Genesys X

by B. J. Graf

  “Hey,” I yelled.

  Mercedes looked up with an anxious smile. But when Pink turned and spotted me, he scurried to his Toyota. The junkie looked surprised and confused, and not at all happy to see me.

  He hadn’t placed the call to meet. The little chirp of his car door unlocking flooded me with a sense of dread. I suddenly knew why the pitch of Pink’s voice had sounded high on the call.

  “Down!” I yelled and dove under my car, covering my ears.

  Mercedes froze with a look of startled confusion plastered on her face. And Pink’s Toyota exploded in a ball of flame.

  The force from the explosion rocked my Porsche like a row boat in a typhoon. My head bounced off the chassis. When I crawled out, the world was eerily still. No sound for what seemed like an eternity. Then I heard a heavy rain on the windshield. Only it wasn’t rain. A shower of blood splattered the reinforced glass and painted everything with a red mist, including me.

  Where the clinic had been, there was only a shell now. The whole back of the building near Pink’s car was a pile of refuse, shrouded with a cloud of greasy black smoke. Body parts lay strewn haphazardly around the parking lot. A woman’s arm and bloody entrails hung in the blackened oak tree out front. The air felt thick and hot.

  No sign of Pink.

  And Mercedes - one second she was standing next to the tree by the door. The next, she was falling to her knees in the dirt, her crimson blood mingling with the dust.

  “No. No. No.” My ears were ringing. My eyes stung. I could feel sweat pouring down the singed skin of my face. I wiped my face with my sleeve. The sleeve was covered in blood. The skin of my face felt numb. I staggered a little before finding my feet. I made my way to Mercedes. She was supposed to be staying with relatives – safe out of town. I ripped off my shirt. I probed her wounds, trying to staunch the blood with the once white cotton. Pointless. Shrapnel had torn the life from her body. Her eyes were already glazing. I sat back on my heels and slowly draped the shirt over her face.

  Standing, I called out under the rubble to any survivors. It was a fool’s errand. Nobody in close could have survived the blast. The guy with the cream-colored Sebring convertible had toppled backwards - skewered with a hunk of metal and fragments of glass from the explosion.

  “9-11.” My voice was hoarse from the smoke. My glove phone couldn’t understand my command. Trying to activate it manually, my numbed fingers felt awkward, making it difficult to punch the numbers. My ears were still ringing. The stinging smoke made me squint.

  Staggering over to the seared remnants of Pink’s Toyota, I made my way around the burnt-out hull of twisted metal and melted plastic. Plumes of smoke wafted their way skyward from the wreck. Round what had been the passenger side I staggered. And found what remained of Harvey Pink. A burnt offering to a savage god.

  The force of the blast had tossed him ten feet or more, landing Pink behind his Toyota. His head was smashed in but his torso had burst open like a piñata in a horror movie. The stench of burnt hair and flesh filled my mouth and nose.

  Not long after approaching sirens blared. An EMT chopper car landed with a full medical team that rushed towards us. Some minutes later I texted both Shin and Captain Tatum about Pink, Mercedes and the explosion, then watched as the medical team did their job. By the time the paramedic had glued the gash in my forehead, police scanners had been buzzing for a quarter of an hour. Shielded by the Sebring that had blocked the entrance to the parking lot, my Porsche was dented by falling detritus but still intact. I wiped the blood from the reinforced windshield and found the engine purred to life. White vans crammed with breaking news crews were pulling up, satellite dishes swaying, as I drove away.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Captain Tatum reached me at the hotel about an hour later. I was fixing a bag of ice to put on my pounding head when she called.

  “You okay?” she said, her forehead puckered in a worried expression.

  I nodded. Leaning against the ice dispenser down the hall from Jo’s and my hotel room, I gazed at Tatum’s normally stern face. The cold steel of the dispenser felt good on my skin. “Anything at Pink’s place?”

  “We found a suicide note.” Tatum tapped her fingers on the surface of her desk at Nokia PD. “He claimed responsibility for the deaths of all the clinic’s ‘baby killers’ and, I quote, ‘the cops that protect them’. I figure that last was meant for you, Eddie.” She paused. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  I nodded. “Pink didn’t rig his Toyota with the car bomb, Captain.”

