Limbus, Inc.

by Anne C. Petty

  “Excuse me, are you the recruiter?”

  Dallas looked up to see a teenaged girl in full Goth drag, her kohl-rimmed eyes and cropped black hair a perfect complement to the fat-bodied tarantula clinging to her shoulder.

  Dallas hesitated a moment, then sat down in Rigel’s chair. “Yes. I am.” He put the phone back in the drawer.

  “We answered an ad I saw on the Internet.” She shrugged, as if that should be explanation enough.

  Dallas smoothed his hair away from his face. An inexplicable calm seemed to have settled over him. “Certainly. Have a seat, won’t you?”

  She sat in one of the chairs fronting his desk. “It’s for him, not me.” She nodded to the arachnid, who leapt from her shoulder to the empty chair with a substantial thump.

  “Of course.” Dallas took the recruiter’s badge and pinned it to his shirt front. “I’m Recruiter Hamilton. I’m sure we can find you something.” Instinctively, he pulled out the main drawer again. There was a single sheet of paper inside.

  He took it out and slid it toward his applicant. The tarantula climbed up onto the desk and the girl leaned forward, studying the job description carefully.

  Dallas leaned back in the recruiter’s chair and discovered it to be more comfortable than it looked, as if molding itself to his body. He watched the girl and the spider communing over the various points of the contract, and only idly wondered what deep shit they might be getting themselves into. Whatever it was, the pay would probably be more than enough to seal the deal, and in any case, it was not his problem. His intention had been to confront the Limbus agency, to pull the curtain aside a la Dorothy and reveal the evil piss-ant manipulators pulling the strings. But that didn’t seem so important anymore, because clearly he was on the inside… and employed.

  Dallas opened the right-hand drawer of the desk and extracted a box of strawberry Pocky, the cascade of Kanji on the packaging telling him it came in crunchy almond as well. He popped the top and tore along the perforation, pulling out two long crispy-sweet Pockysticks, the most sought-after snack treat in Japan. The aroma of sweet biscotti and fresh, otherwordly strawberries broke over his tongue. He couldn’t remember why he’d been so angry a moment ago. Maybe this Limbus gig wasn’t so bad. He might even grow to like it.

  Strip Search

  By

  Jonathan Maberry

  The card was on the floor. I kicked it when I opened the door.

  Not the first time somebody slipped something under my office door. At least this time it wasn’t a threat, a fuck-you letter from a girl, a summons, or an eviction notice. Been getting way too many of each of those lately. Economically speaking, this year sucks moose dick.

  This was just a business card. It looked crisp and expensive. The kind lawyers sometimes use.

  I have three ex-wives, so I left it there. I do not want to hear from another lawyer. Sure, maybe if there was an estate attorney trying to find me to tell me I’d just inherited a mansion and a vault filled with gold bars. But, since the odds on that were on a par with me getting laid this week, I didn’t bother picking up the card.

  Instead I went through the ritual. I closed my office door, flopped into the piece o’ crap faux leather chair, sorted through the mail for job offers or checks from satisfied clients, found none of that shit, listened to my answering machine, didn’t hear a thing worth listening to, opened my laptop and checked my agency email, didn’t find anything except a Nigerian prince who wanted to transfer thirty million into my account and an ad for the latest dick pills. Same shit, different day.

  I had a mildly masochistic urge to log into my bank account to see how much I had left, but I drank beers until I came to my senses.

  Outside it was the kind of spring day that Philadelphia gets a lot of but doesn’t deserve. Maxfield Parrish blue skies, a few sculpted white clouds, temperature in the mid-seventies, and low humidity. The city was pretending to be San Diego, and it fooled a lot of tourists, but only those who weren’t here in the summer, when the humidity and the temperature jump into the low nineties and refuse to fucking budge. For months. I sometimes think the real reason the Founding Fathers started the Revolution was because they were hot and cranky. When Philly summers really start to cook even a Buddhist monk would lock and load and go looking for someone to shoot.

