She brushed my complaint away with a swipe of her hand. “I’m going to attach an artificial hand for you. I picked out something special.”
“I want to see it.”
“And ruin the surprise? No. I don’t do work to order. I’m an artist. Don’t worry, when I’m finished with you, I guarantee you’ll be thankful.”
“She’s right,” said Maria. “She does amazing work.”
I was not a canvas. I had to get out of here now. “Untie me.”
She acquiesced with a nod and started unbuckling. “Do you know how lucky you are that Maria brought you to me instead of one of those filthy hospitals?”
Somebody appeared in the doorway, a teenaged boy with milky eyes on chocolate skin. “Would you like some tea, Doctor?”
The doctor’s head snapped around to look at him. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
He bowed his head and blinked his cataract eyes. “My apologies.” He walked away.
She turned back to me, her eyes rolling behind her glasses. “That boy has a lot to learn if he thinks he’s going to make it as my houseboy.”
Maria asked, “Can you fix his eyes?”
“Not if he doesn’t learn how to follow directions.”
She undid the straps. I breathed easier and easier with each uncoupling, and I sat up as soon as the last strap slithered off.
“Hold out your arm so I can change your dressing.”
I had my arm pulled in tight, hugged to my body. I didn’t trust her. I had to get out of here.
Maria gave me the eye. The doctor made a don’t-keep-me-waiting face. “You need fresh bandages. The wound has to stay clean or the rot will set in.”
The rot had taken my mother.
Reluctantly, I lifted my half-arm and let her start unraveling. I watched the layers peel off, steeling myself for my new reality. The last bandage fell free. My hand was gone, an empty space where it should be.
I raised my arm. It had a cap on the end, some kind of thick, plastic-like substance that sealed the wound, a dozen or more vinelike tendrils holding it on.
She was going to give me a new hand? A hand of her choice.
Fuck that.
I had to get out of here.
I held my arm out straight. It held steady. Didn’t shake anymore.
I could deal. I was plenty used to having only one good hand.
I could fucking deal.
With my mind made up, I sat still and let the doctor dress my arm with a fresh set of bandages. When she finished, I made my intentions clear. “Pull the IV. I’m leaving.”
“Not until I take measurements for your new hand.”
“Pull it.”
Maria tried to intercede. “You’re not thinking straight. She’s a great doctor. The best.”
I looked the doctor in the eye. I wanted to enjoy this. “She’s a hack. Tit jobs and robo-snatches. Artist, my ass. Real doctors cure the sick.”
The hack glared at me, cheeks burning, eyes smoldering, her carefully constructed doctor’s face not so doctorly anymore.
I held my left arm up and nodded at the IV. “Pull it.”
“Fine. Be a cripple.” She reached over my torso to my left arm and yanked the IV tube like she was starting a cheap outboard. I didn’t feel it. I could get used to this no-pain thing.
Maria watched the doctor go out the door before she got in my face. “What’s wrong with you?”
I nudged her back with my left and stood. A bead of blood formed on my arm where the needle had been.
“I’m going to kill you if you screwed this up for me.”
The drop broke loose and I swiped it away with my … my stump.
I was in my underwear. “Where are my clothes?”
“They were stained. I threw them away. Sit down and think it through.”
“Shoes?”
“Under the bed.”
I used my toes to pull them out one at a time and slipped them on. “My money and my gun?”
“In the drawer. Listen, why don’t you wait here while I go buy you a set of whites. It’ll give you a chance to think.”
I didn’t want to think. I wanted to leave before that bitch doctor cut off another part of me.
I walked out the door. Maria’s voice sounded behind me. “You can’t go out in your underwear.”
Looking left, I spotted the houseboy. “Where’s the exit?”
He pointed to a set of steps.
I took them down and threw open the door at the bottom. Greeted by a blast of party noise, I moved into the street, a jungle breeze kissing my skin, clouds of O smoke wafting on the black air. Music blared from a dozen open doorways, the combined sound mixing and mashing into a pulsing cacophony. The street was filled with a large herd of offworld kids bucking and braying.
