“How did you get that to work?”
Ebenezer turned from the countertop where the TV rested. “I powered it with the same car battery I use for the lamp. I’ve been programmed to work with all kinds of electrical devices.”
“I see. What’s on?”
“You are.”
Confused, he stood beside Ebenezer. The picture on the twelve-inch screen was fuzzy, yet he could distinguish Sakura Yoko interviewing Geiger. “Oh shit,” he muttered.
The picture switched to Jen Washington behind the anchor desk.
“The man accused of killing the mayor’s daughter earlier this evening is Nikolai Zola Crowe, founder of his own company, Virus Hunter …”
“That’s Virus Bounty Hunter, you stupid cow,” Nikolai spouted.
“Shush,” Ebenezer hissed. “Listen.”
The picture switched from the anchorwoman to his mug shot. His breath became short. He rested his elbow on his other arm, pressed on his abdomen, and bit his knuckles.
“Crowe has escaped police custody and is on the run,” the anchorwoman said. “Here with us is Chief of Police Howard Osborn to tell us more.” She turned to a big screen, where Osborn was satellite broadcasting from his station. “Chief, can you tell us more about the suspect?”
“Yes. For one, he’s not just some idiot off the street. He’s a crafty kid.”
“Thanks,” Nikolai whispered from behind his knuckle.
“He’s also extremely dangerous. Anyone who sees him should not—I repeat—should not approach him alone.”
“Chief,” the anchorwoman said, “how would you rate this man on the list of wanted fugitives?”
“Jen, I would rate him as the most wanted man in the country right now.”
Nikolai slapped his hand on his forehead and dropped into the chair behind him. He stared at the screen in dead silence. Ebenezer stood and watched with arms crossed.
“If anyone sees this man,” continued Osborn, holding up Nikolai’s mug shot. “Please call us at the Midtown North Precinct. There’s a reward of twenty thousand dollars for information that will lead to his capture.”
“Thank you for your time, Chief Osborn. We’ll talk to you soon.” The anchorwoman faced the camera again. “As this story progresses, we’ll give you more information about Nikolai Crowe and the alleged victim. Stay tuned.”
“Shut it off,” Nikolai demanded, rubbing his forehead. Ebenezer pressed the button and the screen went blank. “Twenty grand, huh? That isn’t too much for the most wanted man in the country. Jesus. The most wanted man in the country?”
“Before this goes any farther, I need the truth from you.”
“What?” he said, raising his chin to him.
“Are you truly innocent of this crime?” Eb asked more forcefully.
“Yeah,” Nikolai said, not realizing Ebenezer’s seriousness until the Replica stepped toward him. When he tried to stand, Eb grabbed him by the throat and held him in his seat.
“Were you at her home today?”
The hand compressed his windpipe, making it difficult to speak. “No! I had nothing to do with her death.”
Ebenezer held on a minute longer, then slowly loosened his grip and released him. Nikolai gasped and coughed but never took his watery eyes off him. The attack caught him off guard, but he swallowed enough courage to speak.
“I’ll only say this once to you. I did not kill Jade. I would never hurt her.” He stood with his hand on his throat as Ebenezer moved away to the other side of the room. “You rescued me for a reason, and I don’t think it’s as simple as you believing I’m innocent. You’re hiding something.” Nikolai’s suspicion had gnawed at him since their first talk. “Now tell me your real reason.”
Ebenezer said nothing, only stood with his back turned. Finally, he spoke. “Howard Osborn was right about you. You’re not just some idiot off the street. I don’t think you killed her, but I believe whoever did, had more reason to set you up than we think.”
“Than we think?” he said angrily. “I don’t think anything. In the last three and half hours, I’ve been arrested, beaten up by the cops, saved by a clone, brought to an abandoned prison—that smells like piss, by the way—and just now had my neck crushed.”
Ebenezer approached him again.
“Stay away from me,” he said, stumbling over the chair as he backed away. “I’m fucking warning you, don’t come near me.”
Ebenezer stopped. “I am sorry for hurting you.”
“Yeah?” he said, standing behind the chair, holding the back. “Which time?”
“Both times. I swear I will never lay another harmful hand on you.”
He sensed it wasn’t a trap. Eb could easily crush him against the wall and splatter his body like a housefly anytime he wanted. “Okay, I believe you.”
“Whoever killed your lover and then went through the trouble to make it seem like you did must have a powerful motive for doing so.”
For the first time since his arrest, he thought about the reason why he’d been set up. “Gives us both something to think about, doesn’t it?”
Dozens of reporters cluttered the sidewalk in front of the mayor’s apartment building, eager to speak to Hiroshi Sho about his daughter’s murder. In his study, he stood behind his desk, mixing another scotch and soda. He took a sip and felt the alcohol slide down his throat. With a painful sigh, he lowered the glass and placed it on his desk. Three of his top agents stood in front of him. The agent on the right had a birthmark on his scalp, with a small patch of white in his dark hair.
“Any leads?” Sho asked.
“No, Your Honor,” Keiko Yu said. She kept her answer short. Her partners, Van McLean and Ashton Zimmerman, did not.
