama had somehow managed to gain assignment of a new vehicle, a ‘92 copper-colored Monitor. Quist and Roos eyed it with envy as Mama disconnected from its charge socket.

  Janna stepped across the airfoil skirt that gave the vehicle a shape some department wit had dubbed bullet on the half shell. “See you in Oakland.”

  The dash screen lighted with the message: SCPD 5501 in service . . . sensors in the door frame ID’ing them as authorized users of the vehicle by scanning their badges and the scibs — social care/identification/bankcard chips — implanted in their left wrists.

  One thing about airfoil cars, Janna reflected as the Monitor lifted off its parking rollers and sailed up the garage ramp to Third Street, they need not wait for snow plows to clear the streets after a winter storm. The air cushions created by the fans carried them over all but high drifts. To her relief, the snowfall had stopped.

  They had just wind to contend with — the disadvantage of a floating vehicle — and at the intersection Mama fought it in turning south on Topeka Boulevard.

  She called Com on her bovi. “Link Oakland traffic to my bovi, dispatch only.” A call might prove useful, but for right now she preferred to skip the audio of patrol unit responses.

  “Copy that.”

  Calls to all divisions — each distinguished by a separate color — roll
ed up their dash screen. None in Oakland’s tan . . . not until Mama turned the car east onto Sixth and passed through the downtown area.

  Crossing over I-70 into Oakland, text at fifty per cent density to let her see through it, appeared to float in front of her right visor lens. Beta Oakland Twelve, welfare check needed on Galaxy Lane, the brown house. Then after a pause, responding to a question from Twelve, Com said, “Brown house is only ID given. Check the area. RP said she would wait on the street.”

  Brave, or determined reporting person, to stand outside in this weather.

  Along Oakland’s streets twentieth century buildings of age-darkened brick and old-fashioned rectangular windows stood between newer structures with thermal siding and thermal windows in the arrow-slit style. But even the oldest buildings now had roofs shingled with solar tiles.

  Mama said, “You miss Sid, don’t you?”

  Janna sighed. For all the times he seemed totally oblivious to everyone beyond himself, other times he read her very well indeed. She felt disinclined to bare her soul, however. “What about you? You’ve been unusually subdued lately . . . except for your clothes, of course.”

  “I’ll have you know my Aunt Dido knitted this sweater and cap of wool from their own sheep that she personally spun into yarn and custom-dyed.”

  Dodging her question. Obviously he preferred not to talk, either. So Janna wisecracked, “She spun the sheep into yarn? Amazing.”

  Turning onto Garimond, the Monitor bucked over drifts. The street looked untouched since the last snowfall. Few residents in this neighborhood owned cars and of those vehicles, only two sat visible above their airfoil skirts. Snow buried others to the roof. Their fans possibly frozen or, if solar powered, batteries dead in the bitter cold, they waited for a thaw and good sunlight before their owners cleared them off. If even warm weather helped. Houses in tanglewood yards bore testimony to oppressive poverty . . . roofs sagging, plastic siding warped and cracked. The buried vehicles probably sagged and rusted, too.

  Several decades ago, an effort to fight the decline in these poorer neighborhoods resulted in several blocks of modular townhouses. At the time, the staggered rows with their slit windows and panels of Simon cells on the steep roofs — forerunners of solar tiles — must have looked stylish. Now, however, Janna saw cracked Simon panels. Seams between the modules gaped and many of the window slits had been boarded up, using slats stolen from the second floor balcony railings. Siding laminate hung in long, faded strips, rustling in the wind like dead leaves. Not even the alpine charm of snow and icicles hid the sad ugliness.

  Since Smiths screamed leo, they passed the condos and parked around the corner at the south end of the block, well away from the windows of number 1172. Climbing out, the four of them huddled on the lee side of the CAPP vehicle, deciding who should knock on the door.

  Quist said, “It ought to be Maxwell. They won’t make him.”

  Janna agreed. She peered over the car at the row of balconies stretching up the length of the building. “So . . . rock, paper, scissors for who takes the back door and ends?”

  Roos nodded. “Low takes the north side. Go.”

  “Damn!” Janna said. Both of them threw rocks to her scissors.

  Alpha Oakland Twenty, ran the text on Janna’s visor, contact management, Drug World, Belmont Mall, reference individual attempting to obtain pharma with an expired addict card.

  Oh, to be back on patrol today, she reflected . . . snug in the warmth of a watchcar . . . or anywhere but here with cold seeping through the soles of her boots.

  On a second throw to decided who got the south end, out of the wind, Roos pumped a fist when her paper won over Quist’s repeated rock.

  They linked their visors to Mama’s, Janna cancelling the Oakland traffic on hers. Then she waded north, huddling deep in her ski jacket. Not only was the street unplowed, the residents felt no hurry to clear their walks. Past the condos, she crossed the lawn area to the end of the building . . . picking her way to avoid drifts looking more than knee deep, and circling wide to keep her tracks from being immediately obvious to someone on the end balcony.

  There she put her back to the wind and unzipped the jacket enough to reach the Starke holstered under her arm. Because the biometrics needed contact with her skin to ID her as the authorized user, she peeled off her right glove. After checking to make sure she had the ammo selector set for the Thor needles, she shoved weapon and hand in her jacket pocket before frostbite set in.

