Forests of the Night

by S. Andrew Swann

  "Like the percentage of untreated bullet wounds that become gangrenous? Damnit, you weren't in the hospital just to be inconvenienced."

  Nohar shook his head. At least Manny wasn't saying, "I told you so." Even though he'd been right about getting involved with pink business.

  "I needed to feed Cat."

  "Great, just great. I won't even tell you how silly that sounds. You couldn't have gotten me to do that?"

  Nohar thought of the ratboys. "No, I couldn't."

  Manny sighed and slowed his chittering voice. "I know how you feel about hospitals, but you can't avoid them forever. Things have gotten a lot better. They don't make mistakes like that anymore—"

  Nohar knew Manny stopped because of the ground he was treading. Thanks for reminding me, Nohar thought. He was about to say it, but, for once, he managed to keep his mouth shut.

  "You better promise to come over and let me look at that wound. There are a lot more appropriate things to die of."

  "Promise,"

  "I know you didn't just call to say hi. What do you want?"

  Nohar caught the dig at him. It was unlike Manny. Manny really was worried about him. "Before I ask you, promise me something."

  "What?"

  "When this is over, we get out together. No business, no corpses."

  There was a distinct change in the quality of Manny’s voice that made Nohar feel better. "Sure . . ."

  Damn, Manny was almost speechless. "I wanted to ask you about the time of death. How accurate can that be?"

  Manny found his professional voice. "Depends on a lot of things. The older the corpse, the less accurate. Need a good idea of the ambient temperature and the humidity—"

  That's what Nohar wanted to hear. "What if they were wrong about the temperature? Fifteen degrees too high."

  "Definitely throw the estimate off."

  "How much?"

  "Depends on what they thought the temperature was to begin with."

  "Thirty-two at least."

  Nohar could hear the whistle of air between Manny’s front teeth. "Nohar, the time of death could be put back by up to a factor of two. If the humidity was off, maybe more."

  "Thanks, Manny."

  "You're welcome, I think."

  Nohar hung up the phone and looked at the ranch. All the little nagging problems with Johnson's death— and it was so damn simple.

  Problem—it took much too long for the local population to notice the gaping hole if it had been shot when Johnson was shot. Solution—the window was shot out long after Johnson was dead. Probably during the thunderstorm that Thursday, so few people would have heard the glass—real glass, expensive—exploding and none would recognize its significance.

  It had taken Young to make Nohar think of that. Young said he had seen a morey kill Johnson. "One of you," he said. The only way Young could have seen the killer shoot Johnson was if he, the killer, and Johnson were all more or less in the same place when Johnson died. If the assassin was in the house, he could have offed Johnson with one shot—no need for a shattering window to draw Johnson's attention. Johnson could have remained facing the comm, oblivious enough to be shot dead center in the back of the head.

  Because no alarm, no break-in. That meant Johnson let him in. With a Levitt Mark II? Not likely.

  Johnson let in someone else—one of them—and that person let in the assassin. Yes, Johnson let in someone. Perhaps to confront the person with whatever he had found in the financial records. Young lived in the ranch with Johnson, but no one was supposed to know that. So Young would be hidden from the guest. Maybe in a darkened bedroom, looking out a crack in the door.

  The guest—maybe one of the franks from MLI— talks to Johnson in the study. The frank leaves the door open, so the assassin can sneak into the living room and set up the Levitt. The door to the study must remain closed except for the last minute, to give the assassin a chance to prepare. Young would only see the gun when the frank opens the study door to give the morey killer a field of fire.

  The one shot gets Derry Johnson in the back of the head. Young is in shock. The frank and the morey clean up a little and leave.

  It must have been Saturday night, after that fundraiser Young and Johnson had departed early. That would explain Johnson's state, and why no one could finger Johnson's location during the week, Young wasn't thinking right. He freaked, packed his stuff, and ran out to his empty house.

  The corpse was left in an air-conditioned, climate-controlled environment, until the morey with the Levitt blew away the picture window on Thursday. The storm ruined the traces of the assassin in the living room. The killing became an anonymous sniping. The time of death shifted to Wednesday and nobody got the chance to plumb the inconsistencies because Binder clamped down immediately.

