by Dan Stout
“We were trying to save your city,” he said.
I thought of the slathering dog outside, and the destroyed lives of Jermaine Bell-Asandro and his family. I thought of Garson Haberdine’s remains scattered over a hotel room, and of Talena handcuffed to her hospital bed. I had to fight to keep my finger light on the trigger.
“Talk,” I said. “Explain it to me.”
“May I?” He looked at his hands, still raised between us. I nodded.
“Put them flat on the table, directly in front of you. Don’t move them.”
He lowered his hands, and began his tale.
“Technically I am a consultant to the Cedrow Care Center’s research department. But as you can see”—his eyebrows danced as he looked left and right—“I operate rather independently. A specialist of the highest order,” he said, “I was brought in to rectify the cowardly and ineffectual measures of the CCC before me. Small people with small ambitions.”
“Wait,” I said, forcing my voice to stay level. “The Care Centers. Harlan was using them as what—a petri dish?”
“In a way,” he answered. “Terminal cases are excellent subjects for controversial methodologies. Because if something goes wrong . . .” He shrugged. “But as I said, the Care Centers were run by amateurs using pale imitations of my techniques. They had no hope of finding what Harlan wanted.”
I tried to stay focused, not letting myself dwell on the implications. I had to get as much information as I could.
“And what was it that Harlan wanted?” I asked.
“Oil.”
“Bullshit.” I kept my aim steady. “There’s no more oil to find. What did he really want with you?”
He snorted. “Cedrow believes he’s the savior of your city. Wants to preserve Titanshade, to keep it the center of the world petroleum market. He hired me because his work at the Care Centers failed, and he needed my expertise. You see, I am the world’s leading authority on manna-based biological modifications.” He paused, as if I would be impressed. When I didn’t respond, he sighed and continued.
“In any case, it was these techniques that confirmed the presence of oil on his property. A reservoir large enough to keep the heart of the town pumping. He was delighted, of course. The oil that saved the city would also save his company, prolong his family’s reputation, blah, blah, blah.” He lifted a hand, opening and closing it like a talkative puppet mouth.
“On the table,” I corrected, reminding him who had the gun. He dropped his hand, and I continued, “I still don’t buy it. The wind farms will bring him so much money—”
“It’s about his family name, and this town of fools. The deal was being forced on him by the AFS. He had a choice—sell his properties or Rediron would be shuttered. And most of his buyout would be in the new wind farm company stock. All of that will be worthless once he produces the oil.”
“There is no more oil!” I snapped. “Geologists have been searching for years—”
“Not with my techniques. The methods I pioneered have succeeded where all others failed.” Heidelbrecht reached up to stroke the nonexistent ends of his painted-on mustache. “Untapped reserves that lie beneath the ice. Far deeper than anyone has looked before.”
I shook my gun side to side in a “no” motion, and he dropped his hands with a roll of the eyes and a sigh, a curiously whispering sound as it crossed his motionless lips.
“Harlan was delighted with the results,” he said. “Even more so when we found it on the oil field most dear to his heart.”
“Then why the Hells isn’t he already drilling?” I asked.
“Of course he’s drilling! It takes time to drill that deep, to locate reserves and set up a well. You see why he had to stop the Squibs, don’t you?” The doctor pressed down on the tabletop, leaning into his story. “They were buying up all the smaller reserves. It was merely a matter of time before they got to the one that housed the oil. And then they would build windmills on it. Such delicious perversity! Like spinning tombstones on the hopes of Titanshade.”
He pronounced it oddly, breaking the stress to make it sound like Titan’s hade. Everything about this man put me in mind of hade, the trickling sound of hidden snowmelt. The superstitious might hear in it the voice of a lost spirit, but more practical minds knew it for what it was: A sign that their surroundings were more treacherous than the surface would indicate.
“So Harlan needed more time,” I said, “to slow down the deal.”
“Precisely! He needed a distraction.”
