by M. G. Herron
A squat Torlik, his arms wired with ropy muscles, turned toward us. He was old, his swarthy skin wrinkled and browned with age. A clouded, rheumy blue eye took up most of his blocky face. With Yarnow’s body angled, I caught a glimpse of Slim’dar Killperch lying limp on the tabletop behind him. The alien creature’s toothy jaw hung open. His remaining eye was glassy and still.
“I reckon the only thing we know for sure,” Yarnow said with more than a hint of Texas drawl, “is that this Jel’ka’s heart stopped beating. You want to find out more, boss, I’ma hafta to cut him open.”
“We can’t afford to return him in pieces, Yarnow!” Rashiki yelled. “That will only ensure that the Lodians on Jel keep our entire security deposit for themselves. Find another way.”
“Yes, boss,” Yarnow said, nodding his head in deference and turning back to his charge.
The medics accompanying us guided the hovering stretcher supporting Vinny up to another metal work table, much like the one Slim’dar lay on, but away from the dead Jel’ka. The medics opened a plastic case and began to line up drugs and needles and other savage-looking devices on top of the table. Crossing my arms, I posted myself nearby and glowered down at them.
“If you want to see the footage,” Rashiki said, “you must come with me.”
I frowned. I was deep in the heart of Rashiki’s domain, and while I didn’t feel good about leaving my friend’s side while he was unconscious, if I wanted Rashiki to help me find out who drugged Vinny, I had little choice in the matter. I had to trust him.
The security guards escorting us fell away, fanning out around the room. Rashiki led me through the single closed door and into a dim office. The far wall was lined with television monitors. Nothing alien or fancy about them, just plain, vanilla LCD monitors like you’d get at any electronics store. Each screen was divided into quadrants and showed the boardwalk and the racetrack from every possible angle.
The largest monitor, in the center, was not divided into quadrants. It was fixed on the line of bookies, and seemed to be a live feed. The clock in the corner ran forward in real-time, telling me it was just past one thirty in the morning. I’d been so pumped up with adrenaline watching the races I had hardly looked at the time.
“Hix,” Rashiki said. “What did you find?”
Hix nodded at Rashiki. I recognized him as the Torlik security guard who’d been sent down to find the footage. He was tall and lean, with a brown eye, and thick blonde hair cropped in a box atop his orange head. Hix tapped on a touchscreen. The timestamp on the big monitor changed to 23:52.
Hix pointed at Vinny when he walked up to the short line in front of the bookie booths. He waited for just a moment, and then walked forward and was greeted by the teller. After a short conversation, Vinny handed over some money. He received the betting chips in return. I could see the excitement wash over his face as he took the chips and turned, sorting them in his hands and not paying the slightest attention to where he was going.
Ken Lard moved into the left side of the frame. The drunk swagger was unmistakable. He bumped into Vinny, then hauled back and laid a fist into the unsuspecting Pangozil’s snout.
A large human male lumbered into the frame from the bottom—me, I realized with a sense of disorientation that always comes with recognizing myself on camera. As the crowd closed around Ken and Vinny, I began shoving people out of the way and spilling beer all over the place in the process.
That was when the view had been cut off from me. Fortunately, the angle on the camera showed me what I hadn’t been able to see before.
“There,” I said. “See where Lard is grabbing Vinny’s shirt? He could have dosed him with this Ora there, and Vinny never would have realized it. Check his body.”
Hix gave me a pointed look, saying nothing and letting the video continue to play at normal speed. Next, a humanoid whose head and shoulders were covered with a hooded cloak stepped out of the crowd, bumped into Vinny and nailed him with a kidney shot from his blind spot. Vinny toppled over like a dead pawn. My mouth fell open.
“Don’t be so quick to jump to conclusions, bounty hunter,” Hix said. He too affected a southern drawl, but it was less prominent than Yarnow’s country accent. “My money’s on the second man.”
“Or neither of them,” Rashiki said. “How many others did Vinny bump into tonight? The boardwalk is crowded before a race.”