  “It does seem way beyond his pay grade,” she agreed. “But he did put the nano-bot under Lee’s car. And claimed responsibility for Lee when he called you to the scene, right? That fits with premeditation.”

  “Check on that call.” I told her about the surprised expression on Pink’s face when he saw me outside the clinic and ran to unlock his car. “Pink was a pathetic mess, but he had no clue about the bomb. I’m betting somebody used a spoof card to set us up.”

  “And pretended to be Pink to lure you to the scene?” Captain Tatum cocked her head to the side, considering.

  Tatum knew spoof cards were a useful ploy because we used them. With one of the prepaid cards you could buy in any supermarket and enough technological savy to set up a fake caller id, you could get a perp to show up at a hospital thinking his dear old Mom had just checked into ICU. When he arrived, a pair of handcuffs waited for him instead of Mom. Totally legal.

  I nodded. “Mercedes Delblanco was set up too. One less witness. Nieto’s behind this. Explosives are his thing.”

  “The AzteKa enforcer?” Tatum said.

  “He’s been paroled.” I filled her in on what I’d learned from Jim Mar about Lee’s work and it relevance to the case. “The AzteKas are behind all this, Captain. We’re getting close.”

  “Maybe too close. This is the second attempt on your life in a month. I’m thinking I should pull you off the case before the third.”

  “I have a better idea.” I paused, shaking the bag of melting ice and putting it back on my head before meeting Tatum’s eyes again. “Pink couldn’t cook up anything more complicated than his next fix, but maybe we should let people think different – for a while.”

  Tatum’s face took on the pensive look of a chess player planning two moves ahead. “Now you’re starting to think like Robbery-Homicide, Eddie.” She smiled. A wicked little glint lit up her eyes.

  **

  Later that night crime news broadcasts were still updating reports on the deaths from the blast. Six dead, all innocent victims, plus Pink.

  Jo and I were sitting up in the hotel bed watching the news as Captain Tatum stood behind a podium of plain blond wood inside Nokia P.D. and gave her on camera statement to waiting reporters. Silver stars gleaming on the black collar of her dress uniform matched the silver threads in her dark curls. Tatum’s calm and serious expression was the picture of gravitas as she skillfully laid out the facts in a way that encouraged the press to leap to the conclusion that Pink was the bomber and he’d acted alone. With luck, Nieto and the AzteKas would believe we’d bought it too and back off.

  Reporters shouted questions. The questions blurred into a river of noise.

  Tatum held up her hands in a gesture that demanded calm “We’ll keep you apprised of further developments,” she said and left the podium.

  Jo leaned her head against my shoulder and let the on-camera reporters drone on with their speculation about Pink. Jo had been so freaked out after the bombing, I hadn’t told her the truth about the spoof card.

  Then, Pink’s picture filled the screen.

  My head was filled with other faces though: Britney Devonshire, Lee, Mercedes with that puzzled look on her face, right before she sank to her knees and poured her life out into the dirt, and Frank. Always Frank. But the last face I couldn’t get out of my head, that belonged to Nieto.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  By the next morning, another crowd of screaming citizens massed
in front of Nokia PD. From a hundred and fifty feet out I spotted a digital poster with my face on it. I hunched my shoulders, hoping to make myself a smaller target. Only when I got close enough to read the signs bobbing up and down on digital placards did I see the tagline under my printed picture: Local hero. The same hard-charging behavior, which had gotten me into trouble a couple weeks ago, had now gotten me out of it. News coverage on the clinic bombing had redirected the mob’s anger away from me this time.

  I took a deep breath. The city’s ever-present stink of purifying burning sage and ganja filled my lungs. The smell was especially sharp and pungent today.

  “Our hero,” Shin said in a playful tone as he fell in beside me.

  “Give me a break.”

  With my hat pulled down over my face and shoulders hunched, we slipped through the herd unnoticed and walked in the back entrance. Shin and I went through security, ran our barcodes over the elevator sensor and hit the button for the third floor.