  Neat.

  But why didn't Young call the cops?

  Something had freaked Young. If Stephie was right, something beyond Johnson's death. From the way Young acted, it was something linked to the financial records. Something Johnson saw and Young didn't.

  Nohar looked back at the broken window. The police ballistics report was based entirely on the assumption that both shots came from the same place. Now the second shot, the one that blew the window out, no longer had to be in line with Johnson's head. The field of fire at the picture window was much wider. The sniper no longer had to be crouching in one of the security-conscious driveways across the street.

  Nohar stood up on the passenger seat of the Jerboa and looked for good fire positions. He scanned the horizon—lots of trees. The Levitt needed a clear field of fire; crashing through a tree could set off the charge in the bullet. Nohar kept turning, looking for a high point, above the houses, behind them, without a tree in the way.

  Feeling a growing sense of disillusionment, Nohar parked the Jerboa next to the barrier at the end of the street. He had been pounding pavement and checking buildings for most of the day. Evening was approaching and, while he had found a number of buildings both likely and unlikely to hold a sniper, he was little closer to discovering where the sniper had shot from. He was afraid he might actually cross the path of the. gunman and not recognize it.

  Fire position number ten was inside Moreytown, Which was a plus as far as likelihood was concerned. Nohar figured you could drive a fully loaded surplus tank inside Moreytown and the pink law would give it just a wink and a nod.

  The name of the building was Musician's Towers. It was a twenty-story, L-shaped building, supposedly abandoned since the riots. Good spot for a sniper. Hundreds of squatters in the place, but there weren't likely to be any witnesses.

  There had been a halfhearted effort to seal it up. It'd been condemned ever since a fire took out one wing-as well as the synagogue across the street. Most of the plastic covering the doors and windows had been torn off ages ago.

  He slowly approached the doorway, on guard even though it was still daylight. The entrance hall was in the burned out wing. The hall went through to the other side, looking like someone had fired an artillery round all the way through the base of the building. He had to climb over the pile of crumbled concrete in front of the entrance, debris that came mostly from the facade on the top five floors.

  White sky burned through the empty, black-rimmed windows at the top of the building. That was the place for a sniper.

  Above the gaping hole that led into the building someone had spray-painted, "Welcome to Morey Hilton."

  Inside, the heat became oppressive. Nohar was nearly used to the itch under his shirt, but in the sweltering lobby—it might have been because of the still lingering smell of fire—he had to take it off. He leaned against the hulk of a station wagon someone had driven into the lobby, waiting to become acclimated to the heat.

  No sign of the squatters yet, but Nohar doubted any lived near the first floor. That would be a little too close to the action. The empty beer bulbs scattered across the floor, the occasional cartridge from an air-hypo, the fresh bullet pockmarks, marked the lobby as
a party spot for the gangs. Not to mention “Zipperhead” painted on the side of the station wagon. Hmm, Nohar corrected himself. Gang—singular. Lately, the one gang seemed to be it. He didn't know exactly what to make of that. There had been at least five gangs around when he had been running with the Hellcats. But that was a long time ago—the years before this building burned up—and Nohar really didn't want to think about it.

  He decided he had waited long enough and went straight for one of the open stairwells. The winding concrete stairs were swathed in darkness, and Nohar's view became colorless and nocturnal. Here, the heat was even worse, and the smell of fire was overwhelmed by the aromas of rust, mold, and rotting garbage. The stairs were concrete, but every other footstep fell on something soft.

  Nohar tried to ignore the garbage and think like a sniper. The face of the burned out wing was pointed at the target, so the assassin would take a point amidst the wreckage. Few squatters in the remains of the fire—

  Nohar hit floor ten and had to pause because he thought he'd come across a corpse. A lepus was curled in a fetal position in the corner of the tenth-floor landing. An acrid odor announced the fact the rabbit had soiled—him, her? Nohar couldn't tell in the dark—itself. As he approached, the rabbit's twitching showed it was still among the living. An air-hypo cartridge lay-on the ground.