“No, it happened here,” I said. “This is the only point at which he was distracted enough not to notice. Those damn bets…”
“Notice what?”
“I’ll prove it to you. Tell the medics to bring Vinny over here.”
Rashiki crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat. Then he shrugged, turned and barked out the door. The pair of medics came at a fast walk, pushing Vinny’s stretcher between them. Whatever they had given to him had caused the neon orange filling his eyes to fade to a dull fog, and the high-frequency vibration of his body had reduced back to a low tremor. I sighed in relief, then felt guilty for distrusting Rashiki.
“Help me roll him over on his side, would ya?” I said.
The medics complied. I examined the fabric near his kidneys where the hooded man had struck him. Vinny almost never wore nice clothes around the restaurant. He cared about this shirt and would hate how dirty the fabric looked right now.
If I needed to drug someone, you know how I’d do it? Fast. One and done. Make sure they were distracted, then bam. A quick shot in the kidneys, and it’s over.
What better distraction to provide cover than getting in a fight in a crowd? My pointer finger finally skimmed across the slight depression where a needle had punctured the fabric. Pulling up his shirt, I knew exactly what I would find there. On a fur-covered Pangozil, it was much harder to locate, but I had Hix play the video back, and then felt around on the small of Vinny’s back on the right side. The wiry layer of fur coating his body covered it up. But when I found it, the evidence was unmistakeable: A bright red mound of inflamed flesh, like a spider bite. Only not a spider bite at all, but an injection site. Where the needle went in. Just like Monica’s arms.
“It’s a plausible explanation,” one Torlik medic said, agreeing with me.
“Very likely,” said the other.
Rashiki and Hix both inspected Vinny, grunting. They’d clearly encountered the drug before. Rashiki sent the medics away again. I watched Vinny go, but was less anxious this time.
The obese Torlik continued to smolder. His fury was not pointed in my direction any longer. I could see that he believed me now.
Hix continued playing the video footage. After the hooded man bumped into Vinny, he disappeared back into the crowd. He was only average height. Hard to pick out of a crowd, unlike our oversized drunkard Ken Lard. The hooded suspect tucked his arms inside his gray cloak as he went. The cowl was deep and shadowed. I should have been able to see his face, but it was blurred, pixellated, on the screen.
Then, I charged into the frame and beat the snot out of Ken Lard. I had assumed that Lard had knocked Vinny onto his ass, but that was because I never saw the hooded man. This whole thing felt staged to me. Premeditated. I bet this Ken Lard knew why Vinny was targeted, and what this hooded alien had to do with it. Hix, however, said something that forced me to file that info away for the moment.
“It also looks like the hooded offworlder scanned Vinny’s bets when they bumped each other. Because then…”
Hix fast forwarded to the moment the crowd rushed out of the stands and swarmed the bookie booths—right after Slim’dar collapsed on the track, and everyone who’d lost money betting on the newcomer got the idea to demand a refund.
“He transferred the data to counterfeit chips and cashed the bets out less than a minute after Slim’dar collapsed.”
“Show me that again,” Rashiki said.
Hix replayed the footage. The hooded alien stood near the open gate. He had a good view of the track, yet remained within spitting distance of the bookies. At this point, no one wa
s in line.
This hooded offworlder’s knowledge of the security system must have been good, because he always kept his back to the camera. At one point, when he looked over his shoulder back up the boardwalk, I couldn’t pick a single feature out of that shadowed cowl.
“Why can’t I see his face?” I asked. “We have an angle on him there.”
Hix grunted. Shook his head. “Don’t know. These are Earth-made cameras. Could be some offworld tech that interferes with the recording.”
“But only around his face?”
Hix shrugged. Then his eye grew keen as he focused on something on the screen.
“Slim’dar goes down right…there,” Hix said. “It takes a couple minutes before people realize what’s happened and rush the bookies.”
In that time, the hooded man casually sauntered over to the nearest bookie and handed over three chips. I knew now that those chips were actually Vinny’s bets being cashed in. How he’d been able to counterfeit them so quickly baffled me, but I didn’t let myself get hung up on the details. This was strange enough.