Bangkok Street.
I refused to be bothered by the strange looks coming my way. I spotted a clothes counter down the way and made straight for it. As I cut through the herd like a wounded lion, everybody gave me plenty of room.
I glanced to my right. Maria’s big hair had fallen in lockstep with me.
Wearing more bandages than clothes, I stepped up to the counter. “Whites,” I said to the kid who had watched me approach with saucer eyes. He grabbed hold of a pincer device and used it to reach for some pants that sat on a high shelf behind a crowd of cheap BIG SLEEP ’89 T-shirts.
A full-length mirror stood between the counter and the dressing curtain. I forced myself to take a look. Bronze skin overrun by an unhealthy gray, like I’d been rolled in ash. I’d lost a lot of weight, my underwear hanging loose around my pelvis. When was the last time I could see my ribs?
A dead tree with a bough sawed off. That was what I was.
The kid tossed aside the pair of pants he’d pulled down after checking the size. “Too big.”
I looked at Maria, a frown on her face.
“What?” I asked, innocent-like.
“You better not have screwed things up for me.”
“I wouldn’t let that woman touch my sister.”
“Don’t you get it? She’s an offworlder. The local doctors can’t do the shit she does.”
“She’s a hack, and I won’t be her lab rat.”
“Dammit, Juno, she was going to help you. I got you a deal.”
“Who asked you?”
Anger flared in those mascara-lined eyes. “Who asked me? I saved your damn life.”
She was right. Without her, I would’ve bled out on the sweatshop floor. As unsure as I was that being saved was a good thing, I had to admit she’d tried to be a friend. For that I should show some respect. “You’re right. Sorry.” I cranked up the sincerity in my gaze until she acknowledged the apology with a smirk of acceptance.
The kid passed me a pair of white linen pants. I set my piece on the table, took hold of the waistband with my left, and shook out the folds. I slipped in a leg. “Were you following me?”
“Remember those two guys who came looking for you? I was worried they might be waiting for you outside, so I followed you until I saw you go into that apartment. At that point, I figured you were safe so I went and got some breakfast. I was eating eggs up at one of those rooftop places when I saw you go running underneath.”
I tried to slip my other foot in but couldn’t hold my pants correctly with the one hand. I let myself lean against the counter while I forced my foot into the pant leg. I tugged the pants up and started fumbling with the button.
“Jesus Christ, let me do that.”
I stood there like a four-year-old letting her button and zip me up.
“What’s wrong with you? You gonna go through the rest of your life with one hand?”
I chose not to respond.
“You know that cap is just a temporary, don’t you?”
I shook my head no.
“You can’t just leave it like that. And when those pain blockers wear off it’s going to hurt like a son of a bitch.” She caught the surprise on my face. “You really ar
e a dumb shit, aren’t you? You wanna go back inside?”
I looked across the street at the door I’d exited a few minutes earlier. The door was unmarked, anonymous. I looked up at the second-floor windows, dark glass staring down. “No.”
The temporary cap would have to do for now. I had more pressing matters, like the fact that Mota hadn’t killed Froelich or Wu. There was a serial out there, a fucking lizard-man.
And one by one, he was killing my crew.
I clenched my fists but was half robbed of the sensation. Christ.
Time to move. “Where the hell is my shirt?” I snapped at the kid. “What you waiting for?”
He nervously cleared his throat. “Um, short sleeve or long?”
eleven
A PIECE of me was missing. I was unbalanced. Incomplete. Not whole.
I had to get it back.
But it was too dark behind this tree. Couldn’t see shit. Was it asking too much to get a little daylight?
I looked up, my gaze climbing through boughs and leaves, and settling four stories up on police tape wound around a railing. Right where I’d almost gone over this morning. Would’ve been quite a fall.
The courtyard patio was quiet, no sign of KOP. They’d probably wrapped the crime scene hours ago.