  In front of her right lens, Mama strolled up the sidewalk area, glancing from condos to his gloved hand, as though checking addresses.

  While her cargos and jacket supported Cerberus’s claims for its Thermatex fabric’s warmth — palpably thickening in the cold as the thread’s hollow core expanded to provide dead-air insulation — she stamped feet going numb, swearing silently. Come on, Maxwell, come on! Why are you taking so frigging long?

  Finally he waded up to 1172 and pushed the bell. After pushing it a second time the sound of footsteps clumping down stairs carried through the door.

  It opened on a sullen fem with a long horse tail of silver hair on top of her head, a canary yellow skin suit leaving little of her anatomy to the imagination, and boots with four-inch soles. “Yeah?”

  Janna took special note of the eyes. Orion star tattoos surrounded them.

  “My name’s Francis Sumner,” Mama said in a light, effeminate voice. “Of the Godiva Day Spa? Are you Ms. Maris Kriegh?”

  She stared at him. “No.” And started to close the door.

  “But this is Ms. Kriegh’s apartment.”

  “She ain’t here.”

  “May I come in and leave her a message, then? She’s won a beauty day at our spa.”

  For a moment Kriegh’s eyes lighted and Janna thought the fem might buy it. Until Mama took a step forward, when a male voice up the stairs yelled, “Close the fucking door, bitch! You’re letting in the cold!”

  Out back, Quist whooped, “That’s him!”

  Kriegh slammed the door.

  Seconds later bare or stocking feet thudded on a balcony floor and Mama shouted, “Police! Stop!”

  As if they ever did, but recording the announcement would establish in court that Jerrett knew he was running from the police.

  Peering around the corner Janna saw Mama plowing toward her through the drifts in front of the building, Starke in hand, aimed upward.

  She jerked back out of sight. The thud of feet and plop of snow and icicles knocked from railings marked the fugitive’s progress from balcony to balcony in a race against Mama in the snow. Was he just running, however, or armed?

  Forgetting the cold in a fiery wash of adrenalin, she pulled the Starke from her pocket and ordered her bovi to record.

  Snow fell just around the corner, followed by the drop of something heavier. Then a male hurtled past her . . . stocking-footed, stars around his eyes, black hair pulled back in a long braided horse tail. A bare chest with astronomical tattoos showed under the half-opened jacket.

  “Police! Freeze, Pluto.”

  He swung around, hand darting under his coat.

  Janna aimed at him. “Don’t! Drop it!”

  Instead, out came a knife, opening with a sharp snick.

  She fired.

  The bright orange needle hit Jerrett just above his naval. Its nanobattery discharge felt like a lightning strike, she knew from being zapped in the Academy. Jerrett dropped to the snow with a howl and lay twitching. The knife flew from a nerveless hand.

  She hurriedly retrieved it and held it up for her bovi to record the six-inch blade before folding it and dropping it in her pocket. As she holstered the Starke and pulled back on her glove, Mama arrived, closely followed by Quist from the rear of the building.

  Quist eyed Jerrett, shaking his head. “That’s a piss-poor snow angel you’re making.”

  Janna grinned.

  Mama said, “Let’s get him up before he catches pneumonia.”

  “And searc
h him.” Janna fished out the switch blade. “He pulled this on me.”

  They hauled him to his feet. With Quist supporting Jerrett, Mama removed the needle, holding it cautiously by the butt end while he pulled off his other glove with his teeth and groped in a cargo pocket for an Instagluv to wrap up the needle. None of the charge remained, but no one took chances with the biologicals now on the point and shaft. As further insurance, Janna handed him an evidence bag. Like the gloves, an item they always carried.

  With the needle stowed in a pocket, Mama began searching Jerrett.

  Jerrett glared at Janna. “My lawyer’s gonna get the recording of zapping me and I’m gonna have your badge, pussy!” A threat spoiled by drooling and chattering teeth. “You have to use rubber bullets . . . minimal force! I’ve read all about it!”

  Oh, yes, the Deadly Force Standards . . . otherwise known as Deadly Fucking Stupid. Forced on them by bleeding heart civilian be-kind-to-felons groups. Except no officer she knew carried rubber bullets except in crowd control situations. Like her, they loaded Thor needles on one side of the Starke’s Siamese magazine and paired them with Winchester seg ammo for when they needed real stopping power.

  She gave him a razor smile. “Read all about it, have you, choomba? Maybe you missed where it says: ‘minimal force commensurate with public and officer safety.’ Coming at me with a knife constitutes a danger to officer safety.”

  The recording of that action shortly to be on file at the Office of Professional Standards, attached to the report she had to submit for firing ammo stronger than said rubber bullets. Fortunately, as much of a pain in the ass as the opies could be, they rarely bothered to follow up these incidents with an office interview. Unless Jerrett did file a complaint.

  “This constitutes a danger, too.” Mama’s hand came out of a jacket pocket with a reel of fine wire.

  Anger flared in Janna. Microfiliment! A weapon every leo feared and hated. Strung across an opening for someone to hit, say during a chase, the wire could cut legs, or a throat, to the bone before its victim realized what was happening.