  A jacked rabbit—might have even been funny if it hadn't been so obvious the rabbit was on flush, and having a bad reaction. Nohar knelt next to the rabbit. She—Nohar could tell now—wasn't wearing anything. Filth covered her dark fur. He felt a wave of anger when he didn't see the hypo. That meant one of two things. Either someone had done her, or had stolen the hypo. In both cases they'd left her on her own like this. Scenes like this made Nohar think the fundamentalists might be right and moreys were an abomination in the eyes of whatever deity.

  It was flush, all the classic symptoms. Near catatonia, chills, dehydration, voiding the bowels, rolling up of the eyes, shallow breathing, slight nosebleed. She was lucky. In truly severe reactions, the nervous system went. Then he would have found a corpse. She'd been through the worst of it, though. What she needed now was light and water. The darkness tended to perpetuate the hallucinogenic effects of flush. She could be psychologically unable to move long after the physical effects had worn off.

  Nohar picked her up. She weighed nothing. She was a small morey to begin with, and she was skinny as well. He hoped the squatters still kept those rain barrels up topside.

  On the burned-out wing, with the exception of the concrete facade, the top three floors were gone. Nohar carried the rabbit out of the stairwell and into the open air of the seventeenth floor. Nohar saw the orange plastic barrels immediately. Good, the occupants still collected rainwater. He looked at the shivering rabbit, silently asked himself what he was doing, and lowered her face gently into one of the cleaner barrels.

  The moment the water brushed the side of her face, her ears picked up. Good sign. They stayed like that, Nohar holding her face just above the water, the rabbit curled up with her neck resting on the edge of the barrel, for close to fifteen minutes. The only thing keeping Nohar from giving up on her brain lock was the gradual improvement, and the fact she did seem to be drinking a little.

  There had to be a better way to deal with this, Nohar thought. He wasn't a trained medic. He was following the home procedure for a bad flush trip. It was a lot easier with a toilet handy—the running joke was, the comedown in the head was the way the drug got its street name.

  A sputtering came from the barrel. Nohar hoped she wouldn't vomit. "Listen to my voice." Nohar tried to sound reassuring. "It was a bad trip, but you're coming back. It wasn't real. You can relax now. It's important to untense your muscles, slowly—"

  After a decade plus, the lines came back with surprising ease. She didn't say anything as he talked her down, and Nohar counted himself lucky she wasn't a screamer.

  "Let go, damnit!"

  A wide foot made a hollow slap on Nohar's chest, announcing the fact she had regained some contact with reality. Nohar didn't think letting go of her was a good idea, but the rabbit had suddenly erupted into thrashing motion from near paralysis. She was saying something in Spanish, and from the tone of her voice, it wasn't very pleasant. Good intentions only went so far. He set her down next to the barrel. She was panting, and a little unsteady on her feet.

  Nohar rubbed his shoulder. It was tightening up after the stress of holding the rabbit above the barrel. He knew he was asking for it, but he said it anyway. "Are you all right?"

  She looked up. She had a scar on one cheek that turned up her mouth in a quirky smile, as if she enjoyed some private joke at his expense. "Don't do no favors, Kit."

  "Name's Nohar." He shrugged and started walking toward the windows on the south wall.

  He got to the windows, began looking for Johnson's house, and immediately realized the limitations of his vision. The houses were mere blobs.

  Nohar turned back to the rain barrel and saw the rabbit, apparently recovering out of sheer cussedness, doing her best to clean herself off with a rag. Oops, not a rag, he had left his shirt over there. Oh, well, the shirt was too hot anyway.

  "Hey, Fluffy-"

  She glared at him.

  "Better at giving favors than receiving them?"

  "Name's Angel. Fuck you."

  "You owe me something for that shirt you just wasted."

  She looked at the dripping cloth she'd been wiping herself with. "Yeah, you and every Ziphead this side of nirvana."

  "Your trip an old debt coming home?"

  "Wow, Kit, you have a grasp of the obvious that's worthy of a cop." She stood up—most of the filth was out of her spotted brown fur—walked over to the window and slapped the wet shirt across his midsection.

  "Your shirt."

