Head On

by John Scalzi

  Well, most of the time it’s unintentional. Some people are just assholes.

  The point is that I was not running faster than the man I was following. But I was gaining on him. Because I was doing a better job of threading through people as we ran.

  The dude took a right on Locust, heading toward Washington Square, picking up speed because there were fewer people. As he did he shook the supplements out of the Wawa bag and then jammed his right hand into his hoodie pocket and pulled out a knife. He was going to tear open the bag and destroy the evidence. By this time his hoodie had fallen back from his head. His face was mostly away from me, but as he turned slightly I could see the earpiece lodged into his ear.

  He leapt onto Sixth, avoided the traffic, and headed into Washington Square—

  —and tripped over the curb, slamming himself into the sidewalk pavement and sending the IV bag and the knife sprawling.

  That’s convenient, I thought, stepped onto Sixth to cross over and immobilize the dude before he could take off again, and then heard the revving of an engine a fraction of a second before a car intentionally and unapologetically ran into my threep, sprawling it in a southward direction on Sixth.

  I picked my head up just in time to see the dude, bleeding, jam himself into the back seat of the car, IV bag in hand. I struggled to get my threep up off the asphalt and got up just in time to stare into the car, which revved up and hit me again. It dragged the threep under its carriage and cracked the head of the threep against the pavement so hard that I could hear the shattering of the head case a second before I lost connection entirely.

  The rental threep was comprehensively trashed.

  I ported myself back into my own threep in the valet parking of the Hotel Monaco, found my way out into the street, and ran toward Independence Hall, which by this time was crawling with park rangers and Philadelphia police. One of the latter went out of his way to intercept me. I flashed my ID onto my chest screen and got through, to find Vann standing over Ramsey’s dead body. She saw me.

  “Where’s the bag?” she asked.

  “Gone. With the guy who took it.”

  Vann nodded and then motioned to Ramsey. “This wasn’t subtle at all. Murdering an FBI agent right out in the open.”

  “They don’t want anything leading back to them.” I pointed to the bag that Ramsey had traded for. “What’s in there?”

  “A fucking box of doughnuts,” Vann said. “I don’t think the exchange meant anything. I think the Wawa bags were just a way of identifying themselves to each other.”

  There was a commotion and three suits appeared. One of them was Lara Burgess, head of the Bureau’s Philadelphia branch. The Philly FBI office was two blocks away. They could have run here, and it looked like they did. The suits flanking Burgess moved to tend to Ramsey. Burgess turned her attention to us.

  “Agent Vann,” Burgess said, “you have exactly ten seconds to tell me what the fuck is going on and why one of my agents is dead.”

  “Agent Ramsey is dead because she took a bribe to destroy evidence in my investigation, and the people who bribed her paid her off with a double tap, Director Burgess.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Shane,” Vann said.

  “I have her confession recorded, Director Burgess,” I said. “Just tell me where you want me to send it.” Burgess looked at me, confused, and then I realized the last time she saw me I was in another threep entirely. She figured it out after a second and turned her attention back to Vann.

  Who was ready for her. “So, Director Burgess, your agent went out of her way to fuck up an ongoing investigation, and we both know how you went out of your way just a couple of days ago to run interference for her against us.”

  Burgess stiffened up at that. “Watch yourself, Agent Vann.”

  “That’s funny,” Vann said. “Your agent interferes with our investigation for a bribe, your lab is sloppy enough to let her fuck up its evidence, and you tried to screw us to cover for your agent’s fuckup, and you’re telling me to watch myself. How about this, Burgess. I’m going to give you two choices here. The first is that from here on out, you give me and Shane everything we need to do our job, top priority, no bullshit, in which case we all make nice. The second choice is that you don’t, in which case, fuck you, and I’m going to make it my mission to make sure at the end of all this, you release a statement about how you have left the Bureau to spend more time with your family. You can count on that. So tell me, Director Burgess, which of these you want. You have exactly ten seconds.”

