The Moreau Quartet, Volume 2

by S. Andrew Swann

  If she didn’t draw any more attention to herself, she wouldn’t be up on charges for the gun she was waving around. What the hell had she been thinking?

  She took her foot off Pinky’s neck, letting her roll away. Pinky made a croaking noise, and there was a slight tug from Angel’s left hand.

  Angel had kept a grip on the jagged earring.

  “Crazy freaked hairball,” Pinky managed to croak.

  “Let’s go, Angel.” Lei grabbed Angel’s arm.

  Angel slipped the gun back into her waistband. “Fuck this shit.”

  Pinky looked her right in the eye as Lei led her out of the alley. “We know who you are.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Come on, Angel.” Lei kept dragging her back to the BMW.

  When they reached the BMW, Angel could hear Pinky croaking, “A flaming sword of righteousness—” Then the door closed.

  Angel floored the car as fast as she could move, past the bottleneck.

  “What is possessing you, girl? You looked about to kill—”

  “I was.”

  “Are you going to start blitzing out on me? If you are, I’d like to know. You going to jump any human you run into now—”

  “She wasn’t any human.”

  “Then who the fuck was she? And why were you tap dancing on her neck?”

  Angel turned down Beale, under the old Embarcadero Freeway on-ramp. As the BMW passed under the new Oakland Bay Bridge, she said, “She, or someone like her, set that fire.”

  “How the fuck do you know that?”

  “You saw. She’s Knights of Humanity—”

  “So-fucking-what? Is it suddenly open season on every freako nutball group out there? That’s half this city, Angel. I don’t think you have enough bullets.”

  “Don’t you see what’s happening?” Angel slammed on the brakes and a green GM Maduro laid on the horn and swerved around them.

  “What?”

  “They set that fire in retaliation. Someone else is going to retaliate for that, it’s going to keep going, someone has to, to . . .” Angel leaned her head against the steering wheel. Why did she feel that she was spinning down into some dark abyss? She told herself that the smell of smoke that was clinging to her fur was making her dizzy.

  “Has to what?”

  Angel felt her eyes watering. “God. I don’t know.”

  Lei hugged Angel’s shoulders. “You’ve been stressed out. It’s understandable. Let’s go find that condo you inherited and get you something to drink, all right?”

  Angel nodded, and took a deep breath. “Sorry. Lei. I’ve been losing it lately.”

  South Beach Towers was at the corner of Stanford and Townsend, right on the coast of the bay. In fact, it sat right on the terminus beyond which the Embarcadero and a few million tons of landfill slipped underwater in the ’34 quake. Now that she could see it without the benefit of fog, Angel thought the look of the city might improve immeasurably if the white concrete and black glass neo-Aztec building joined the last half-klick of Townsend under the bay.

  Angel parked the BMW in the reserved garage and led Lei up to the building.

  The combination that DeGarmo gave her let her into the lobby, and she had to spend a few worthless minutes explaining the situation to the security personnel. The rent-a-cops were nice and professional enough that Angel could pretend that it didn’t matter that she wasn’t human.

  Even so, Angel could smell the tension. The veneer was cracking on these guys.

  It took a few minutes to double-check and clear Angel through to the elevators. They gave her a personalized ID card and promised that she was now on the computers and wouldn’t be hassled again.

  On the elevator ride up, she asked, “Did you see it?”

  “What?” Lei asked.

  “Those guys. They feel it, too, in the air.”

  “What’s in the air?”

  “Violence. We aren’t immune here. People are beginning to realize it.”

  “You’re just paranoid.”

  The doors whooshed open on the fifteenth floor, where Byron had his apartment. “Lei, I think it’s only a matter of time before all Hell breaks loose.”

  “This isn’t New York or Los Angeles. I think you’re too close to all this. You’re losing perspective.”

  Angel led her down a corridor to apartment 156. She tapped in the combination on the keypad next to the door. “What’s so different about San—”

  Angel stopped talking as the door swung open on Byron’s apartment.