“Something to push the negotiations back,” I said. “Something that might even turn public opinion against the Squib deal.” I eyed the doctor. “And I’ll bet you had a suggestion for what to do.”
“It was a perfect opportunity!” His eyebrows shot upward, reaching for the sky even as the lower half of his faced showed no movement at all. “A scandal would work wonders for our time line.”
“And a dead Squib would be a scandal?”
“A dead negotiator with connections to prostitution, who was murdered in a most dramatic fashion?” His tone grew smug. “Well, you saw the papers. Harlan’s man Flanagan found a member of the Squib delegation who was prone to exposure, and made the arrangements. Harlan took it from there.”
“This had nothing to do with Haberdine taking core samples on the oil fields?”
“Was he?” Heidelbrecht mused on the idea. “It would hardly matter. The reserves discovered by my techniques are far deeper than any core sample would detect.” He rolled his eyes. “Besides, I had much more pressing matters to attend to. Core samples,” he huffed. “Really.”
“But you didn’t just kill Haberdine,” I said. “You tore him to pieces. That couldn’t have been just for show.”
“Quite correct. Our primary test subject was a local boy—”
“Jermaine,” I said. It seemed like I was always reminding people that the dead had names.
“Yes,” said Heidelbrecht. “We transitioned him from acting as a dowsing rod to acting as a—”
“Wait,” I interrupted. I remembered Nina Bell talking about her nephew being used as a guinea pig: A scar-faced doctor injected him with rainbows. “Jermaine was how you found the oil?”
Heidelbrecht nodded, talking over me. Once he got going, he couldn’t hold back the pride he took in his work.
“The subject functioned perfectly. Infused with a manna/petroleum mix in his system, he acted as the needle of a compass. But instead of being drawn due north, he was pulled toward the hidden stores of oil far beneath all predicted reserves.”
My skin prickled as I pictured a teenage boy with manna in his veins stumbling across the ice fields, hovering over reserves of liquid treasure far, far beneath his feet, drawn to it inexorably.
“I’m simplifying the procedure, of course.” Heidelbrecht tottered back and forth in a fit of self-congratulation. “As I said, I’m the greatest mind in the bio-manna field. You couldn’t keep up if I gave you the full explanation.” He froze, as if regretting his words, and eyed my gun. “No offense intended.”
He needn’t have worried. I had too much on my mind to be concerned about an insult from a sociopath with a PhD. I tried to remember all the times I’d imagined the pull of Jenny’s bones on my own. Was that real? Was there some remnant of her on the Mount, pulling me toward her? Had the treatment that gave Jenny such solace been a dry run for Jermaine’s suffering? I felt my anger rise and forced myself to think of something else. I focused on the man in front of me.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “Tearing Haberdine apart. That wasn’t just to delay the talks.”
“Correct. The attack on the Squib diplomat brought the added bonus of providing additional raw materials for our study.”
Raw materials. Jermaine would have left the murder scene covered in . . .
“Blood,” I said.
>
“Viscera!” Heidelbrecht’s voice brightened. “There was some improvisation involving a barrel of liquid, and it had the side effect of preserving most of the residue. Tremendously useful. We removed the subject from the brine—”
“Which is when he escaped.”
That was why Jermaine’s clothes were wet when he showed up at his aunt’s house. He’d been smuggled out of the Eagle Crest in Haberdine’s half-empty barrel of romantic brine to avoid leaving a bloody trail. His clothes had still been wet and stunk of the stuff when he turned up at his aunt’s looking for help.
Heidelbrecht seemed uncomfortable. “We didn’t anticipate his ability to get loose while he was still under the influence of the inhalant. It was unfortunate and unprofessional.
“You must understand, searching for material buried at such depths required the procedure to be very”—he hesitated, his stubby tongue darting out to wet motionless lips—“aggressive. We had to use a level of manna that might be considered unusual. Combined with effects of the Squib smell there were unintended alterations to the subject’s temperament.”
