The chat client popped open on her terminal. Emilie, with some ideas on moving forward. A moment later Tonique chimed in, also eager to get started on Phase 2. Estelle stifled a sigh. One thing at a time. Right now she needed to focus on work. She had the rest of her life to worry about her father.
* * *
At five the office rallied around the elevators in a knot of buzzing energy. Estelle received plenty of chastisement when she turned down the offer to help them drink their way through the Bastille district, and she weathered it stoically. She had a prior engagement to keep.
The sun remained firmly in place over the western horizon when she left the Radical Dynamics campus alone, thickening the air in a way that made the first lights of Paris shimmer as they came to life, giving the city a painting-like quality. She called a car and had the deliciously air-conditioned interior all to herself as it took her back east from La Défense. Estelle had it drop her near Square du Temple, one of Paris’ many green garden spaces. From there she walked three blocks to her favorite boucherie.
Or rather, she walked to where it should have been. As she turned the corner, Estelle found herself faced with a moderate crowd being kept at bay by a police cordon. She joined their ranks, mouth agape. In place of Viandes Amicales de Berthold was a charred ruin of wood, brick, and melted glass. Smoke still issued from the blackened wound, filling the street like fog and flashing red from the lights of the fire response vehicle.
“They just snuffed it out,” a man told her in French.
Estelle blinked numbly, pulling her gaze from the ruin. “What – what happened?”
He shrugged, while at the same time giving her a dark look. “Too early to cry wolf, but – well, this isn’t the first, is it?”
She knew what he meant. In her five years as an expat, three boucheries, one poissonnerie, and one supermarché had burned down under suspicious circumstances. Only one instance had been conclusively proven to be an act of arson, but the fact that all four were guilty of selling lab-cultured meats and/or hydroponically grown produce made it all too easy to draw a connection. Climate shift had put a strain on the agricultural demands of the world, and France was no different. Where the farmers were stumbling, automation and advanced lab techniques were gaining ground. Estelle could only suppose that a few feelings were bound to be hurt. It was the beginning of the end for a 12,000-year-old profession, after all.
Still – this one hurt. She’d been coming to Viandes Amicales de Berthold for cruelty-free meats since first moving to Paris. It had provided some much-needed stability as she adjusted to a new setting. And, despite what Martin Kingston might think, their products were indistinguishable from the “real thing.” She’d been slipping her father cultured pork, beef, and poultry for two years now, and he only complained after she revealed its source. Which she only ever did after he cleaned his plate.
A police drone was moving slowly down the street, urging the rubberneckers to disperse in a stern, amplified voice. “You win this one, dad,” Estelle sighed, turning away from the sad scene.
She crossed the street to a more traditional market. The proprietor was doing her very best to look put out by the tragedy across the way as her shop swarmed with customers, all of whom were scrambling to leave their moral convictions on the floor in exchange for last-minute dinner replacements. Estelle purchased a pound of sausages, spared one final look for Berthold’s, and made her way to Rue de Turbigo.
It was on a busier thoroughfare that her father and mother had decided to make their home. Trees cast verdant shade over the two-way street, though it did little for the heat, even as the evening waned. Estelle passed the Galerie Nicolas Flamel, a small and storied art gallery whose proximity had been a deciding factor for her mother. The apartment complex was only a block away; Estelle punched in the access code and climbed the three flights of stairs, forgoing the rickety elevator. On the third floor she went to No. 6 and used her credentials stored in her glasses to unlock the RFID smart lock. Estelle put a hand on the doorknob and left it there, suddenly feeling as if she were waiting for something. The sensation passed before she could internalize it; she twisted the knob and stepped inside.
Jazz was playing – Mulatu, her father’s favorite, and definitely one of her top five. “Bonjour,” Estelle called as she moved down the hall and into the living room. It was a semicircular space, the rounded end bowing out over Rue de Turbigo, tastefully furnished with bookshelves and eclectic artwork lining the walls. To the right, raised slightly, was a gourmet kitchen; left of the hall, a short corridor led to the master bedroom, study, and bathroom. A wrought-iron staircase spiraled above the entrance hall to the loft, where she knew a spare bed was always made and waiting.