  They both stood there, silent, staring through the door.

  “Shit.” Angel finally said.

  “I’ll go call the police,” Lei said.

  Angel nodded, not really listening. She walked into the room, stepping over cushions that had been tossed from the couch and shredded. The coffee table was in three pieces, the glass top shattered. The wall-to-wall pile carpeting had been cut neatly into five-centimeter-wide strips, as had the upholstery on what remained of the furniture.

  Angel could smell a faint animal musk hanging in the air. Canine or feline, she couldn’t tell. It had taken a while to fade, but she knew it wasn’t Byron she was smelling.

  Yes, Angel thought, Lei had to go to the lobby.

  That was the comm there, and there, and there—Angel thought she even saw a piece of it on the balcony.

  Angel walked through the rubble to the remains of the wet bar and hoped the folks who trashed the joint had left her that drink.

  Chapter 8

  They were seated out on the patio, under a blackening sky, and Angel was having a tough time figuring out what else could go wrong.

  “Did you notice anything missing?” Anaka asked.

  “I told the first cops. It wasn’t my condo.” Angel refused to sit down or even look at the Asian cop. Anaka was just the latest in a series of uniforms, detectives, and lab guys who were busy tearing the wreckage apart. She’d given a statement to one of the uniforms, and she didn’t want to go over it again. “Same damn questions, again? Why not zip off and leave me alone—”

  She heard Anaka inhale as if he was about to retort. Instead, he hit her with another question. “When was the last time you were in this apartment?”

  “Week ago Wednesday. Answer to that hasn’t changed in the last half hour.”

  “It is possible that the humans we’re holding—”

  Angel whipped around. “The hell I’m supposed to know if a trio of hairless geeks could’ve managed a little party time here?”

  Anaka was rubbing his temples. “Miss Lopez, I wish you’d be more cooperative.”

  “Why you bothering? You have your suspects. They’re going down. Your job’s over.” Angel walked up to Anaka. With him sitting and her standing, they were eye to eye. Under the smell of the lightning, the cop was shedding stress and tension like old fur.

  “Sure,” she said with an insincere smile. “The fuckheads did this too, make life easy for yourself.”

  “I’m trying to do my job here. There’s more to this—” Anaka looked around and stood up.

  “Yeah, like I make a shitload of difference?”

  Anaka didn’t look like he was paying attention. He was looking back into the apartment, where the police were still sifting through debris. The forensics people were dusting the place and sweeping an UV laser around in their search for biological material and prints—paw and/or finger.

  Anaka stepped over to the door and slid it shut. Suddenly Angel was reminded of Dr. Ellis. She remembered the rather tense byplay between the two pink cops. White didn’t want to deal with Anaka’s “conspiracies.” Anaka had suspected—

  “Something funny about the autopsy,” Angel said.

  Anaka whipped around. “What do you know about that?” Suddenly she could see all of Ellis’ parano
ia mirrored in Anaka.

  “Ever find out why Ellis the not-a-vulpine-expert was assigned to cut up the corpse?”

  “No.” Anaka warily backed away from the doors. “I’ve been trying to contact Ellis on the substance of the autopsy.”

  “Did she mention a morey did him?”

  “What? How do you know that?”

  “Ellis told me when I cornered her yesterday. About to crap her pants, too.” She was glad to see somebody else look confused. Even though the expression on Anaka’s face only lasted a second.

  Anaka nodded as if something just made sense to him. “Falsified the autopsy, then she panicked. That’s why she’s disappeared . . .” Angel was about to ask him about what happened to Ellis, but he went on, changing the subject. There was an edge of fear, or paranoia, in Anaka’s voice. “This is bigger than you know.”

  He said it with such conviction that Angel backed up to the railing. Chain-reaction lightning shot across the sky, and for the first time she noticed how fatigued he looked. The rumpled suit he wore was the same one he’d been wearing in the morgue. Might have been the same suit he’d worn to Ralph’s. “What are you talking about?”