  But it was May tenth.

  The day was beautiful. I had windows open and the breeze was perfect.

  I sat there, sipping a Yuengling and looking at the door, trying to will it to open at the touch of a client with an expensive job.

  Nothing.

  I was four beers in and the door still remained closed.

  I sighed.

  I looked around. I run a one-man investigation office. Industrial, domestic, whatever. I’ll look for Hoffa if there’s a paycheck in it. I have a secretary who works on a per diem. Right now there was nothing to type or file, so she was at home with a dozen cats and her skewed perception of reality.

  I saw the card on the floor. Yup, still there.

  Another beer came and went.

  The card was still there.

  I would have knocked back a sixth but I didn’t have one. The only thing left in my little cube fridge was a three week old yogurt that was evolving into a new life form.

  That was the only reason I got up to get the card. Boredom and no beer.

  Funny how things start.

  I bent and picked it up.

  Frowned at it.

  On the front, printed in black on cream stock, raised lettering.

  Limbus, Inc.

  Are you laid off, downsized, undersized?

  Call us. We employ. 1-800-555-0606

  How lucky do you feel?

  “Balls,” I said. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Sometimes it’s an ad for low-end commission work-at-home crap. Cold calls to sell products people wouldn’t want even if it was free. Follow-up calls for people dumb enough to put their email addresses down at a restaurant, hotel or resort. Or time-share pitches. Stuff like that.

  If that was what it was.

  I turned it over. There was a handwritten note on the back. That was different. Most of these kinds of cards are just the basics. A hook, no real information, and a contact number.

  With the ‘How lucky do you feel’ thing I wondered if this was a new marketing scheme for second-string call girls.

  I’m horny, but I haven’t ever been so horny I wanted to pay for ass.

  The note on the back said:

  2:45, your office.

  I looked at the wall clock.

  2:43.

  Shit.

  There was still time to pull the shade, lock the door and turn off the office lights. I wanted a client, not some yuppie entrepreneur trying to see some college-girl tail.

  But then I caught a whiff of something.

  Literally a whiff. I put the card to my nose and sniffed it.

  The odor was very faint, but it was there. Just a hint of it. Like freshly-sheared copper.

  The smell of blood.

  Human blood, too. And, yes, I can tell the difference. Some people can do that with wine or truffles or chocolate. Me, I can tell you anything you want to know about blood. Other things, too, but in my trade it really matters that I can tell a lot from a little noseful of blood-smell.

  Thing is, there was no stain anywhere on the card. Not a drop, not a smudge. Nothing.

  Smell was definitely there, though.

  I put the card against my nose and took a longer, slower sniff.

  There’s so much you can tell if you have the knack. My whole family has the knack. My grandmother, Minnie, is best at it. She can tell blood type. I may not be in her league—and really, no one is, old broad or not—but I could tell a lot. If I ever sniffed that blood again I’d know who owned it. Better than fingerprints for me. Back when I was a cop in the Twin Cities, I closed a shitload of cases that way. Finding the right perp was the easy part for me. Finding evidence that tied him to the case wa
s harder. Sometimes it was impossible, which frustrated the living shit out of me. Nothing worse than knowing someone did something bad and then having to watch him skate through the courts back onto the street with a free pass to hurt someone else.

  Most of the time.

  A few of those guys tripped and hurt themselves. Or, um, so I heard.

  I tapped the card against my chin, thinking about it. What kind of marketing stunt was this? What kind of—?

  Out in the hall I heard the elevator open.

  The wall clock told me it was 2:44.

  “Early,” I said.

  But as soon as the visitor knocked on the door the clock ticked over to 2:45. The exact second.

  *

  I went around and sat behind my desk before I said anything. I let the seconds tick all the way to 2:46. Just to be pissy.

  The person outside didn’t knock again. But I saw a figure through the frosted glass. Tall, dressed in some kind of suit, and definitely female. Her silhouette was rocking.