Her father was nowhere to be seen. Estelle moved into the kitchen, setting the sausages on the counter. A pot sat on the stove, containing four ears of corn in water. Estelle dipped a finger in. It was tepid.
A deep unease seized her. Something about that pot, sitting there – as if her father had simply vanished in the middle of dinner preparations.
“Hello? Dad?”
Nothing.
He’s in the bathroom. Or on the computer. Gaming. Can’t hear me.
“Sophia – where’s dad?”
The apartment’s smart assistant recognized her voice and responded in bright tones. “Hello, Estelle. Martin is –” A brief hitch as it searched its spatial log. “In the bathroom.”
She moved quickly down the side hall. The door was closed. “Dad?” Estelle knocked, and again when there was no answer. “Dad!”
Silence. For a moment she stood paralyzed before the closed door, feeling like a child again. Scared and powerless.
What are you doing, you idiot?!
Estelle threw the door open. Her father’s cobalt-blue medical exoframe stood dutifully beside the tub. Martin Kingston himself was immersed in water, one shoulder slumped against the wall, his eyes closed and his face drawn as if in pain. She rushed forward, falling to her knees beside the tub and grabbing him by the shoulders.
“Dad! Dad!”
He did not move. She couldn’t even tell if he was breathing. His skin was turgid and pale. Estelle placed her fingers against the hollow of his jaw, while plunging the other hand beneath the water for his wrist.
She hissed, drawing back reflexively. The water – at first she’d thought it was hot, but now she saw the ice floating in it, and the bucket sitting on the toilet. He’d made himself an ice bath. Why?
Lower his body temperature. A fever – sick –
Estelle plunged both arms into the water, up to her wrists, and wrapped them around her father. “Sophia,” she shouted as she hauled him from the tub. “What’s happening?”
“Hmm. You’ll have to be more specific –”
“What’s my father’s condition, you dumb cow?!”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t find any data on that right now.”
What? That made no sense; her father’s medical tag was still on his wrist, and it couldn’t be turned off.
Estelle laid him out on the floor, snatched as many towels as she could find, and swaddled him. Then she pressed her fingers against his throat again. This time she felt the pulse – faint and irregular, but there.
Years of worry, of anxious imaginings, of preparations and mental fortification, had steeled her for this moment. The moment her father’s health finally got the upper hand. Dimly, Estelle was proud of how calm she felt. There was fear, but she hadn’t yet lost her wits entirely. That it was probably a state of shock didn’t really matter.
“Sophia, call an ambulance. Right now.”
The apartment acknowledged her request and sent out an automatic message. A moment later a new voice spoke through the speakers positioned throughout her father’s home.
“Hello? Can you hear me?”
“Yes! My name is Estelle Kingston, I need an ambulance right away. My father – he’s unconscious, I don’t know why –”
“Alrigh
t, just take a breath. Your smart assistant isn’t giving me any medical information, so I need you to describe your father’s condition as clearly and accurately as you can.”
“He’s unconscious. Breathing, but his pulse is weak. He was in an ice bath. He has staph –”
“An ice bath?”
“Yes, I think he put himself –”
“Listen to me carefully. If he’s battling a fever, you need to keep his temperature down. Gather ice or any cold packs you have and apply them to his armpits, neck, and groin. Don’t put him back in the bath or he’ll go into shock.”
Right. Cursing herself, Estelle plunged her hands back into the water and gathered up as much ice as she could. She tried to place them where the voice had instructed, but they kept melting and slipping away.
She was crying, she realized. Dinner seemed to have been planned in a different reality entirely, rather than just that morning. “Please tell me you’ve sent the ambulance.”
“They’re on their way. Five minutes, tops. I just need you to stay with your father and keep talking to me. Alright? Keep talking.”
Estelle dropped her head to the tub’s edge, her father’s image wavering though the tears.
“I need you to keep talking.”
“Yes.”
“You’re doing fine.”