  Anaka walked up next to her as the peal of thunder reached them. The wind began to pick up, and the few last remaining shards of sunlight raced south, across the bay.

  “The first big quake, it was the fires that almost killed this town.” Anaka stared out at the water, toward the dome. His voice became harder and more distant. “In ’34, it was money. The quake, martial law, the recession, the civic restructuring . . . This town was bought and sold like it was a public auction. Cops rented out as hired thugs, firemen paid protection money—”

  “What’s your point?”

  Anaka turned toward her. “I’m not an enemy.”

  “You’re part of that machine.”

  “No.” Anaka shook his head. “For twenty years— A quarter century since the quake, and things haven’t changed.”

  Another bolt of lightning tore open the sky, and a minute long roar of thunder followed close on its heels, vibrating the railing Angel leaned against. A drop of moisture struck her square on the nose.

  Anaka was going on now, like Angel wasn’t even there. “The DA’s office is rushing a conviction on the shoddiest evidence I’ve seen since the National Guard stopped shooting looters.”

  Rain began to gently patter the balcony, and the rumblings were closing the gap on the flashes.

  “They say they want to shut down the Knights—” Anaka was raising his voice now. All she heard of the rest of his sentence was: “VanDyne Industrial?”

  “The ones who rebuilt the Pyramid?” she shouted over the storm.

  “And the cable cars, and half of downtown between Market and Telegraph Hill. They own this building, and most of the condos overlooking the bay.” The rain finally cascaded upon them in full force, sheeting across the balcony in rhythmic waves. “Byron Dorset worked for them, and if there’s a central cog in the San Francisco ‘machine,’ it’s VanDyne.”

  “Does that have anything to do—”

  Anaka shook his head. “I’m working on it. Help me.”

  He slid the door open and rushed inside, Angel on his heels. In the apartment, the only thing Angel could smell was her own wet fur. “What about Detective White?”

  “He’s a good cop.” There could have been an edge of sarcasm in his voice.

  “White doesn’t like you, does he?”

  Anaka shrugged. “Few people in the department do, I’m used to it.”

  She looked at the cops and the forensics guys who were packing things up. Apparently their job was completed. A balding black human walked up to them and addressed her. “The place’s all yours now, though I’d suggest you take pictures for the insurance companies before you clean up.”

  “You’re done?” There was a slight hint of disbelief in Anaka’s voice. “That was damn quick, Beirce.”

  The man turned to Anaka as if he’d just now bothered to notice him. He ran a hand through what was left of his hair. “And what’re you doing here? No meat lying around—you did make Homicide, didn’t you? Paint’s still wet on that suit.”

  “Since when does it take less than an hour to dust up a crime scene?”

  “Fuck you. Just because you wear civvies now don’t mean you tell me my business.”

  “Listen—”

  “No, you listen. I do what I have to do and get out of the lady rabbit’s hair—”

  “Fur,” Angel said.

  “Whatever. So, Detective Anaka, I suggest you pack your paranoia and do likewise. And if you need a report, you know where you can file it.”

  Beirce turned around and left the apartment, leading a platoon of men carrying equipment. The uniforms followed, leaving Anaka and Angel alone in the living room.

  “What did you do to that guy?”

  “Me?” Anaka shook his head. “Nothing.” Anaka sighed. “I’m going to go before my partner starts missing me, but we’ll need to talk later.”

  “Sure,” Angel said, “for all the good it’ll do.”

  “One thing though.” Anaka pulled something out of his pocket. “Would you stop poking around on your own?”

  “Huh?” She tried to look innocent.

  He handed her a folded up paper that she instantly recognized. It was Byron’s letter, wrapped around the Earthquake’s season tickets.

  “Where?” Angel asked as she reflexively stuck her hand in the pocket of her jeans. She began to remember feeling something drop while she was watching Earl’s corpse.

  “You dropped them outside the door to the morgue.”