  Nohar wrung out the shirt and tied it around his waist. "Thanks, Angel— Can you help? I need someone with better vision than I have."

  Angel sighed. "What you want?"

  "I need to find a window overlooking a ranch house with a shot-out picture window."

  "You say shot?" A real smile overcame the ghost of the scar.

  "Yes. I can't pick it out—"

  She shook her head. "Kit, I didn't know the cops were hiring—"

  "I am not a cop!"

  Angel stepped back, still smiling, showing a pair of prominent front teeth. "Sore point? What are you, then? What you looking for?"

  "I'm a private detective. I'm trying to find a sniper."

  She laughed and said, "I can tell you who. What I get?"

  It took Nohar half a second to realize she was serious. He closed the distance between them in an instant and grabbed her shoulders. There was a brief adrenaline rush, but he contained it.

  "Tell me."

  "Not for nothing."

  "What do you want?"

  "You played the savior, play it all the way. I want protection. You're a big one, Kit. Keep Zipheads from expressing me to nowhere again."

  She had him. He'd gone to the trouble of saving her life. Now, he had to make it worth something.

  Nohar looked into her eyes and she stopped smiling. "I will, if you tell me two things. First, why are they after you?"

  She shrugged. "Made stupid mistake. I tried to keep Stigmata, my gang, going after the Zips moved in. Didn't know then that they were backed from downtown. My clutch didn't fall off the map, so got erased."

  Nohar could live with that. "You on flush—or anything else?"

  "Do I look stupid?"

  He told himself not to answer that.

  He might as well play the Samaritan while he could.

  "You get the couch."

  Chapter 10

  Nohar didn't see any rats when he parked the Jerboa across from his office. He hoped that meant Fearless Leader and his cronies were laying low. Even so, he was nervous, and Angel was more so. He gave her his shirt—it dragged on the ground when she wore it—and had her hold her ears down.

 
With ears down and her body covered, she could pass for a deformed rat.

  It was the longest three blocks Nohar had ever walked.

  They got to his apartment, and no ambush was waiting for them. Nohar breathed easier once he managed to unwedge the warped door and close it behind them.

  Cat ran up, as usual, and seemed puzzled to find one of Nohar's shirts moving under its own power. When Angel lowered a hand, Cat shied away and hissed, but the moment she stopped paying attention to him, Cat attacked the end of her foot that stuck out from under the edge of the shirt.

  "Ouch! Shit, Kit, put a leash on it."

  "His name is Cat. If you have an argument with his behavior, you have to take it up with him. He doesn't listen to me."

  Cat backed up, crouched, shook his ass back and forth, and pounced on Angel's exposed toes.

  Angel jerked her foot up and Cat tumbled back into the living room. She twitched her nose and snorted. "You think that name up by yourself?"

  Angel unbuttoned the shirt and took it off. She tossed it so it landed on Cat. Cat found the shirt more absorbing than Angel's toes, and he started rolling across the living room floor buried inside it. Occasionally a paw would come out and swipe at the air. Angel made for the couch. Nohar went into the kitchen and filled a bottle of water. When he returned with it, she took the bottle and started drinking greedily.

  By the time she'd finished her first bottle, Nohar had already made the trip for the second one. She drank this one more leisurely, and her story came out.

  Angel had seen the sniper on the twenty-fourth, the stormy Thursday. "Ancient history now," she said. Stigmata still had a few loyal holdouts at the time. By then, though, the Zips had confined Stigmata's turf to the tower. War was about to break out all over. Everyone knew that. The Zips were going to vanish the remaining gangs. Only three were left—Babylon, Vixen, and Stigmata. According to Angel, Vixen's last shred of territory was the strip of Mayfield Road between Kenelworth and the concrete barrier, and Babylon was hunkered down in an enclave somewhere on Morey Hill.

  Everyone was edgy. There was always someone watching, hidden behind a wall of rubble in the lobby. Angel, and the rest of them, wanted the chance to take some ratboys down with them. The twenty-fourth was her watch and Thursday was the night all hell broke loose. Angel thought Stigmata must've been the first of the mopup because the Zips must've realized there were only six members left.