Four
Chicago
Illinois, The Third Coast
Hollis’ predictions about the SIS M17s being impossible to trace might have been cynical, but they weren’t unwarranted. Booker spent a few hours calling local dispensaries and checking the sales records from recent gun shows, turning up a short list of individuals who had legally purchased M17s in the state of Illinois. None of whom had a record or a hint of criminal inclination. That didn’t rule out other possibilities -- out-of-state purchases or unreported thefts, for example -- but Booker was ready to admit that Hollis had probably been right. The guns were a dead end.
Fortunately, Hollis had the grace not to gloat, and rather than fork over the cash for Cubs tickets, he settled for making Booker buy lunch. They opted for tacos from a food truck. The rain had cleared up, leaving only a seasonal mugginess in its place.
Booker wiped some sour cream from his chin, nodding. “So the van?”
“Yeah. Got a few shops known to do that sort of work we can shake down, see what comes rattling out.”
They returned to Hollis’ car and pulled back into traffic. It was nearing noon, with no sign of the fake Amazon van or the thieves who’d been using it. With every hour that passed, the trail grew colder, the odds of picking up the skull before it disappeared into the underground shrinking. That wouldn’t necessarily be the end of it -- they could still monitor illicit auctions and deep-web message boards. Most stolen goods were recovered that way, sometimes years after they’d been snatched. Still, Booker would rather this be a clean and fast case. It would look better, for him and the ACT.
The first garage was a dud, the crew out for lunch. They hung out front for a bit, just in case someone came back, but after a half hour gave it up. They could try again if none of the other options panned out.
The next stop was more promising. Three miles north they came to a scrapyard, the gate hanging open, music blaring from somewhere inside. Hollis rolled through the entrance and parked in a lot amidst the heaps of rusting metal and refuse. To the left, a tug drone was trundling along, collecting scoopfulls of scrap and shoveling them into a compactor. Directly ahead was a trailer marked Office, raised on cinder blocks. A large garage sat to the right, sparks flying from its open doors. The music was coming from within.
“So,” Hollis said, shutting his door. “Not to step on any toes, but maybe let me do most of the talking here.”
“Let me guess -- you’ve cultivated a close and trusting relationship.”
“Something like that.”
Booker slipped on his Ray-Bans as they crossed the sun-soaked lot, a wasteland pocked with puddles of the morning rain and iridescent oil slicks. The detective paused at the threshold of the garage, right where bright sunlight met shadow, and rapped a knuckle on the half-open door. “Jonesy!”
A man sat on a stool, working at the body of what had once been a Mercedes with his plasma torch. He cocked his head slightly at Hollis’ voice, but didn’t look up or stop cutting. Hollis shouted again, voice raised above the sizzle of metal and the music. Still no response.
He sighed. “Alright then,” he muttered, and strode across the garage. Booker drew out his e-cig and followed.
Hollis walked up to Jonesy, waited. When the man continued to ignore him, he kicked over the small speaker beside the stool.
Finally, Jonesy stopped cutting. He set down his torch and removed his gloves, slow and methodical. Then he stood, turned to Hollis, and raised his welder’s mask. “Oh, hey there, Detective Hollis. Didn’t hear you come in.”
He was smiling, but Booker felt a tremor of nerves as he noted the man’s height, the size of his arms in his stained tank top. A rap sheet filled the side of his vision, telling of a storied career in motor vehicle theft and black-market sales. He took a drag on his e-cig.
Hollis didn’t flinch, even as he tilted his head to peer up at Jonesy. “You should install a doorbell.”
“Well, most people call ahead. But you -- you just show up whenever you want. Guess that means we’re friends, huh?”
“Oh yeah. Real cozy.” Hollis glanced at Booker, rolling his eyes. Then he began to pace around the car Jonesy had been working on. “So. When did this roll in?”
Jonesy shrugged. “Been sitting in the lot.” He spoke to Hollis, but he was studying Booker, frowning slightly. “Who’s the suit?”