  When the door opened, there stood my rep Espinoza, waiting for me just outside the elevator. He gave me the official version of what Jo had confided days earlier. I’d been reinstated with a clean record.

  Irony be damned. A thousand pound weight had been lifted from my shoulders. The day was getting better and better.

  “You’re good police,” Espinoza said. “I’m proud to have represented you, and don’t take this the wrong way, Detective, but I hope not to see you again.” A quick handshake, a few more words, and he was gone, scurrying down the third floor corridor.

  **

  Captain Tatum met us right outside Homicide Special, her tired but smiling face appraising me. There was a familiar presence on Tatum’s right flank. The dark haired woman with a heart-shaped face and eyes like a raptor belonged to Anna Vargas, Head of the Technology Unit.

  “I ran a trace on that call which lured you to Baby Mine,” Vargas said. “You were right about the spoof card, Detective Piedmont.”

  Pink’s mobile had not made the call – even though my caller ID made it seem like he had. Vargas took my glove phone and personally issued me a new Nokia Handy with special latest edition encrypted security.

  “Officer Vargas sent our best mechanic to scan your Porsche for any potential IEDs too,” Tatum said. “Just in case.”

  “Jimmy Chung’s going over your car right now,” Anna confirmed.

  I nodded thanks. “Good press release last night, Captain.”

  “Let’s hope the AzteKas take the bait,” she said, glancing at Shin and back to me. “The case is yours to close, Detectives. Don’t fuck it up.”

  Shin and I watched Tatum and Vargas enter the elevator before heading to our desks and digging in to the update on the explosion.

  “Forensics found traces of large quantities of hexamethylene triperoxide diamine and pentaerythritol tetranitrate on the chassis of Pink’s car,” Shin said. “They’re tracking the sale of the explosives.”

  “PETN: Nieto’s brand of choice,” I said, nodding.

  “I’ll get to work on the subpoena of Lee’s will,” Shin said, “and follow Pink’s digital trail.”

  That left the terms of Lee’s employment contract at Genesys, plus follow-up with Jim on the genetic work to me. I left an urgent message for Chris Maclaren, Lee’s employer, and called Jim Mar about the blood work.

  “I need more time,” Jim said, his holo-image floating in the L-shaped space between the thumb and forefinger of my glove phone. His hair was unwashed, and he was wearing the same clothes he’d worn during our chat at the Theban Grill.

  I was pretty sure he hadn’t slept since then either.

  “Is Britney Devonshire the source genome for the Alz-X treatment, or not?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Jim said. “There’s some damage on the file you gave me. We don’t want to be wrong on this. I’ll call you when I know.”

  We hadn’t yet found the evidence that clearly linked Dr. Lee and Nieto. Salazar had claimed Raymond Lee’s drug habit was the link between Dr. Lee and the AzTekas. The explosives wre a Nieto signature, but we needed definitive proof. So, while I waited to hear back from Jim and the Genesys CEO, I pulled up Nieto’s rap sheet and dug in. It was a long and bloody sheet, capped by the murder of a Zeta in 2036.

  That’s when I saw the name: Miguel Fuentes-Obrador. He was the first uniform on the scene of the Nieto murder. No way that was a coincidence; this had to be the Fuentes Dr. Lee had mentioned in his vlog and at the time of death.

  It took another half hour to locate Captain Tatum again and get her to authorize my access to Fuentes-Obrador’s confidential personnel file. Pins and needles pricked the pit of my stomach as I entered the access code and started reading.

  Officer Miguel F. Obrador had not only been the first uniform at the crime scene. He was also the young P-2 who filed that supplemental report over a year later, claiming he’d had a lapse of memory about an unnamed potential suspect who’d fled the scene.

  Since this new evidence had directly contradicted the sworn testimony of the only eye witness besides Nieto himself, it gave the defense attorneys the hammer they needed. The report necessitated another cross examination of the witness on appeal. The only problem was that the witness wasn’t available for cross examination. She wasn’t available because her dead body had turned up a month earlier in a Mexican ravine.

