by K. C. Sivils
“He did.”
“Yep. Toby said you have a warm place that’s safe where we can sleep tonight.”
“Toby’s right. Will there be other’s joining you?”
Her head nodded up and down, indicating others would come.
“What’s your name?” Father Nathan asked.
“Tina,” the waif replied.
“Can I have my watch back Tina?”
She smiled and handed the watch back.
“Toby said you were sharp.”
Tina looked around and then whistled softly. A string of small kids hurried from around the same corner Tina had appeared from. Several carried small bundles with them. All of them were dirty, cold and looked tired. Father Nathan’s heart sank at their appearance.
“C’mon kids, let me take you to the dormitory. You’ll be able to bathe and clean up. I will bring blankets for each of you.”
Father Nathan led the way between the two buildings, watching the children follow him in silence. A total of eight children had arrived, but no Toby, two boys and six girls. Two of the girls seemed to be sisters as the taller one held the hand of the smaller one and carried a bundle over her shoulder.
As soon as he opened the door the urchins hustled through before Father Nathan could say a word. He shut the door behind him and led the kids to where they would be staying for the evening.
Outside, Toby watched from across the street. He’d decided to trust the priest. Tonight he’d search the area for the monster who’d killed Lucy and taken Anna. He owed the sisters that much.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I thought for a moment about how to ask what I needed to know. I decided getting straight to the point would be best.
“Two miners have died from miner’s cough. The nurse practitioner at the infirmary is certain the daily preventative given to each miner has been swapped for a placebo. Evidently this drug is worth a lot on the black market on rim worlds.”
Joe and Ralph looked at each other knowingly for a moment. I hoped they would trust me enough to share some information that would help me. The pair sat in silence, waiting for me to go first.
“Look, I’m not looking to get either of you in a jam. If what I’ve been told is true, a lot of miners are going to get sick and die. A lot of them are probably already sick. The planetary government is supposed to supply the miners with the preventative. The theft of this drug falls under my jurisdiction.”
“So, you’re just looking to catch the crew running the drug then,” Joe said evenly.
“No. I want the entire organization. Every miner who goes below ground on this planet is at risk. Knowingly swapping their meds to sell on the black market is at a minimum negligent homicide, hopefully manslaughter and I’ll do my best to find evidence convincing enough for a prosecutor to go for murder in the second degree. That’s all before the fraud, money laundering and smuggling charges get added in.”
My companions looked at each other again but remained silent. I thought about the ramifications of their silence.
“Should I add corruption of public officials to my list?”
“A lot of people are going to die Sully,” Joe said evenly. “You might be one of them.”
“Goes with the job Joe. Help me catch these people.”
“I don’t know. I got a good thing going here with my business. People count on me for their jobs. Ralph here is doing okay with his cab.”
“Just point me in the right direction.”
For a third time the pair looked at each other. This time Ralph nodded. Joe looked around his restaurant for a second, tapping his fingers on the table.
“You know that kid you blew away when you walked into the terminal?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I got a hearing coming up about that. Nothing to worry about. It was a good shoot.”
“You think so. But the kid’s boss probably doesn’t think so. A hearing would be a good way to calm everything down.”
“Suspending me is not going to stop me Joe.”
“Didn’t say they’d suspend you,” Joe said ruefully.
I looked first at Joe and then Ralph. The realization of what Joe was implying dawning on me.
“When did either of you plan on warning me?”
Again the pair looked at each other. This time it was Ralph who responded.
“We was gonna have Alice give you a note in a day or two, warning you. Look, Sullivan, I can’t go back to prison and I can’t have any trouble with people I ran with in the past. Alice is okay with our having to scrape and work hard but she’ll leave me if things even look like I might be going back to my old habits. If she leaves me, my life might as well be over.”
I looked at Joe. He shrugged. “I have to walk a fine line Sullivan. I like you, but…I have a past too. Since my wife died this place is what keeps me going. I don’t need any raids with cops planting evidence.”
This time it was my turn to look at the pair in silence.
“How much do you pay each month and who picks it up?”
Joe’s face paled. I knew he wasn’t going to tell me.
“Ralph, I guess you pay less, but you have to pay for protection just the same.”
The cabbie started to protest but I held my hand up to silence him.
“Is it safe to even talk in here,” I asked Joe.
“Yeah. I sweep the place five times a day. Customers have to be able to do business here. What that business is happens to be none of my concern or that of anyone else.”
“Okay, I’ll start with that kid.”Joe reached out and touched my hand. “Sullivan, I like you. You want to do good. I’ve never met a cop that wasn’t bent in some way before. It’s just hard to trust. Be careful.”
Alice arrived with my food and a couple of beers for Ralph and Joe. She sat everything down without saying a word, shot me a nasty stare and left.
My comm buzzed. I took it out of my pocket and saw Josephson’s name.
“I thought I told you to lay low,” I hissed into my comm.
“They found another body,” Josephson’s voice informed me. “It was that guy who came to the station.”
“The foreman?”
