by Vanessa Muir
“That’s evidence in an ongoing SSG investigation. It’s illegal to remove it.”
“Evidence?” Smith asked. “Is it? So, I can put in a call to Stormshield’s Headquarters and confirm that you have entered these journals into evidence? That you’ve attached a case number and evidence tag?”
Shit, shit, shit. She hadn’t had the time for any of that. And that meant Jordan Smith and his cronies were well within their rights to remove it from her. If it wasn’t classed as evidence, it was still their property.
“You’re obligated to offer up that evidence to me,” Charlie said. “If it relates to my case.”
“But it doesn’t,” Smith said. “Haven’t you heard? New surveillance footage was found which marks Jana Mitchell as a Black Mars operative. Dr. Mitchell’s research had nothing to do with the murder.”
“That’s crap,” Charlie snapped.
Smith patted her on the arm, and she jerked out of reach. “I can’t thank you enough for your cooperation, Miss Spade. You have a good evening.” And with that closing remark, he walked off, whistling under his breath.
She didn’t watch him leave. She couldn’t.
Everything had collated in her mind, crammed into the span of a breath. She’d lost the proof she needed to convince Boss Ink, and Mem Store had fabricated evidence to ensure nothing she said made a difference.
What could she do? Speak to one of the State-owned news companies? The media published only what the Council pushed forward, only what they approved.
Charlie walked to the open door of her apartment and stood on the threshold.
Everything looked exactly the same as she’d left it, apart from a few missing items, and the fact that the sofa cushions had been forced up, and the space beneath them was empty.
She couldn’t enter. It felt dirty. Sullied by the fingers of those Mem Store operatives who’d rifled through her life.
“This can’t be over,” she whispered.
Her wristwatch buzzed, and she lifted it, then frowned. This wasn’t a Mem Store notification. It was a video message from an unknown number. She tapped the routing symbol on her watch, then pressed a finger to her temple.
Tatiana Mitchell revolved into view, hands clasped in front of her chest. “Please, Agent Spade, I need you to come quickly. I did a bad thing. I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t have an option.”
Behind her, something thumped against the tiles, something heavy. A scream rang out.
“I’m scared,” she whispered. “I thought she’d be okay if she stopped taking the pills, but I was wrong. Please, she’s going crazy down there. She’s trying to get at me. Please, come quickly.”
The video feed cut off, and Tatiana winked out of view.
So, that was it. Tatiana had been hiding her mother after all, and she knew that the MemXor had changed her behavior.
Charlie’s palms were slick with sweat. She tapped on the watch and typed out a notification.
Meet me at Tatiana Mitchell’s apartment ASAP. We’ve got her.
She shot it off to Eli. If she didn’t take him with her, Boss Ink would likely find something wrong with her method.
Charlie stepped backward out of her apartment – now, definitely bugged – then shut the door. This was only the beginning. It had to be.
17
Charlie hit the buzzer to Tatiana’s apartment three times. Nothing happened. No clack of the door and immediate entry. “Well, that’s not good,” she said.
“Do you think the mother, you know?” Eli, beside her, had his gun out, both hands on it, a white-knuckle grip.
He wasn’t the most experienced with arrests, being relatively new to SSG, but he hadn’t backed out at the suggestion. Her ridiculously handsome partner with the sinus-headache inducing cologne had stepped up to the challenge.
“There’s only one way to find out.” Charlie took both hands and rammed them down on all of the buttons. Forty buzzers cried out, and voices screeched through the intercom. “SSG, open up,” she commanded, then held her breath.
The front door clacked and opened.
“We’re in,” Eli said.
Charlie took point on the revolving stairs. They passed the first floor, where a few intrepid tenants poked their heads into the hall and searched for the commotion, and arrived at the second.
The door to number 27 stood ajar.
“Safety off?” Charlie took her gun out.
“Check,” Eli replied.
“Stay behind me. Run if I say run. Shoot if I say shoot.”