“We know he’s somewhere in the city,” Zimmerman offered.
“Oh?” Sho said sarcastically. “You know he’s still in the city? Of course, he’s still in the damn city! Where else would he be able to go?”
Zimmerman swallowed hard and tried speaking in his defense. “Sir, I was merely pointing out that—”
“Enough!” Sho cut in. He leaned on the desk and pressed his hands on the dark wood to steady his trembling. His mouth was dry even after he’d taken a drink. “Get out there and find my daughter’s killer. He took my little girl and I want justice.”
They left without a word. When the doors slid shut behind them, Sho sank into his padded leather armchair and ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. He picked up his glass and took another swallow as the doors reopened.
“What is it?” he said curtly to a plain looking woman.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but your stepson is on the phone.”
“I don’t want to speak to him.”
“He really wants to speak to you. He just found out about Jade and he’s very upset.”
Sho shifted his eyes from his glass to her and growled, “I said I don’t want to speak to him.”
“What should I tell him?”
He returned his gaze to the glass. “Tell him the usual. Tell him I’m busy.”
“All right.”
Sho took another drink as she raised the phone to her ear.
“I’m sorry, Aaron, but your step-father is busy at the moment. Would you like to speak to your mother?”
Aaron Goodall sighed and said, “No, I’ll call back. Thank you, Kay.”
He lowered the phone slowly to its cradle and stood motionless. Eric came up behind him and wrapped his arms around him.
“Damn it, I really needed to talk to him.”
“It’s all right. You don’t need him; you never did.”
He turned to Eric. “I’m not looking for sympathy from him.”
“Then what?”
“It’s private.”
“Couldn’t you tell your mother?”
He almost laughed. “No. But still, he hasn’t talked to me since the scandal.”
He shifted his eyes back to the phone. When Eric took his hand, Aaron hoped he didn’t notice it tre
mbling.
Rivera arrived at the Highland Morgue tired and frustrated. The drive over had been hectic and he had no idea why he was even there to begin with. It was an open and shut case. A gang tried to rob the bank but managed to blow themselves up instead. The end. But no, he had to drive through heavy traffic, following one of Knox’s hunches.
He went downstairs to the mortuary. Coming off a short flight of stairs, he walked through a white hallway and headed for the double doors, which slid open as he approached. The temperature inside instantly dropped as he entered the land of the dead.
Busy medics wheeled in gurneys loaded with body bags through the back door. A crew of forensic pathologists and technicians stood by cold steel slabs, waiting to examine the bodies. Rivera searched around before his eyes snagged on a familiar face.
“Judith.”
One of the pathologists on the other side of the room turned and waved to him. “Detective Rivera, come on over.”
He started to approach, doing his best to stay out of the way.
Meandering through the gurneys and tables, he spotted a body that stood out from the other blistered corpses. The male body had no burns on its pale skin, but a bullet had blown off the top half of the face. The man had been shot from behind, execution style. Blood and brain burst from the skull when the bullet passed through the head. The left eye protruded from the socket.
A tattoo was inked into the left arm. It was an odd depiction of a smiley face. But on a closer look, it was recognized as a yellow theridion grallator spider.
As he reached Judith Kincaid, she gave him a smile and said, “I’d give you a hug, but my hands have been in dead bodies all day.”
“I’ll take a rain check. That body over there, who is it?”
She craned her neck over to the dead man. “Him? He came in earlier this evening. Didn’t have any identification on him. According to his DNA, his name is Scott Loy.” She turned her attention to a body bag lying on the slab in front of her. “Hell of a night, huh?”
“To say the least. The roads are crazy.”
“The explosion at the bank stirred up a shitload of traffic.” She straightened a bright pink bandana she wore over her puffy gray hair. “Took nearly an hour for these bodies to arrive.”
She slipped on a fresh pair of latex gloves and yanked the zipper down on the body bag. Rivera’s nostrils filled with the same rank stench of burnt flesh he’d experienced at the bank.
He covered his face. “I wish Knox had come instead of me. I hate this shit.”
The heat from the explosion had roasted the body down to its skeleton. The soot-covered skull was exposed; the rib cage stuck out through holes in the black paper-thin tissue of skin. The arms and legs were burnt sticks.
“What? My hearing isn’t so good. You have to stop mumbling.”
He lowered his hand. “I said …” He caught another whiff of the corpse and jerked his head to the side. “Jesus, never mind.”
When she smiled, the lines in her dark face deepened.
He turned back to the slab. “You have a morbid sense of humor.”
“Duh! And by the way, this shit is part of your job.”
“Yeah, but I’m sure a butcher has to get used to slicing throats before it means nothing to him. Let’s see if this is one of the suspects or a victim.”
“Aren’t we all victims in some way?”
He shook his head. “Creepy. Well?”
She pulled the zipper down until a red tag on the chest caught their attention. She flipped it over. The letter S was written on it.
“Suspect,” he said.
“Knox sent you here to do his dirty work, huh?” she asked, spreading the thick plastic away from the body. “Wants a DNA test done right away.”
“Yeah. So, about that DNA test?”