“Yeah. And Sully, he’s got the mark on him.”
---
I stood staring at the crumpled body of a man I’d only talked to but never met. Dressed in his miner’s overalls and a greatcoat, the man’s wallet identified him as Paul Johnson. His employee ID confirmed he was a shift foreman for the Schlesinger Corporation Number Two Mine. He lay in a frozen pool of his own blood, his throat and wrists slit. In the middle of his forehead was the oddly shaped brand burned into his flesh.
“Think it’s a copy cat,” Josephson asked.
“No. It’s our guy. He’s evolving again.”
“What makes you say that boss?”
“The slashes on the wrists, just deep enough to damage the artery but not deep enough to cause him to bleed out quickly.”
“So? Maybe he put up a fight and the killer couldn’t slice him like he would have liked.”
“No, Josephson, this guy is sick and getting sicker. He weakened him and then told him to run. My guess is he hunted the guy. Promised him if he could make it to a clinic and get his wrists tended to he’d let him live. Of course, there isn’t a clinic anywhere around here in a five kilometer radius.”
Josephson, who wasn’t looking too good to begin with, got a couple of shades paler.
“Doesn’t look like he took a trophy this time though.”
The coroner looked up from where he was entering data into his tablet. “Take a trophy? Is that what you asked Sergeant?”
Josephson nodded yes in response.
“The killer cut his tongue out. It’s missing. He pulled it through the wound in the throat and cut it out.”
I watched my partner turn a shade paler still. I nodded to the coroner and asked him to forward me a copy of his findings when he was done. I took Josephson by the arm and led him away from the crime scen
e.
“Sully, what would cause him to change his pattern? He’s striking faster and there’s no pattern now.”
“Something is stressing him. He needs to kill to release the pressure and rage he’s feeling.”
I looked around the area, hoping for once there would be no CCTV cameras. I pulled Josephson toward his hover car. “I thought I told you to leave town.”
“I have a scanner in my car. I heard this and was worried it was our guy. So I called in we’d take it.”
Rage filled me at the naiveté of this kid. He couldn’t help it, Josephson was who he was, but still, it was going to get him or both of us killed.
“You can’t trust anyone in our precinct kid. Get out of town until you hear from me.”
“Can’t trust…Sully, why…”
I watched as it finally dawned on him. “The nurse said this stuff was worth a lot on the black market on the rim worlds. Somebody from…”
“You got it now?”
The puppy nodded, the expression on his face both sad and frightened. He left in silence. I watched him all the way to his car. He got in, started it up, hovered for a second and for once didn’t nearly cause a wreck as he merged into traffic. I hoped he had a good place to bolt to. I didn’t need to add the puppy to the list of others already on my conscience.
---
Markeson’s mood had improved since he’d arrived at his office and checked the duty roster. Fortune had smiled on him when the idiot rookie Josephson had taken the call on the dead foreman. If things worked out the way he wanted, that sick animal would take care of the problem of Sullivan for him. Problem solved for everyone. It would be a shame about the kid, but that was the price the kid would have to pay for being honest and naïve.
As he leaned back in his chair, Markeson began to consider the various things that needed cleaning up. A knock on the door caused him to lean forward. He hated being disturbed when he was thinking.
“Enter.”
Sergeant Bland stuck his head through the door.
“Captain, what do you want done with those two guards Josephson brought in? Nobody’s even questioned them yet and they’re screaming for lawyers from the mine they work for.”
Markeson frowned at Bland for a moment. It looked like he’d have to do a little of the lifting himself after all.
“Does anybody know they’re in lock up?”
“Just Josephson and me.”
Bland looked back at Markeson with a hard but knowing look.
“No, Sergeant, this one is on me. Fill out the paperwork to show we released them because we had no cause to hold them. Get all their contact information. Make it look legit. Tell those idiots to calm down, we’re going to spring them but we got to take care of a couple of things first.”
“That’s all boss?”
Markeson nodded before adding, “let me know when you’re done. I’ll handle it from there.”
---
I had to sleep. I’d had about four hours of sleep in the last thirty-six hours or so. I couldn’t think and I needed to think a lot. Ralph took me back to my place. He didn’t say a word the entire way and neither did I.
Molly, the grumpy, greying landlord had actually smiled at me when I came in. I waved to her and headed for the stairs. The elevator still wasn’t in a state where I would trust it.
Pausing at the fire door the exit for my floor, I listened carefully while I adjusted my cybernetic eye for the lighting. Something told me someone was out there. Reaching into my jackboot, I withdrew another of my small pistols, another .22 kinetic energy weapon. I liked bullets. They made people bleed and the noise scared them. A cannon like my .50 cal. would knock someone down, even if they were hopped up on stim.
I wanted to talk to whoever this was. A small hole in their body would do.
I took my time opening the door, smiling as I did so. I had taken the time to oil the hinges and the door closing mechanism earlier in the week. I made my way down the corridor. I paused at the intersection and peeked around the corner toward the door of my place.