Gotta be around here somewhere. I roamed, my squinting eyes straining to see the ground. I kicked something, felt it through the toe of my shoe. I reached down with my right but came up short. Forgot. I switched to my left and pawed through ash and crisped leaves.
There. I blew out a sigh of relief and unfolded the glasses with a snap of my wrist. Lucky I hadn’t stepped on them. I held them up in what little light there was. They’d survived the fall intact, thanks no doubt to landing in a soft bed of ash.
I blew off the dust and slipped them on with a relieved smile.
I was whole again.
“Juno, you stupid hump, where the fuck are you?”
I picked my way back through the tree’s weeping canopy, the rustling ruckus serving as my answer.
Detective Mark Josephs approached from the patio entrance, Maggie following a few paces behind. “We got your message. Who was that who called us?”
“Maria. A friend.” I didn’t know what to do with my right arm. Hide it? Give an empty wave? I let it hang by my side. “Thanks for coming.”
The courtyard tree had me cast in night shadow. Maggie hadn’t noticed yet. “We spent a few hours working the crime scene upstairs. Wu’s wife and kids are all dead, butchered, but there may be a witness. Somebody took a couple shots at the killer and chased him down to a sweatshop before getting himself wounded and disappearing. We were ready to start canvassing hospitals when Lieutenant Rusedski pulled us off the case.”
“He say why?”
“He said a second dead cop makes this case too high-profile to run a regular investigation. He’s going to create a task force and run it himself.”
“You ask if Mota was behind the move?”
“No. I figured Rusedski just didn’t want me working such a big case.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t want to share the spotlight. He thinks I’m after his job.”
“Are you?”
“I just got a promotion.”
In other words, not yet.
I dropped the first bombshell. “Mota didn’t kill Wu.”
Josephs dropped his jaw. “The fuck you say? You said it was brass who did Froelich.”
“I didn’t say I was sure.”
“You shittin’ me? Dammit, Juno, that’s a helluva thing to be wrong about. How do you know he didn’t do it?”
“Because I’m your witness.”
“You were here?”
“I was inside when the killer came back with Wu’s head.”
“That was you in the firefight?”
“Yeah.” I raised my right. “Caught the short end of it.” Bombshell number two.
Maggie snatched me by my new short sleeve and pulled me out into the light of a patio lamp. She stared at the void where my hand should be. “Why aren’t you in a hospital?”
“It’s all fixed up,” I lied. “No big deal.”
“No big deal?”
“The thing didn’t work right anyway.”
Her voice gained volume. “Shit, are you crazy? We’re not talking about a broken phone. You lost your hand. Your hand!”
I shrugged. I was getting used to the idea.
“Dammit, Juno, you should be in a hospital.”
“I can deal.”
“Are you kidding me? You can deal? Is that all you have to say?”
“Um, yeah.”
She popped me in the chest, a quick shot with her fist.
“What was that for?” I said with max indignation. “What do you want me to say?”
She turned away and started pacing, her angry heels muffled by a carpet of ash.
I looked at Josephs. “What am I supposed to say?”
Josephs shook his big, round head. “This is some fucked-up shit. Even for you.”
Maggie paced, left and right, back and forth. I stayed silent, letting her work it off. I didn’t know why she was so upset. I really didn’t.
“Does it hurt?” asked Josephs.
“I’m on pain blockers.”
With a sigh, Maggie stopped pacing and ran her fingers into her hair. She squeezed down on her long locks like she was wringing the agitation out of her face, forcing it all the way down into her tapping foot. “Tell us about the killer.”
I gave them a description. Tall. Skinny. Dark hair and darker eyes. Skin the color of dead vines.
“A local?”
“Right down to the ratty clothes. But this punk could shift. He became a lizard just before he clamped my arm.”
“A lizard?”
“Beaded skin. Forked tongue.”
“I don’t know many locals who can shift. Could’ve been an offworlder in disguise, couldn’t it? Maybe the killer goes native to blend in with us.”