  You wouldn’t be able to tell it from my threep, but I was gawking at Vann in open admiration. It’s one thing to bad cop an electrician or a medical assistant or even an FBI agent. But playing bad cop to an actual director of the Bureau took some chutzpah. And here Vann was doing it. Without blinking.

  It was Burgess who blinked instead. “What do you need from me?”

  “I need you to gather Alton Ortiz and Keshia Sanborn for me, right now, and deliver them to the Bureau. We need a room to talk to them in. I need your lab, the one that fucked up, to redeem itself and give us top priority for analysis.” She pointed to the threep next to Ramsey. “I need everything on this thing and who was piloting it, and on the gun it used to kill Ramsey. I need a sandwich because I haven’t had lunch yet.”

  “I can do all that,” Burgess said.

  “As in, now,” Vann said.

  “I understand you, Agent Vann.”

  Vann turned to me. “What do you want for Christmas?” she said.

  “I need to run a license plate and access to all the closed-circuit cameras in the area,” I said. “I also need to get out an APB on three individuals.”

  “Who are they?” Burgess asked.

  “I can give you their images soon. We’ll need to run them through the database. I also need a monitor. You can put it in the room you set aside for us. And I, uh, need someone to go get the threep I left on Sixth.”

  Burgess looked at me. “Left?”

  “It got hit. Twice.” I pointed down Chestnut, toward the rental place. “And someone’s going to need to go explain what happened to the threep.”

  “I assume you’re going to try to put the cost of this threep onto our budget, Agent Shane?”

  I looked at Vann, who shrugged. “No, Director Burgess. This one’s on me.”

  “You don’t seem to have very good luck with threeps, Shane.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first to notice that, Director.”

  Burgess nodded. “I’ll give you everything you’ve asked for, and put a priority on it all, Agent Vann, Agent Shane. But, Vann, a small request.”

  “What is it, Director Burgess?”

  “Try not to be as much of an asshole today to everyone else as you’ve just been to me.” She nodded at Ramsey’s body. “Everyone in the office lost a colleague today. And whether or not she was indeed taking bribes, the fact of the matter is she was liked by everyone. If you run her down today, there’s a very good chance someone will shoot you.”

  * * *

  “Didn’t your parents teach you to look both ways before you walk out into the street?” Vann asked. She was watching the video where I got hit by the car, and used the conference monitor’s remote control to scrub the replay back and forth. She was enjoying the sudden jerk in perspective as my threep went flying.

  “I don’t think looking both ways will matter when a car is specifically aiming at you,” I said.

  “Maybe not,” Vann allowed. Before she could continue, Keshia Sanborn and Alton Ortiz were escorted into the conference room by two agents. The agents sat them down and left, quickly.

  Keshia Sanborn didn’t waste time. “This is outrageous,” she said. “It would be bad enough for you to haul my client in here, but grabbing me—”

  “Shut up,” Vann said, and then turned to me. “Show them.”

  I popped a video up on the monitor in the conference room. It was of Ramsey handing over the IV bag, and then be
ing shot in the head and chest. Ortiz winced at the image. Sanborn looked at it, uncomprehending.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “This is a video of an FBI agent being shot to death after she handed off that second IV bag to someone who bribed her to get it,” Vann said. “You know, Ms. Sanborn, the one that stood the best chance of clearing your client of the murder charge we’re going to lay at his feet.”

  Sanborn opened her mouth to say something, then closed it quickly.

  “Oh, look at that,” Vann said. “It’s always nice when a lawyer remembers they might need a lawyer themselves.”

  “What is going on?” Ortiz said, to me.

  “As near as we can tell, your lawyer has been feeding information about your case to a third party,” I said. “That third party has been consistently setting you up to be the fall guy for Duane Chapman’s murder by tampering with, destroying, or hiding evidence.” I scrubbed back in the video to the handoff. “Here, for example. That IV bag is gone now. We don’t know where it is.”