“Should we really go in there without back up? I mean, she shoved a pill bottle down someone’s throat,” Eli whispered.
“Only in his mouth. And don’t worry, I don’t think Tatiana has any MemXor lying around.” Charlie headed down the hall along the wall, stepping lightly, adjusting her grip on the weapon. Her palms didn’t sweat this time.
She’d done countless busts. The fear that had initially taken hold of her evaporated with time and experience. This was her bread and butter, what she did for a living. The calm before the storm had already come over her.
Eli, however, trembled like a leaf on a damn tree.
Charlie halted in front of the entrance to 27 and raised her hand. She listened.
A sharp “thunk” followed by another and another, accompanied by grunts. Charlie inhaled through her nose and tasted copper at the back of her throat. She pointed at the door, then held up three fingers.
She ticked them down.
Three, two, one.
Charlie burst into the apartment, gun up and steady. She didn’t recoil at the bloodied scene but pointed the gun at Jana Mitchell. The woman who wasn’t a woman anymore. At least, not as she’d been once.
Jana Mitchell sat astride her daughter, a butcher’s knife in one hand, covered from hilt to tip in her daughter’s blood. Spatter on the front of her cotton dress, blond hair stringy with sweat. She hadn’t noticed them come in. She raised the knife again and aimed it at her daughter’s chest, though Tatiana was already gone – eyes blank, mouth open, and blood pooled beneath her.
So much god damn blood.
“Drop your weapon,” Charlie commanded, voice steady.
Behind her Eli gulped. He retched.
Mrs. Mitchell didn’t respond. She thunked the knife down into her daughter once again, and a low growl snaked from her throat.
“Drop your fucking weapon!” Charlie roared.
Finally, the woman noticed them. Her head swiveled, and eyes, terrifying in their emptiness, bulging from her skull, absorbed their presence. Her mouth dropped open, and a screech escaped her.
“Charlie,” Eli whimpered.
“Keep it together, partner,” she snapped back.
The screech heightened in pitch. Jana Mitchell drew the knife out of her daughter again, and scrambled to her feet, splashing in the blood.
“Ma’am, drop your weapon, or I’ll be forced to shoot,” Charlie said.
Mrs. Mitchell either didn’t hear or didn’t comprehend what the words meant. She streaked toward them, knife raised, still screaming, her jaw dropped, and mouth open impossibly wide, in a mimicry of her husband’s final death position.
“Freeze!”
She came on, bare feet thumping on the tiles.
Charlie took aim and squeezed the trigger. Blam! One shot to the right shoulder.
The knife-wielding arm flailed, and the weapon dropped, but Jana Mitchell didn’t register the pain. She sprinted toward them.
“Fuck!” Eli yelled. “Fuck!”
Blam, blam!
Two more shots from Charlie’s gun and Jana Mitchell’s form jerked in response to each. One in the left shoulder, one in the right thigh.
She came on, screaming bloody murder. She lifted her hands, fingers scrabbling for purchase in the air, deathly nothingness in her arms.
Charlie lowered her gun. “Cuffs, Eli.”
But her partner had checked out. He stepped forward, weapon still up, and fired. Three shots.
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One to the chest.
Another to the abdomen.
The last penetrated Jana Mitchell’s forehead and stopped her for good. She crumpled to the ground.
Charlie started shaking now, but it wasn’t fear. It was rage which jellied her muscles. “Are you crazy?” She turned on Eli. “She was disarmed. She was under arrest!”
“She was still moving,” Eli said, lamely. “She would’ve killed us.”
“No! She would’ve gone to fucking jail for murder.” Charlie dropped into a crouch, placed both hands on either side of her head, gun still in the right. “She was proof. She was the only proof.”
“You’re not making any sense!” Eli yelled. “She wanted to kill us like she did her daughter and husband.”
“Enough,” Charlie said, at last. “Enough.”