Alterations like inducing homicidal frenzy and a paranoia so powerful that he killed his own family.
“You used him up,” I said.
“We made a sacrifice for the common good.”
“You used him up for the common good.” Keeping my gun pointed at him, I asked, “Why the aerosol canisters?”
“They were my fee. As I said, cost is my major limitation. In exchange for helping Mr. Cedrow find his oil, I was able to synthesize the particular qualities of the Squib pheromone, and will be able to place it up for auction. However . . .” He pointed at the boxes and packing materials. “Since your last visit, our operation has been shut down. Apparently Ambassador Paulus learned of my presence here and I’m afraid that I’m at risk of—”
I waggled the revolver, keeping his attention focused.
“The canisters,” I said. “Where are they now?”
His shoulders fell. “Harlan took them. I don’t know where he went or why he wants them, so don’t bother asking. But they’re tremendously valuable.”
If Harlan was getting increasingly desperate, I could only imagine what he wanted the canisters for. “And the Therreau? Putting your product in their carts?”
“Testing, of course. Harlan Cedrow’s deep connection with the local religious zealots was very useful. I was able to perform a series of A/B tests for effectiveness before proceeding with pressurization into the canisters. The Therreau move about the city almost unnoticed. The most dangerous things are often invisible.” He waggled his eyebrows. “And as the enhanced protests created even more of a disturbance, Mr. Cedrow was happy to fund the process.”
There was a twitch of movement over Heidelbrecht’s shoulder. Framed in the window behind him, a dark figure appeared then faded back into the shadows.
I gave Heidelbrecht a simple, “Don’t move,” and ran back into the lab. I pushed myself flat against the wall beside one of the larger windows, giving me a wider view of the yard. Black-garbed men and women hustling from shadow to shadow, the distinctive markings of an SRT squad just visible if you knew where to look. On the far edge of the property I saw a Mollenkampi I knew well. Angus was barking orders into a walkie-talkie.
A crash from inside the lab brought me around again. Heidelbrecht stood outside his office door, foot still raised from kicking over a barrel. Liquid gushed out of the barrel as it rolled across the lab. With each revolution it revealed the stylized orange and black flames of its warning label: Flammable.
I raised my weapon, but hesitated to fire when there could be armed cops with twitchy fingers outside the windows. The good doctor struck a match and dropped it in the liquid. Flames danced across the spreading pool and leapt up to the barrel. Heidelbrecht ran back into his office.
He called out, “Time to fly, Fritz!” and slammed the door shut.
34
I REACHED THE OFFICE DOOR a second behind him. The handle wouldn’t turn. Locked. I put my shoulder into it, but it didn’t give. My face was beside the paperback novel–sized window that looked into the office. Heidelbrecht’s scarred face appeared behind the glass, inches away from mine. Our eyes locked, then the pane went black. I kicked the door once, twice. On the third kick it flew inward, and I stormed inside.
He was gone, files and goldfish along with him, as if he’d never been there at all. I didn’t know how he’d done it, but he’d left me standing alone with all the evidence of Harlan Cedrow’s insanity, about to be discovered by cops who may or may not be on the take, and may or may not be gunning for me. And that wasn’t even my most immediate problem.
The barrel of flammable liquid was still unloading its contents, shooting out a geyser of flame as it rolled about the room, setting everything near it ablaze. Waves of heat buffeted across the room, and a gray haze was quickly collecting across the ceiling of the lab. There was a fire extinguisher at each end of the lab, and I could easily reach one, put out the flames before they grew out of control. But I didn’t move.
The SRT squad circled the building, and any of those cops could be the ones feeding information to Paulus. If they found me there, my career would end quickly and loudly. The only thing that would make it worse would be a corpse on site.
Which is when I remembered Knuckles.