“No, I saw a tube of glue in his pocket. He’s a huffer. Offworlders can afford better drugs than that.”
“If he’s too poor to buy good drugs, how did he afford the tech he needs to shift?”
“I don’t know. But trust me, the guy’s a local. He was too ugly to be an offworlder.”
“Did he bite you?”
“No. He grabbed me with his hand, but his hand had teeth. It was like being bit by a monitor, except the teeth were made of steel.”
Maggie’s phone rang before I could explain. Abdul Salaam’s holo appeared, bald head and thick glasses. I grinned at the sight of him. The old coroner was a longtime friend. “Have you seen Juno?” he asked Maggie without saying hello, the urgency in his voice at odds with the holo’s saccharine smile.
“He’s right here.”
“That blood from the sweatshop, the DNA says—”
“It’s his. We know.”
“He okay?”
I stepped up close to Maggie to get in range of her phone’s receiver. “Just a scratch, Abdul. Have you passed my ID up the chain?”
“Of course not. Not until I talked to you. Want it hushed?”
“Yeah. I’m getting enough heat as it is.” I tossed a deliberate glance in Maggie’s direction.
“No problem,” said Abdul.
That was what I loved about him—as dependable as he was loyal. A true friend. When Paul and I ran KOP, Abdul was our chief evidence manipulator, the king of faux forensics—ginned-up genetics, phony fingerprints, bullshit blood spatter …
When we needed a frame, he’d be ready with wood and nails.
“What else do you have, Abdul?” asked Maggie.
“I heard you and Josephs got pulled from the case.”
“True, but we’re going to keep at it awhile.”
“Because of Juno?”
“Yeah, because of Juno,” she said with subzero enthusiasm.
“I know how that goes. Have you heard the rumors floati
ng around?”
“That Juno had something to do with Froelich’s death?”
“Yeah, and there’s another one going around that says Captain Mota in PR was responsible. I’ve heard it both ways.”
“They’re both false.”
“I figured as much. This killer’s a vicious bastard. At first I thought that after being stabbed, Maribela Wu was attacked by a monitor. The wounds where her breasts and vagina used to be look like bite marks, but what kind of monitor would target just those three locations on her body? So I measured the wounds, and they didn’t measure right to be bites.”
I knew what that was about. I broke in to describe the killer’s steel-trap hand—the way it came out of nowhere, the opposing rows of fanged metal. He was a biter instead of a chewer.
“You get nipped? Is that where the blood came from?”
“Yeah. The thing clamped down strong as a motherfucker.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said with more emphasis than necessary. I didn’t need Maggie chiming in.
“That steel hand sounds high-tech enough that it has to be an offworlder, don’t you think?”
“He was a local.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“It okay if I pass what you’ve told me along to Rusedski?”
“Yeah. The sooner we squash the rumors about me and Mota, the better.”
Maggie asked Abdul, “Ever seen a hand like that?”
“Maybe. I searched the database for bodies with similar bites. We get a lot of corpses that have been fed upon, but I filtered for people who were fed upon by bigger game.”
“Find any that were beheaded?”
“No. So either Froelich and Wu were his first victims, or he’s killed before but the decapitation is new.”
“Any with missing sex organs?”
Good question.
“Plenty, but I ruled out the ones that had been eaten all over. That left me with one male found naked with missing sex organs and minimal damage elsewhere.”
Josephs spoke up, a devilish smile on his face. “So unless those monitors suddenly developed a taste for sausage…”
I rolled my eyes. Asshole.
Maggie spoke into the phone. “How easy would it be to mistake our killer’s bites for monitor bites?”
“Pretty damn easy. Unless you had a reason to check for monitor saliva or the presence of one of the bacteria strains that live in their mouths, you wouldn’t know. Even though the bites I found on Maribela Wu were smaller than a typical monitor bite, you could mistake them for bites from an immature monitor, or maybe a really big iguana. Postmortem bites are common enough that you wouldn’t look that close unless you had a reason.”
KOP Killer Page 9