And quiet filtered into the apartment, drifting over the corpses of both women. Tatiana, so young and beautiful, destroyed by the need to protect her mother. And Jana Mitchell, dead but still twitching. An entire family ruined by Mem Store, and no one would ever know the truth.
They’d blame it on Black Mars again. They’d blame it on anyone other than Mem Store.
Sirens wailed in the distance. The cavalry had finally arrived. Not that it made a difference.
18
Boss Ink waited for them outside the apartment, dressed in his SSG uniform and wearing a blank expression beneath the dotted tattoos on his skin. His gun was holstered, badge polished, but he lifted his eyes to the second-floor windows above them and shook his head, once.
“That’s it,” he said. “Did you have to kill her?”
Charlie kept her mouth shut. Still in the throes of fury over having lost Mrs. Mitchell. There wasn’t a chance Mem Store would allow anyone to perform an autopsy or tests on her dead body. The State would take over the investigation since it was now a double murder, and it had been “revealed” that both Tatiana and Jana Mitchell were Black Mars agents.
“I’m sorry, Boss,” Eli said. “It was my first time. You should’ve seen it. She just kept running at us. Running and screaming. She didn’t even look human anymore.”
“I wonder why that was,” Charlie hissed.
Ink gave her a look directly from the grave. “Cool it. You’re both lucky this ended so well.”
“All due respect, sir.”
“Spade.”
“With all due respect, you call two women dead a good ending to this investigation?” Charlie asked and finally holstered her gun. She’d kept it out mostly because she’d forgotten it. But a part of her needed the comfort of the metal weight in her palm.
“It’s better than having to hand over a woman to the State, isn’t it?” Boss asked.
Charlie met his gaze but didn’t give an answer. Yeah, it was better than that and interesting that Ink had identified that fact. But he wouldn’t support her line of investigation on Mem Store, regardless.
“Sir,” Charlie said, the cold night breeze pricking the sweat on the back of her neck, “do you have any information on the whereabouts of Doctor Germiston? He called me earlier this evening, but when I went to the lab, it was locked up.”
“He’s on paid vacation,” Ink replied. “He put in for it this evening and left immediately. Called me himself.”
“What? Are you kidding?” She knew what happened to people who were sent on “vacation.” The State tried to rehabilitate them, likely with torture, or they were never heard from again.
“No. He contacted me before the fire at the Mitchell apartment. Sounded anxious to take leave, in fact.” Ink shrugged. “He hasn’t taken a vacation in years. I figured it’d be good for him to take a break. There are others who can take over for him in forensics in the meantime.”
Charlie slapped a hand down on Eli’s arm and squeezed tight. It was for the contact, for something real in this world. How could everything fall apart like this? She would probably never see Dr. Germiston again. The findings of his research were lost to her.
One second, the evidence was lined up in a neat row, ready to be disseminated. And the next second, obliterated.
“Spade?” Ink peered at her. “Perhaps, it’s time you take a vacation too.”
“No,” she said too quickly. “I’m fine. I’m ready for another case.”
“I don’t have anything for you yet. You two go back to SSG and write up your reports, then head home. You’re done here. The cops will clean up this mess.”
“Of course, they will,” Charlie said. “Of course.” And she let go of her partner and walked away, back to the car. One night and she’d witnessed two murders, a fire, the disappearance of one of SSG’s finest, and discovered journals which damn well detailed the problems with MemXor.
And now, everything was gone.
She had the pictures on her phone and nothing else. Nothing except her last resort. “No,” she whispered. “I won’t do that. I won’t go see him.”
“What are you talking about?” Eli popped up beside her. “Dude, are you okay? You’re pale and whispering to yourself.”
Charlie halted and drew the tiny square phone out of her pocket. She tapped on the screen and cycled through the apps in her gallery. She opened the one she was looking for, but the phone blipped an error.
Folder empty.