  “And if we hadn’t lied to your lawyer about where we were going to be, we’d all be over at Chapman’s town house now, looking for it in vain, because we wouldn’t know it had been stolen,” Vann said. “We wouldn’t be able to find it, and that would make us angry and suspicious at you, Mr. Ortiz. And then you would be in a much worse position, and Ms. Sanborn here would be pushing that plea bargain on you again.”

  Ortiz turned to Sanborn. “Is any of this true?” he said to her.

  “Alton, look,” Sanborn began.

  Ortiz put his hand up. “You should have said ‘no,’” he said. “That’s what you should have said right off. You are so fucking fired.”

  Vann tapped on the conference room glass to get the attention of the agents, and signaled for one of them to come back in. “Take her out but keep her around,” she said, pointing to Sanborn. Sanborn left without uttering a word.

  After Sanborn left I turned to Ortiz. “You’re entitled to a lawyer,” I said.

  Ortiz laughed, bitterly. “Yeah, because that’s been working out so well for me up to this point.” He put his head in his hands and held it there for a couple of minutes. Then he dropped his hands, took a deep breath, and looked at the two of us. “Just ask me your questions.”

  “Why did you run from us earlier this week?” Vann asked.

  “Because Duane’s apartment burned down and I thought you guys knew about my cousin.”

  “You didn’t ask your cousin to burn down the apartment,” I said.

  “No, but it burned down anyway. When I saw you, I panicked. I don’t have any excuse.”

  “You knew Duane was having an affair with Kim Silva.”

  “Yes. We were friends. He told me right off.”

  “You were also having an affair with Marla Chapman.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” Vann asked.

  Ortiz looked at her, confused. “What do you mean, why? Because I could, I guess. Because Duane was screwing someone else, and I wasn’t having sex with anyone, and Marla wanted to and made the move on me, and I didn’t think it mattered.”

  “Did you love Marla Chapman?” I asked.

  “No. It wasn’t about that. Marla was angry and I was horny. I liked Marla. I think she liked me. But I think for her it was more about getting her own back.”

  “And you were okay with this,” Vann said.

  “Agent Vann, I’m not proud of the fact I was happy to be getting laid,” Ortiz said. “But I was.”

  “So you didn’t want Duane dead?” I asked.

  “No, of course I didn’t. And Marla never said she wanted him dead, either, if that’s what you’re going to ask next.”

  “So she didn’t want him dead, but she did want him divorced,” I said. “And you were happy to help with that.”

  “Agent Shane, I think I have it on pretty good authority that the marriage wasn’t going to last,” Ortiz said. “I didn’t see the harm in helping the two of them get it over with. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.”

  “So you ask your cousin to help you on the same day Duane dies.”

  “I asked Pedro before then. The outage we planned just happened to be on the same day.”

  “It’s a hell of a coincidence,” Vann said.

  Ortiz held his hands out, pleadingly. “I don’t know what to tell you, Agent Vann.”

  “How did you get connected with Ms. Sanborn?” I asked.

  “She got hold of me,” Ortiz said. “Told me the league expressed concern about my situation and offered pro bono assistance. I don’t have money for lawyers. I was happy to get someone for free.”

  “And what did you tell her?” Vann asked.

  “What do you mean what did I tell her? I told her everything. I told her about Marla and me, I told her about Duane and Kim Silva, I told her about Duane sneaking Silva’s supplements—”

  “But you didn’t tell her about the second bag,” I said.

  “It slipped my mind. I told her about the apartment, and everything in it. I even told them about the stupid cat.”

  “The cat?” I said.

  “Yeah, a cat,” Ortiz said. “Silva kept a cat in the apartment. Duane said Silva said she had a surprise for him and it involved the cat staying alive, so he better treat the cat nicely.”

  “What sort of surprise?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think Duane knew either. He knew there was a data vault on the cat’s collar, so it was probably something on that, but he never asked what was on it.”