  With my luck, though, she’d have the right curves but a face like Voldemort.

  “Come in,” I yelled.

  The door opened.

  She came in.

  I actually said, “Holy shit.”

  *

  She had the kind of face that you read about. The kind of face that if it looked down at you from a movie screen you’d absolutely believe you were on your knees in the Temple of Athena. The kind of face Hollywood women pay a lot of money for and never quite get. You’re either born with that face or you spend your life in therapy because it’s just not going to happen.

  That kind of face.

  Pale skin with pores so small it looked like she was carved out of marble. Not white marble, though. She had some natural color that I’m pretty sure wasn’t a tan. Couldn’t peg her race or nationality. Maybe she was from the same island Wonder Woman came from. I don’t know. I never visited that island. I knew right there that I couldn’t have afforded the boat fare.

  She was maybe thirty, about five-eight. Tall, with good bones and great posture, and enough curves to make my hair sweat, but not so many that it walked over the line into cartoonish. That’s a very delicate line. Her hair was a foamy spill of black with some faint red highlights. Her lips were full and painted a discreet dark red. Make-up applied with skill and restraint. Pearl earrings, a drop-pearl necklace that rested half inch above the point where her cleavage stopped. Yes, I looked.

  The only flaw—if you could call it that—was a small crescent-shaped scar on her cheek near the left corner of her mouth. If she was a different kind of woman I’d think that it was the kind of scar you can get when someone wearing a ring pops you one. But I couldn’t sell that story to myself. This was a class act. But, I like scars. They’re evidence that a person’s lived.

  She said, “Mr. Hunter?”

  “Sam Hunter,” I said, rising and offering my hand.

  Her grip was cool and dry, but she withdrew her hand a half-second too quickly. Maybe she was afraid I hadn’t washed. Not an unrealistic thought. I suddenly felt grubby.

  I gave her an expectant smile, waiting for her name, but she didn’t give it. Some clients are like that. Either they like being mysterious or they have to be careful. A lot of them hedge because they seem to think that if they withhold their names it somehow distances them from whatever problem brought them here. Nobody comes looking for a guy like me unless they’ve stepped in something. A bear trap, a pile of shit. Something.

  “Have a seat,” I said, gesturing to the better of my crappy visitor chairs. She sat and smoothed her skirt over her knees. She wore a charcoal jacket that had a pale blue chalk stripe that precisely matched the color of her silk blouse. Her skirt matched her jacket. Her shoes looked more expensive than my car, and probably were.

  She sat there and studied me for a long time without speaking.

  So, apparently the ball was in my court. Fine. I tossed the card onto the desk between us.

  “Yours?”

  “Ours,” she corrected.

  She waited for me to ask, but I didn’t. I couldn’t tell from the mouth she made if that was a good move on my part or not. She was clearly evaluating me, but I didn’t know what kind of yardstick she was using. So I leaned back in my chair and waited.

  After a while she gave a single, short nod and said, “We want to hire you.”

  She leaned on the ‘we’, so I guess I was supposed to ask.

  “We being… ?”

  “The Limbus Corporation.”

  “Who are they?”

  “That’s not really—.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Pardon?”

  “You’re going to tell me that it’s not really important. It’s a cheap answer to a question that actually is important. You left a card with the company name. You’re here as a representative of that company. That puts the company into play. So… who or what is Limbus Inc?”

  She gave me a few millimeters of a smile, but she didn’t answer the question. Instead she opened her purse—an actual Louis Vuitton that would have paid off my mortgage—and removed two items. One was a standard-sized envelope with a thick bulge in it that was exactly the right size and shape to make me want to wag my tail. She placed that on the desk and held up the second item. A plain black flash drive.

  “Will you agree to help us in this matter?” she asked.

  I blinked a couple of times before I said, “Is that a serious question?”

  “It is.”

  “You haven’t told me anything yet.”

  “I know.”

  “And yet you want to know if I’ll ‘help’?”