“Folder empty,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Charlie replied. “It’s nothing.” Exactly that. She had nothing. They’d hacked her phone and erased the images. All the evidence she’d collected. Disappeared before her very eyes.
“Okay,” Eli said, drawing the word out. “So, I know we need to write those reports now, but I’ve been thinking, maybe we should finish up our meal afterward. Or, I don’t know, check out one of those bars you mentioned. I know it’s late, but are you really going to sleep after all that’s happened?”
She searched him. Could she trust him? No, she still couldn’t. Had it been a coincidence that she was out with Eli when Smith showed up to recover the journals from her apartment? Was it a rookie mistake that he shot Jana Mitchell to death, or was it intentional? Did he want to spend time with his partner? Or had he been instructed to keep an eye on her? He believed everything the State fed him, as long as it tasted good, as long as it sat with his worldview that everything was fine and it would remain fine.
That was what kept the shocking secrets at bay. The State didn’t even have to try hard to defend them. It was his fear, his and people like him who let themselves be walked all over to maintain the status quo.
“What do you say, Spade?”
“No,” she said. “After the report, I have to be somewhere.”
“Where?”
Charlie let out a bitter chuckle which displayed no mirth. “Prison,” she replied.
19
The State’s maximum security penitentiary in Corden Prime Phi Sector was nothing but a gray block with a single entrance. Three rows of electrified fences and gates separated the main road, a long path walled off on either side by concrete, from the glass entrance.
The glass itself was thick enough that a person standing behind it would appear as a distorted shape. Formless, even.
She’d been here once before. Only once, but had left without going in – a previous case turned bad.
Charlie Spade parked her car in the allocated visitor’s parking bay – a single one – then got out and locked it. Theft wasn’t a concern; she just didn’t want her car bugged too. She stood and brushed off the plain blouse she’d chosen for the occasion and straightened the jeans beneath it.
Wearing her SSG uniform felt wrong. She didn’t want to trigger anger, right off the bat.
“Agent Spade?” A man strode through the now open glass door.
“That’s correct,” she said and brought out her ID card. She flashed it at him, then tucked it back into her pocket. “I’m here to see Jones.”
“Follow me, agent,” the prison guard said – bald, a single digit tattoo under his left e
ye. The mark of an ex-convict, not a violent offender.
The State had mastered the art of rehabilitating offenders and giving them a job which suited them – prison guard. Apparently, the power sated those who wanted it, provided them with a sense of responsibility.
Charlie followed the guard through the doors and lifted her arms above her head.
A machine scanned her and flashed a green light above a second thick glass door. It slid back to reveal a long, colon of a passage which wound into the bowels of the prison. It was eerily silent.
“This way,” the guard said. “You’ll be speaking with him in the viewing room. You will be under surveillance throughout.”
“That’s fine,” she replied. She couldn’t stop them from overhearing, but she wouldn’t let it stop her.
She fell into step behind him, her tennies squeaking on the polished tile floor. They passed more thick glass doors, these thinner than the last and totally opaque. An air-conditioning unit rattled overhead, pumping cold air down on them. The place didn’t smell at all. The absence of it made her uncomfortable. It was too clean, too controlled.
“Why is it so quiet?” she asked in a low tone.
“All our inmates are in constant solitary confinement,” the guard replied, loudly. His voice didn’t carry far, it seemed to disappear a foot in front of his face. “These are the most dangerous offenders in Corden Prime, Agent Spade, and they are treated as thus.”
“You don’t worry they’ll lose it? That they won’t be able to rehabilitate?”
The guard skipped a step, then resumed his easy pace. “Ma’am, none of the men in the Phi Prison are marked for rehabilitation. This is Death Row. This is where they come to die.”
Charlie swallowed bile. Of course, she’d known that before she’d asked.
Five minutes of building discomfort, of their noiseless trek through prison halls, and she was excreted into the viewing room – plain, gray, a single table and two chairs, with cameras watching from every ceiling corner.