Farther back in the lab, the corpse of the hulking guard was in the same shape as the dogs in the kennel. The surviving dog was on the floor, worse for the wear after its tangle with Knuckles. It looked like he had two broken legs but he kept pulling himself forward, leaving a smeared trail of blood behind him as he crawled away from the flames. His jaws snapped open and shut, his tongue lolled out of the side of his ruined muzzle. The tongue itself was half chewed off, as if it had gotten in the way of the dog’s assault.
I couldn’t leave him to the fire, but I couldn’t risk a gunshot from my own weapon, not with the SRT about to overrun the place. I holstered my revolver and reached for the cylindrical red fire extinguisher on the wall. Walking up to the dog, I approached him from behind and used the heavy metal extinguisher to put the poor thing out of his misery. Then I dropped the extinguisher on the floor and walked past the flaming barrel, leaving it untouched as I prepared for the onrush of my fellow officers.
* * *
When the kick came to the front door, I stayed in the storage room. I needed a little bit of luck, and for the first time in a while I got a break. As the first wave moved down the hallway, I used the connecting storage room to stay put, letting them sweep past me. That was when I got lucky; the smoke alarms chose that moment to kick in and trigger the sprinklers.
Everyone in the lab area was suddenly sprayed down with water, throwing the search into chaos. The fleeting moment of confusion gave me an opportunity to slip out of the storeroom and into the deserted hallway. As quietly as possible I slipped through the doorway. Right into the path of a detective doing a follow-up sweep.
A voice barked out a harsh, “On the ground!”
Hands on head, I went to my knees. “Police!” I said. “I’m a cop!”
I risked a peek over my shoulder. I recognized the Mollenkampi who had a bead on me. My luck held out. It was Ajax.
He dropped from his firing stance. “Carter? What are . . .”
“Long story,” I said. “I’m going to stand up, don’t shoot me.”
“I had Dispatch page you. You never responded.”
I remembered the page that came in as I’d sat outside the building. I ground my teeth in frustration.
Calls came from the direction of the lab. The SRT team would be falling back any moment to guard the perimeter while the fire department was called in. The flames must have been spreading because the sprinklers overhead kicked in as well, spraying us with pressurized water.
Ajax grabbed my arm and pulled me back the way he’d
come. “Why the Hells are you here?” Water soaked us as we spoke, covering our heads and trailing down our faces. A trickle seeped in through the corner of my mouth; it tasted of rust.
I ignored the question. “What triggered this raid?”
“I didn’t ask. Kravitz roused everyone and said we were hitting this place. We’re serving a warrant for some ugly mug with a scarred face. He said it falls under the Squib killing, but I’ll be damned if I know how.”
We exited the building, almost tripping over SRT members as they fell back. No one noticed me in the confusion.
“Kravitz,” I said. “Then he’s the one.”
“The one what?”
My head throbbed. I massaged my temples as I walked, remembering Kravitz’s tics and beard-pulling. Were they the signs of a detective chafing under a high-profile case, or indicators of a cop buckling under the pressure of an external agent?
“He’s been reporting to Paulus,” I said. “She’s behind this.”
“Behind what?”
“She’s got some history with the turkey doctor working for Harlan. I saw her tonight, too.” I avoided his eye. “Not on purpose—it doesn’t matter anyway. She’s not working with Harlan. She said she only wants to resurrect the talks.”
“You believe her?”
I nodded. “Mostly. She’s chasing power, and the wind farm deal helps her.”
We reached the perimeter of the lot. He looked at me. “Who set that fire?”
“The guy you were sent to find,” I said. I didn’t say that I’d chosen to let it burn. Ajax gave me a long look, eyes narrowed over his emotionless, oversized jaws. His right mandible twitched, then he looked away.
“Get out of here,” he said. I started to argue and he cut me off. “We can’t let anyone see you who knows you weren’t with us when we left the Bunker. I’ll meet you at your apartment.”
I still hesitated and he gave me a shove. “Go!”
I broke away, rolled under the loose section of fencing, and was gone into the night. I knew I’d just stolen something from Ajax, but whether it was his pride, his faith, or his friendship, I couldn’t say.