  “Yes.”

  “This isn’t how it works.”

  “This is how it works with us.”

  “With Limbus?”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  I drummed my fingers on the desk top. “You have your own car or should I call you a cab?”

  The smile widened. Just a little tiny bit. But she didn’t answer. She wiggled the flash drive back and forth between her fingers.

  I sucked my teeth. “What’s on it?”

  Instead of answering she handed it over.

  I hesitated for a moment before accepting it, but figured what the hell. This would be the world’s most absurd set-up for someone trying to infect my computer with a virus. Maybe the flash drive had photos of girls and this broad was a very charming pimp. Or maybe the Jehovah’s Witnesses were going high-tech and this was the latest issue of the Watchtower in eBook format.

  I took the drive.

  Something really weird happened when I did, though. Flash drives are small so it’s not unusual for fingers to touch when giving and receiving. When my fingertips brushed the edges of her painted nails, there was a shock as sharp and unexpected as an electric shock. Like the little snap of electricity you get on cold days when you touch a doorknob. I could even hear the crack in the air as the energy arced from her to me.

  I snatched my hand back.

  She didn’t.

  She withdrew it slowly, smiling that cat smile of hers. There was an opportunity to make some kind of joke about how shocking it all was, yada yada, but it would have been lame. She wasn’t a chatty, laugh-a-minute kind of gal. She also wasn’t the kind to waste a lot of her time in idle chitchat.

  So, I plugged the flash drive into my laptop, located the device, accessed the menu and saw that there was one Word document and sixteen image files. Jpegs.

  “Open the pictures,” she suggested.

  I selected all of them and hit the preview function.

  My computer’s preview function acts like a slideshow unless I hit a key to give me static images. By the time the first image popped up I forgot about the keys. I forgot about pretty much everything.

  The picture was high-definition and tightly focused. No blur to soften any of the edges. No grain to reduce the impact.

  It was a girl.

  Or, at least it was girl-shaped.r />
  She lay in the open mouth of a grungy alley, her body partially covered by dirty newspapers. Her mouth was wide open, the lips stretched as far as they could go, tongue lolling, teeth biting into the scream that must have been her last. The scream that was stamped now onto the muscles of her face.

  Muscles, I said. Not skin.

  She had no skin.

  Not on her face.

  Not on her body.

  Not anywhere.

  Not an inch of it.

  The image vanished to be replaced by another girl.

  Different girl, and I could tell that only by location—this one had been spilled out of a black plastic industrial trash bag—and by size. She was bigger, taller and bigger in the breasts and hips.

  But that was the only way to tell the difference. All other individuality—skin tone and color, scars and tattoos, marks and moles—had been sliced away. All I saw was veined meat.

  Another image. Another girl.

  Another.

  Another.

  Another.

  Sixteen.

  The slideshow ground on mercilessly and I was absolutely unable to move a finger to stop it. The images flicked across my laptop screen. Sixteen young women. At least, I think they were young. Somehow I knew they were young.

  All dead.

  All stripped of more than flesh. Someone had torn away their lives, their individuality and their dignity along with their flesh.

  When I raised my head to look over the laptop at her, there must have been something in my eyes because her smile vanished and she physically shrank back from me. Not a lot, but a bit.

  “What the fuck is this?” I asked, and I barely recognized my own voice.

  The woman cleared her throat, licked her lips, smoothed her skirt again. Rebuilding her calm façade.

  “Beyond the obvious—the murder and mutilation of young women—we don’t know what it is.”

  “A serial killer?”

  “So it would appear. Sixteen dead girls over a period of roughly sixteen months.”

  “This isn’t happening here in Philly,” I said. “I’d have heard something.”

  “The first girl was found in Seattle. Felicia Skye, seventeen,” she said. “Other bodies have been found in nine cities in five states. All girls ranging in age from sixteen to eighteen. They’re all runaways, and all of them have worked as prostitutes. Eight have also worked as exotic dancers.”