  It took another year for the lawyers to game the system, but eventually Miguel Fuentes-Obrador’s highly suspicious report got the conviction overturned on procedure. That first week in October of this year, 2041, the bad guys had won, and Nieto walked free. The announcement had been playing on the news that evening Shin and I left the Code Seven VR-bar. That news story had been the start of an evening I wasn’t likely to forget, the evening which ended with the Ramirez shooting and my being put on desk duty. The pieces of the puzzle were coming together fast now.

  I desperately wanted to talk to Officer Fuentes-Obrador, but a glance at his file told me that too was impossible. As Lee had told me, Fuentes was two inches in the obit column. The dead man’s file listed the cause of death as heart failure brought on by overdose of green ice. He’d died on September 15th. Britney Devonshire had overdosed on the drug too, and the 15th was only a couple weeks before her murder. The dates for Fuentes’ death tallied with Lee’s last words to me at the crash which had killed him. Ditto his vlog.

  I read the files again. This new information linked Dr. Lee to Nieto through Fuentes. But the connection opened up nearly as many questions as it answered. Like how had Nieto gotten to the young P-2 when Nieto was already in prison by that time?

  “Shin,” I said as soon as he was off the phone. “I’m heading out.”

  “Where to?” Shin replied, head cocked to the side and took a sip of his Redbull.

  I filled him in on Nieto’s record. Shin spilled his Redbull over the front of his shirt when I showed him Fuentes’ personnel file. I watched as the genetically engineered cotton self-clean itself and wished the city could rid itself of filth like Nieto just as easily.

  “Cause of death listed as heart failure due to overdose,” I said, rereading the Fuentes personnel file again. “But in his vlog, Lee said they got to Fuentes.”

  “So.” Shin cut me a glance. “Most likely not an accidental overdose.” Shin turned away from the holo-screen. “I’ll get the autopsy report and check with Obrador’s supervisor. Then there’s the wife and Obrador’s partner.”

  I had already pulled a name from my computer and an address in Big Bear.

  “Let me guess,” Shin said. “You want to talk to his partner first.”

  I nodded as we shared a glance at the name I’d pulled: Dick Logue. “Partners always know.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  I was well on my way to Big Bear when my new Handy vibrated. It was Jo.

  “Eddie, did you forget to send me your schedule?”

  I had. The case had pushed personal life off my agenda for the moment. “Sorry.”

  “Se
nd it, okay? I’d like to get the wedding calendar settled before my trip to China.”

  Hong Kong would lose any remaining autonomy and be completely absorbed into the People’s Republic of China in 2047, and Jo had a big intellectual property conference coming up in a month to deal with the anticipated repercussions. I smiled. My Jo hated any hint of chaos. She liked to keep things organized.

  “I’m on it.” By the time I’d followed through on that and called Shin back, my partner had finished checking out Fuentes-Obrador with his supervisor.

  “As as far as his lieutenant knows,” Shin said, “he didn’t have any health issues. He was current on the rent and all his bills too. Other than that supplemental report, Fuentes-Obrador’s jacket was as clean as an eagle scout’s.”

  “No prior drug use?” I said.

  “Nada,” Shin replied.

  “And he suddenly overdoses? Nobody checked it out?”

  Shin’s face screwed up into an apologetic expression. “His lieutenant said there was no sign of foul play, and nobody wanted to make a stink about a possible suicide. Fuentes had a wife and two kids.”

  “Three reasons I’m thinking he didn’t check out on his own.”

  Shin nodded and hung up as I veered off CA-330N to CA-18. Time to talk to Fuentes-Obrador’s partner and get some answers.

  **

  Officer Richard Logue had retired from the force two years ago and settled in Big Bear.

  Pine-covered San Bernadino Mountains surrounded Big Bear Lake like a mother’s embrace. But August wildfires had laid waste to much of the parched scrub and pine trees on the hillsides, and a hard rain had sent boulders and a sheet of mud hurtling down the naked mountainside onto roads. Ominous boulders stood as mute sentinels of natural disaster on the side of the cleared road.

  The Grizzly Lodge, a three story bed and breakfast perched on the edge of the lake, was a mud-colored, down-at-the-heels ski chalet. I spotted one dark haired woman with a golden retriever and two little kids playing outside, but otherwise the place felt barren.