  She took the tickets and the letter and replaced them in her pocket. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I—”

  “Just don’t anymore.”

  She shook her head and felt stupid. She was way out of her depth and felt like things had flown totally beyond her grasp. She didn’t say anything as Anaka let himself out.

  • • •

  The BMW kicked up a sheet of water over the sidewalk as Angel pulled up to her house.

  “The van’s gone,” Lei said.

  Angel looked at the spot where the gray Dodge van had been watching their apartment. Nothing. “They probably saw what’s-his-name get shit for footage and gave up.” It would be comforting to think they’d just been reporters.

  “I suppose.”

  They both got out of the car and ran for the door, splashing across a sidewalk that was becoming a shallow river. The storm was still gaining in intensity. The rapid-fire lightning flashes were now simultaneous with the thunder.

  The door was open.

  “Shit.” Angel pulled the Beretta out of her pants.

  “You didn’t ditch that thing?” Lei asked.

  “Why?”

  “There were a dozen cops—”

  “I was an innocent victim, why search— Damn it, did you leave the door open?”

  Lei looked at the door which had swung inward with a slight touch from Angel. “I don’t know. I could’ve in all that confusion when we left.”

  A blast of wind slammed the door into the interior hall. Angel covered the hall and the stairs with the gun.

  “Who’re you going to shoot? Balthazar could’ve—”

  “Almost forty, barely leaves his apartment during weather like this?” Angel stepped into the hall and started edging up the stairs, leading with the gun.

  Lei followed, keeping a respectful distance behind her. “Are you going to shoot some overeager reporter?”

  “At least make him crap his pants. Close the door.”

  Lei pushed the door shut with her foot. Angel asked, quietly, “Do you smell anything?”

  “Besides us?”

  Angel nodded. Lei shook her head no.

  Maybe she
was wrong and all she could smell was her own wet fur, but Angel could swear she could smell something else. Something else that was alien to this house. Neither canine, lepine, or Balthazar’s leonine scent. Not an animal smell at all.

  Fake pine?

  The door to their apartment was closed. There seemed no sign of any forced entry. Angel backed up and leveled the gun at the doorway. She waved Lei over. “Open it. Then stand back.”

  “Is this smart?”

  “Do it.”

  Lei stood next to the door and punched in the combination. Then she stepped back and cowered as if she expected some sort of explosion. The door swung open a few centimeters, and Angel stood for nearly ten seconds, waiting.

  She could feel her own pulse in her neck, and there was the copper taste of excitement in her mouth. Her breath tried to burn her nose.

  She took a deep breath and dove through the door.

  Through the door, she swept the gun to cover the living room from the kitchenette, past the bay windows, and then to the hall to the bedrooms. She rolled into the hall between the bedrooms and covered, in turn, her room, the bathroom, and Lei’s room. It took all of three seconds to see the apartment was empty.

  Angel slumped against the doorframe to the bathroom, hyperventilating, pointing her gun at the floor. Lei took a few tentative steps into the living room. “Safe?”

  Angel nodded, panting.

  “Would you please put the gun away?”

  She nodded again, unable to get the breath to talk, and clicked the safety on the Beretta. She went and tucked it back in the underwear drawer. There was a nearby lightning strike that shook the house. The lights flickered.

  She stood, leaning against the dresser in her room, catching her breath. The shower started, and she realized how wet and miserable she was. She walked back to the bathroom and sat on the john. “Leave some hot water,” Angel told Lei through the fogged-glass partition.

  As she waited for the shower, Angel kept telling herself that it wasn’t paranoia. There really was something rotten going on here. It was perfectly reasonable, what she just did. Someone—she wished she knew who—could have been waiting for them.

  She put her head in her hands. Yeah, but jumping that pink Knight on the street today, that wasn’t reasonable. A fine line she was treading here, and at the moment she didn’t know exactly what side of it she was on. It didn’t help matters that city employees were feeding into her paranoia.