Hollis whistled, running a hand over the rear bumper of the vehicle. “Looks like she was a classic in her day. Seems a waste to just dump her.”
“People don’t take care of their shit.” Jonesy sounded annoyed. He was still watching Booker.
Booker took another pull, letting out a mouthful of vapor.
“Y’know, my grandma had this Mercedes, I swear she loved that car more than her husband. Or her son. Used to take me on rides along the lake, windows down -- we’d surf our hands, like dolphins, y’know? You ever do that, Jonesy?”
“Yo!” Jonesy whirled towards him, finally taking his eyes off Booker. “What is this? Who’s the fucking suit?”
Hollis had made his way back to the front of the car. He came to a stop, removed his hat and twirled it between his fingers. He smiled at Jonesy, but didn’t say anything; instead, his eyes flicked to Booker, and he gave the faintest of nods.
“You check the news feeds this morning, Jonesy?” Booker asked, as if they’d been chatting this whole time.
Jonesy turned towards him. “What?”
“The news. You hear about the museum? Big smash-and-grab, early in the morning. It’s all anyone’s talking about.”
“Yeah, I heard,” Jonesy said carefully. “Why?”
Booker pocketed his e-cig. When he drew his hand back out of his jacket, he was holding his badge. “Thought maybe we could talk about it.”
The color drained from Jonesy’s face as he regarded the badge like a venomous snake. He turned back to Hollis. “Listen --”
“You didn’t have anything to do with the hit,” Hollis said, still twirling his hat. “That’s what you were going to say, right?”
“I didn’t,” Jonesy hissed. “Alright? I’ve been here all day --”
“Well no shit. Neither of us are under the assumption that you were actually at the museum, Jonesy. It’s your other activities that concern us.”
“I don’t chop anymore.”
“No, but you do custom jobs.”
“That’s not illegal!”
“It’s not,” Booker said, drawing the man’s attention back to him. “Unless, of course, it allows someone to ram their way through a garage door and rob a public museum.”
“I know you’ve done some creative bodywork in the past,” Hollis sai
d. “Reinforcement. Maybe you did something similar recently?”
“No,” he said at once. “Nothing like that. No way.”
Hollis raised his wristband, displaying an image of the Amazon van captured by the museum security cameras as it smashed into the loading dock. “So this isn’t your baby?”
Jonesy stared at it for a long moment. Then, very softly: “Shit.”
“Care to elaborate?”
The mechanic glanced between the two of them, and for a moment Booker thought the man might run. He certainly looked like he wanted to. But then he sat down heavily on his stool, head in his hands.
“Listen,” he said, voice muffled. “This isn’t -- I didn’t do anything wrong, ok? I’ve been staying clean for a while now. It’s not easy, with -- with old clientele showing up. But I tell them to fuck off, alright? I’m not interested --”
“The van, Jonesy,” Hollis said, and his voice was suddenly cold.
Jonesy cleared his throat, lifting his face. Booker was slightly surprised to see that his eyes were red. “I didn’t do any custom work on it. But…yeah, it was mine. Got wrecked making a delivery, so they towed it here --”
“Wait,” Booker said, stepping forward. “It is an Amazon vehicle?”
“Yeah. Well, it was. But, like I said, it got wrecked. Totalled, or so they thought, but I could fix it up. I did --”
“Who’d you sell it to?” Hollis asked.
“Nobody,” Jonesy said, looking up sharply at the detective. “I didn’t sell it to anyone.”
Booker shared a frown with Hollis. “You fixed up a van -- what, as a hobby?”
The mechanic was looking trapped. He cleared his throat again, arming sweat from his eyes. “Yeah, just to start. But then I…I had this idea. That maybe I could use it to…to run scams. Nobody looks at the things twice, right? They’re everywhere. I could -- could trawl neighborhoods, picking up returns people left out on their porch -- but I didn’t!” He looked to Hollis and Booker both, as if to impress upon them his sincerity. “I didn’t do it! My girl got pregnant a month later, and I knew -- knew I just couldn’t do that shit anymore.”
A Covenant of Thieves Page 7