The hooded man glanced behind him when the crowd swarmed out of the bleachers and rushed toward the bookies. Everyone else was shouting and brandishing their chips and shoving to get to the front of the line. He watched the oncoming rush calmly, like a statue before a thunderstorm. Once more, the hooded man was swallowed in the crowd. Hix’s sharp eyes caught one more glimpse of him and pointed as a hooded figure who may have been the same offworlder exited on the right side of the frame.
“How can you even tell it’s him?” I asked. “It’s like trying to follow a minnow in a school of fish.”
“Practice,” Hix said.
Hix moved the video up to where Vinny and I got separated, moments before I found him unconscious. The crowd was too thick to pick anyone out. What was clear was that someone yanked Vinny forward into the panicked crowd. Probably the hooded guy. Probably.
I watched until it got to the point where I found Vinny unconscious, and then grabbed the Daacro and dragged him over. Somehow, in that scuffle, Vinny’s body had finally succumbed to the high quantity of chemicals in his system. Or maybe the hooded assailant dosed him a second time. That fit what I knew so far. How had the Daacro hurt his wing? Before, I just assumed that the smaller creature had gotten caught in the crush of the manic crowd, like Vinny. But maybe there was something else he wasn’t telling me. Something that happened before and which we couldn’t see.
“Did the hooded guy leave?” I asked.
“I followed him on the camera feed for a little while, but I lost him. He must have switched out of the hood at some point.”
“Get the whole team on this,” Rashiki said. “No one else comes or goes through the surface door without a full scan.”
Hix nodded. “Yes, boss. I’ll run a biometric search on the footage we just reviewed, too. Even if we don’t have facial recognition, we can try to identify him by height, weight, and body type.”
Rashiki chewed on his lip.
“The door in that barn up top,” I thumbed toward the ceiling. “Is that the only way in or out?”
“That’s right,” Hix said. The way he said it made me certain there was at least one planned escape route, but now wasn’t the time to bring that up.
“Then scour the feeds from earlier today,” I said. “He had to get inside somehow. I bet he walked through the front door, same as the rest of us.”
A frown creased Hix’s long face before he glanced over at Rashiki. He clearly didn’t like the idea of taking orders from me.
Rashiki rolled his big eye and nodded. “Do it.”
“You know,” I went on, “he’s probably still here. It might even be one of your people under that hood.”
“Insolent Earther!” Rashiki screamed.“I have extended every courtesy to you tonight. How dare you accuse my people!” He was fuming now. A vein popped out of his forehead above his large eye. “I should have you fed to the Fetraxian.”
I knitted my brow, ignored that last comment and barreled on. “He knew exactly where the cameras were. He knew exactly how to disappear in the crowd. He’s an old hand, Rashiki. He either cased the place for weeks, or he works for you. The simplest answer is usually the right one.”
Rashiki’s jowls shook as he fought to contain his rage. “Thousands of offworlders come here every night! It is the largest offworlder recreational establishment in the entire West Pole!”
“Bigger than Harbor?” I asked.
“Gah!” Rashiki broke eye contact and looked away, gulping air. Sweat shone in the folds of his wan golden skin. Now it was Hix’s turn to glare at me on his boss’s behalf. His heavy lid slowly shuttered over his brown eye and he clenched a fist at his side.
I just smiled. Rashiki was furious, but he didn’t contradict what I’d said. That was progress.
“Sorry,” I said, holding up my hands. “Didn’t know you were so sensitive.”
“Exploding stars!” Rashiki shouted. “I don’t care who it is! Find them! They attacked my customer. They stole my money. I’ll wager a Triple Talon trophy they know exactly what happened to Slim’dar Killperch. I don’t care if it’s the Emperor of the flunking Federation himself, I want this offworlder found. NOW!”
8
A young Torlik boy in overalls came running up to Rashiki, bearing a message from Yarnow. The fat racetrack owner bobbed out of the room after the boy, muttering under his breath about the inestimable fortune he would lose due to Slim’dar’s untimely demise.