Standing by the door examining it was the girl. The girl from the spaceport.
“What are you doing?”
She spun around. Standing in a slight crouch, her arms slightly extended from her sides and ready to flee at any second, her eyes searched for a way past me and found none as I aimed my pistol at her center mass.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I told her softly. “Just tell me what you’re doing by my door.”
She swallowed as she shifted her weight back and forth on the balls of her feet. I lowered my gun to my side.
I repeated, “just tell me what you’re doing here and I’ll let you go.”
“You promise,” she whispered. “I can’t go back. I won’t go back. I won’t let anyone send me back. I’ll die first.”
“Well, nobody here wants to die, at least I hope not,” I told her.
“Promise. Promise you’ll let me go.”
I pocketed my pistol and widened my stance, watching the girl. She was a stunning beauty, of that I’d been right. The dirty clothes and mussed hair couldn’t hide the fact she was a looker. So familiar, so painfully familiar.
“I promise,” I told her, knowing I’d come for her later. That I had to.
“I saw the monster,” she said, her eyes still darting from side to side. Something about how she looked past me bothered me. I listened carefully and heard nothing. I couldn’t risk turning around to look to see if we were alone.
“The monster,” I asked.
She nodded.
“I decided to tell you but I don’t trust you or any other cop.”
“Why me?”
“You’re in charge of finding the monster. The other cops are scared of you or look up to you. So it had to be you.”
I decided to come clean, to be honest with her.
“I have to be honest, I’ve been looking for you.”
“I know. Since the St. Gabriel. But I had to, I had no choice. Please, just for once, don’t think like a cop and just forget you saw me on the starliner,” she pleaded, not just with her words but her entire body. She was terrified and not of me. She was terrified of what would happen if I took her in.
“Truce for now. I promise. The monster you refer to, is it the one who hurt Lucy? The little girl who runs with the gang of pickpockets around here?”
She nodded but said nothing. Slowly, she raised her arm up, extending it out toward me. In her hand was a message chip.
“I don’t trust cops. But I trust you enough that I wanted to help the little girl. That monster scares me. I came up here to leave you this.”
Her body language told me she had calmed down a little, but not much. She was still terrified, but not of me. Me, I just scared her because I’m a cop.
“This isn’t the first monster you’ve seen is it?”
She shook her head.
“Are you hungry? I know you have to be cold. You’ve been living hard, on the streets. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have seen the monster.”
Her eyes locked on me, chilling me. There was something not quite right about her eyes.
“Look, I don’t want to frighten you. You can stay in my place tonight and leave in the morning. I have a couple of spare rooms. A hot meal, such as I have in my place and a shower would do you good, not to mention a good night’s sleep in a warm place.
I watched her think about it. She started moving from side to side on the balls of her feet again.
“Or not. It’s up to you. If you want to go, you can just leave the message chip on the floor by my door and I’ll back up beyond the intersection so you can get past me and take the stairs, okay?”
My words seemed to calm her a bit. She stopped moving and looked me squarely in the eye.
“You promise you won’t hurt me or try anything?”
I sighed. I was tired, desperately tired.
“Look, I’m running on fumes. I’ve got to sleep. I’m in no mood for games
. Besides, why should I trust you? You could rob me blind or worse while I’m asleep.”
She frowned at me. My words had touched a nerve.
“I don’t steal unless I have no choice.”
“And I don’t hurt citizens I’ve sworn an oath to protect,” I snapped back. “Make your mind up, because I’m going to bed. Give me the chip and decide what you’re going to do.”
I moved toward her with my left hand out for the chip, turning to slip by her to unlock my door. To my surprise she didn’t run. She took my left hand and pressed the message chip into it, a surprised look crossing her countenance. I didn’t stop but took the chip and unlocked my door, leaving it ajar for her to follow if she wanted to.
I went straight to the bathroom and heard the door close softly behind me. I glanced back and saw her looking in bewilderment at the assortment of locks on the door.
“If you want, we can sleep with just one lock tonight. That way, you can leave if you want.”
I went into the bathroom and relieved myself. I set out what I had that a girl could use to clean herself and opened the door, half expecting her to be gone. She was sitting on the couch in my living room.
“I’ll sleep here. It’s better than what I’ve been sleeping on.”
“There’s food in the kitchen. Help yourself. You can even take some with you. I’ve set out what I think you’ll need in the bathroom.” I paused to gather myself. “I’m going to bed. Let me show you how to unlock the door.”
I locked the primary lock and one other. I showed her how to open the locks, locked them again and let her unlock them once herself. Satisfied, she vanished into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. Exhausted, I stared at the bathroom door for a moment and headed into my room. I shut the door and locked it behind me.
After setting the message chip by my computer, I followed my nighttime ritual for getting ready to sleep. For once it worked. In minutes I was sound asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I heard the girl moving around in my small living room. I was pretty sure she planned on leaving before I got up. I know I’d said she could leave if she wanted, take some of my food even, but I wanted, no needed, to talk to her before she left. Not about the Cowboy.