  “And did he treat the cat nicely?” Vann asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know. He must have, because Silva and he were still doing it. You don’t screw around with someone who hates your pets. What happened to the cat, anyway?”

  “It’s dead,” Vann said, glancing over to me.

  “Someone killed the cat? Jesus Christ.”

  “Silva thinks Duane was in love with her,” I said to Ortiz.

  Ortiz shrugged. “Maybe?”

  “Just maybe?”

  “Duane liked her. And they had similar … I think tastes is the best way to put it. Duane was a little out there. Did you see the threeps he had at the apartment?” I nodded. “Duane used them all. He liked to switch things up. And that’s something he couldn’t really do with Marla.”

  “Because her plumbing was all permanently one gender,” Vann said.

  “Because Marla is very vanilla,” Ortiz said. “She liked what she liked and only liked what she liked.”

  “And you were fine with that.”

  “I’m pretty uncomplicated myself. Duane was more complicated and Silva was happy to be complicated with him. Is that love? I don’t think so. But Duane was good with it.”

  “Do you think Marla Chapman would take a shot at Kim Silva?” I asked.

  “Maybe? Marla was angry a lot. But she didn’t have a gun in the house and I’m pretty sure she didn’t know how to shoot. And she sure as hell wasn’t suicidal. I can see her trying to go after Silva, sure. If not to kill her then to cause her pain. But not the way they said she did. And she wouldn’t have killed herself afterward. Trust me on that one.”

  “And you covered all of this with Sanborn.”

  “We haven’t talked much about Marla’s death, but the rest of it, yeah,” Ortiz said. “Why wouldn’t I? She’s my lawyer. Was my lawyer. I thought she was on my side.” Ortiz fell silent and looked at the monitor, where Ramsey was handing off the Wawa bag to the man in the hoodie. “So you’re saying this is my fault.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Ortiz pointed at Ramsey. “I mean if I hadn’t said anything about the second IV bag in front of Sanborn, this agent would still be alive. That’s on me.”

  “Agent Ramsey made her own choices,” Vann said.

  “Okay, but one of her choices was to go get that bag. The bag I told you and my lawyer about.”

  “You were played, Mr. Ortiz,” Vann said. “That’s all. If you want to feel
responsible for what happened because you were duped, that’s on you. But maybe don’t.”

  Ortiz nodded at this and then looked back and forth between the both of us. “So what now?”

  “We’re not going to hold you, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said. “But I think you should stay in our custody for a couple of days.”

  “Because someone might try to kill me like they killed Duane and Marla.”

  “I think it would be good to err on the side of caution,” I said.

  “Hell yes it would,” Ortiz said, and looked back at the monitor. “So this guy took the IV bag.”

  “Yes.”

  “So there’s no evidence that I didn’t kill Duane.”

  “We didn’t need the bag to prove your innocence,” Vann said. “We needed it to prove someone else’s guilt.”

  “But you don’t even have that.” Ortiz pointed to the monitor. “He’s got the bag. And you don’t have him, right?”

  “No, we don’t,” I said.

  “So you have nothing.”

  I turned to Vann. “Can we show him?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Vann said.

  I reached over to Vann’s satchel on the conference room table, opened it and took something from it, and placed it in front of Ortiz. It was an evidence bag with syringes in it.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “Syringes full of the IV supplement mixture,” I said. “Before the handoff we took some out of the bag. It’s being processed now.”

  “Because we’re not stupid, you see,” Vann said.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “LET’S RUN THIS down quickly,” Burgess said to us, in the conference room. She pulled out a legal pad. “First, the supplement bag you provided contains the pharmaceutical compound that was trademarked under the name Attentex. The lab thanks you, incidentally, for telling them specifically what to look for. It made things go much more quickly.”

  “Delighted to help,” Vann said.

  Burgess looked up at this to judge Vann’s level of sarcasm, but kept going. “Second, the Philadelphia ME also reran bloodwork to look for Attentex. She did not find it.”