“Where can I find this Ken Lard character?” I asked Hix. “I’d like him to answer a few questions.”
A quick query on the surveillance system showed us that Ken Lard had stumbled out through the barn door during the middle of the races, as if he hadn’t come here tonight for the races at all. That cemented my suspicions, so I set out to find him, figuring that it was a better use of my time than standing around here making a bunch of Torliks uncomfortable. Also, I didn’t know jack about biometrics, and Hix continued to watch me out of the corner of his eye. It was clear that he had zero intention of letting me look over his shoulder while he dug through the rest of the video footage. He practically stumbled over himself to give me directions to Ken Lard’s place, perhaps recognizing that it would get me out of his hair faster if he was helpful. Rashiki’s head of security had no love for the Lodian drunkard.
“Lard’s an entitled, lazy smear of stardust,” Hix said when I asked him if there was anything I needed to be on the lookout for about Lard.
“I’ll give him your regards.”
Hix snorted.
“How do I reach you if I have more questions?”
“Give me your number,” Hix said. “I’ll call you from a secure line.”
I stared at him.
“There ain’t no direct line here that’s safe for you to call, Earther. I’ll ring you tomorrow.”
“Call me as soon you find something,” I insisted, handing him a business card. “If you don’t find anything, call me at noon.”
“All right, cowboy, take it easy. I’ll call.”
I was topside ten minutes later, waving in the direction where I knew the cameras were hidden as I stepped through the door.
Once outside, I exhaled a huge sigh of relief. I hadn’t realized how claustrophobic I was feeling until I was walking under the open air—and away from those toothy raptors. Spread above, in the clear dark night, a glittering expanse of stars twinkled. This far out from the city there was no light pollution. The amethyst splash of the Milky Way stretched like a brush stroke across the sky. Vinny’s homeworld was out there somewhere. The home planets of all these offworlders were.
Why had Vinny come to Earth? Why had any of them? The new knowledge about offworlders I’d acquired tonight, rather than empowering me, had the effect of making me feel smaller. The Federation that supposedly ruled the galaxy was nothing but an ominous name, a vague bureaucracy that somehow influenced the actions of everyone who was awa
re of it. I knew so little about what else was out there—not only the government, but the aliens—their lives and their problems, their hopes and their dreams. What made Earth such an attractive getaway destination? Was living in hiding here preferable to living in the open in other parts of the galaxy?
Shaking off the weight of such thoughts, I tried to focus on the much more tangible problem in front of me. I walked around the parking lot for a little while, hoping that Ken Lard had lingered for a nightcap before departing.
No such luck. Finding no one, I eventually climbed into the cab of my truck and left.
It killed me to leave Vinny down there in the Jel’ka racetrack, but Rashiki’s medics knew a hell of a lot more about treating the Ora overdose than I did. There was nothing to do but wait for his body to process the drug and recover. He’d probably wake up feeling like he’d just spent forty days in the desert on a vision quest. I felt guilty leaving him, but what would I have done with an unconscious Pangozil—use him as a battering ram to knock down Ken Lard’s door? I’d come back and check on Vinny once I’d squeezed what I could out of Lard. That had to be good enough for now.
Lard’s house turned out to be a little one-story bungalow south and east of the river in Austin. Inside city limits, but in a dumpy area where no one seemed to enforce the ordnances. His lawn was overgrown. The house was painted gaudy shades of green and purple. There was a mailbox leaning on a loose post, and an old Mazda sedan parked in the driveway.
None of the lights were on inside, so I parked down the block a ways with a good angle on the front door, and determined to wait him out, just like I had with Mannheim.
Fortunately, the truck was still well-stocked and accessorized from my recent road trip. I cracked a bottle of warm water, brushed my teeth with supplies I kept in the pocket behind the seat, and spat the toothpaste into the bushes. Then, I washed my face and changed into a t-shirt that didn’t smell like Jel’ka stables and cherry-flavored hookah smoke.
Feeling refreshed, I leaned my seat back and kept one eye on Lard’s front door. It wasn’t long before my eyelids began to droop.