“Oh, all right,” she said, scurrying off to her workstation. “Hurry, hurry, rush, rush.”
When she came back, she carried a slender device with a yellow bulb at the end.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Haven’t you ever seen a dental scanner before?”
“Never had to deal with barbecued corpses before.”
She moved to the head of the body. “This scanner is a new model. It just came out last year. It’s cool. We can now identify bodies without sending their dental or DNA samples off to a lab and wait weeks for a result. This device scans every tooth.” She placed the end of the scanner into her mouth, holding it between her teeth. “It scans every distinctive shape of each tooth, counts how many teeth there are, and what kind of dental work the person has had in the past.”
He watched as she gently wedged her index and middle fingers into the small space between the victim’s blackened teeth. Carefully, but forcefully, she pried the mouth open. He flinched when the lower jaw cracked. She opened the mouth only far enough to slip the scanner inside.
“Watch,” she said, keeping focused on her work. “I click the button here and the bulb lights up—like so.”
After getting the device halfway into the mouth, she clicked a button at the end, like a pen, and the mouth brightened with a yellowish glow. Rays of the light pierced through every hole in the skull: the nose, eyes, and spaces between the teeth, like a candle inside a Jack-o’-lantern. The light shifted back and forth twice before going out. She withdrew the device.
“That light is the actual scanner?”
“Yep.” She walked back to her workstation. “There’s a tiny chip inside the scanner that stores the detail of each tooth when it’s activated.”
He joined her at her desk. A microscope was hooked up to her computer. On the other side sat a small black box, also hooked to the computer. On top of the box was a shiny metal disk with a wavy line running down the middle.
“Why is there a microscope connected to your computer?”
“This isn’t any ordinary microscope. When we do a DNA test on someone, we take a sample from the body and put it on a slide.”
She pressed a button on the black box. The yin-yang pattern on the disk slid apart and a metal stem with a tiny suction cup on top emerged. She pulled the bulb off the scanner and placed it on the suction cup, which descended into the box. She typed something into the computer, and the box started to hum.
“How exactly does this work?”
She looked at him from the monitor. “This is a receiver. It reads the information from the chip before it processes it through hundreds of dental records. Whoever’s been to a doctor—or in this case, a dentist—for any reason, their records can be found. Once the computer decodes the information, it will go through the names of every person close to that particular code until it locates the precise one. Observe.”
He moved in closer as thousands of names and pictures flashed on screen.
“Why call them suspects anyway?” she asked. “I think it’s silly to call people you know committed the crime a suspect, or call their actions alleged. I saw a story on the news the other night about someone who got shot dead in front of a convenience store. They showed footage of the killer pulling the trigger. Yet they call him the “alleged murderer”, even though everyone knew he did it. It’s stupid.”
“Now, now, Judith, we have to make it sound like these people we arrest might be innocent,” he said sarcastically. “Makes us seem more merciful.”
She snorted. “Aren’t you cops thoughtful.”
A ring-tone from a popular song came from inside Kincaid’s pocket. She pulled out her cell phone and answered it after reading the number. “Doctor Kincaid … I thought she was being sent here … Well, how long has she been there? … She’s on the way? … All right, I’ll be there soon.”
She ended the phone call and placed it back in her pocket. “We need to make this quick. I have to get to the Farwell Morgue before a body arrives there.”
“Got an important guest coming?”
She smiled. “You can say that. She was supposed to come here, but the coroner decided at the last minut
e to take her to Farwell once we got overloaded with all these guys.”
“Is it the mayor’s daughter?”
Instead of answering him, she said, “Heard the kid who killed her—I mean, allegedly killed her—got away.”
“I bet his freedom will be short-lived.”
The flashing of pictures and names on the computer slowed.
“Come on, you stupid thing,” she said with a huff.
He noticed her mood change. Instead of her usual calm, relaxed self, she became a restless jitterbug. He wondered if it had anything to do with the body headed for the Farwell Morgue.
The montage came to a stop. When Kincaid read the name, she froze. Her eyes widened and her jaw hit the floor.
“What is it?” he asked, noticing her stunned expression.
“This can’t be right,” she whispered. She pulled open her top desk drawer and brought out another dental scanner. She ran over to a different body, and he followed.
“What is it?”
She didn’t answer him, enticing his curiosity. She unzipped body bag and pried the mouth open to insert the device.
“Judith, what’s going on? Who is that person?”
“That’s Harvey Smith,” she said, clicking the scanner button.
“Who’s Harvey Smith?”
She removed the scanner and hurried back to her computer. Again, he followed.
“Who’s Harvey Smith?”
She pressed the button on the black box. When the tee-like stem appeared, she snatched the pervious ball off and replaced it with the other. As the ball lowered into the machine, she typed on the keyboard. “He’s a murder victim.”
Confused, he said, “So, he wasn’t a suspect, but a hostage? How would you know that?”
Pictures of people flashed again and slowed to a stop. She looked at the screen and was taken aback by the picture and name. “This woman,” she said, pointing to the photo, “was shot in the head.”
“How the hell do you know that? You haven’t even examined the body yet.”
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