Preying for Keeps

by Mel Odom

  “Because I went there asking questions about her.”

  Paulson slapped the desk, looking incredulous. “And you dusted him because he might at some point stumble across her address? I’m saying this because he apparently didn’t have it or else he’d already gone there.”

  “He didn’t give me much choice. It was self-defense.”

  “His head shot up like Swiss cheese,” Paulson said, “there was no other way I could figure it.”

  Skater said nothing, returning the man’s gaze full measure.

  Paulson was still looking at Skater when he touched the base of his skull. Skater knew the guy was answering a commlink call. “Paulson.” He listened intently for a moment, then turned to look at Nina. “That was the coroner. Thinks he identified that third body.”

  Nina looked the question.

  “He says Larisa Hartsinger.” Paulson said.

  Skater kept his emotions from his face.

  The Lone Star man turned to Skater. “So what do you think? Want to come take a look for yourself? A smart guy like you, maybe you’ll see something we won’t.”

  Skater kept his voice flat and neutral. “Sure.” He had to see for himself.

  9

  The cold chill of death soaked into Jack Skater even as the elevator dropped through the Lone Star Security Services building to one of the basement levels. When the doors opened up, the stench of chemicals and blood surrounded him despite the efforts to cover it over with pine and lemon scents.

  “Follow the purple line.” Paulson ordered, giving him a shove to get him started.

  Skater glanced at the floor and found a thin rainbow of colors traced across the linoleum. Locating the purple one near the center of the dozen or so colors, he started forward. The tile was cold underfoot, and the air was chill, crisp.

  Men and women, human and meta, passed him in the hall, all dressed in white lab coats over their street clothes. Only a few gave him a second look. The orange jumpsuit made him stand out in the sterile environment. He flexed his cuffed hands behind his back in an effort to keep the circulation going.

  He followed two lefts, then a right, ending up at a door as black as obsidian. The small lettering in the upper-right corner announced Richard Means, Ph.D., Forensics.

  Nina swiped her passcard through the maglock and the door opened.

  "Go.” Paulson said, shoving again.

  Skater went with it. He was deep inside himself, holding tight where no emotions could touch him. Maybe he’d already accepted Larisa’s death; he wasn’t sure. Maybe it was just that too much had happened. The numbness felt permanent, like nerve-death.

  A small anteroom held a short black female who barely gave them a glance when they entered. She was studying diagrams on a deck. "Hello, Lance, Nina: Doc’s inside waiting on you.”

  The smell filling the room was cloying and made the air thick in Skater’s chest. He had to force himself to breathe it.

  The only other door was to the left. A steady electronic whir came from it. Skater walked toward it, watching as more and more of the gleaming machinery covering the walls came into view.

  A chromed ball hung from the ceiling, nearly two-dozen articulated arms jutting out from it. Each of them ended in another piece of medical hardware: scalpels, forceps, needles, bone saws, and a chest spreader.

  “Doc.” Nina said, staying back from the slanted table where a burned and blackened corpse lay stretched out in unclothed vulnerability. “We were told you had a confirmed idee.”

  Dr. Means sat in a chair at the corner of the room facing them. A helmet was fitted over his head, hardwired into the computers behind him. Rectangular glasses covered his eyes.

  On the armrests, his hands played over a series of buttons, toggles, and joysticks. “I’m pretty sure of it.”

  In response to his movements the ball descended over the corpse and two of the articulated arms whirred smoothly into motion.

  Skater felt Paulson’s heavy hand drop onto his shoulder, pushing him closer. He stopped a few steps away and tried to breathe as shallowly as possible. Burned flesh seared his nostrils.

  One look at the charred face let him know the corpse had once been Larisa Hartsinger. Somehow, the flames had caramelized her beauty, creating a hard, chitin-like exo-skeleton of her face. The shell was smooth, a deep burnished ebony with an undercurrent of dark red that gave off a glow around the edges. Her hair had been burnt off, leaving her skull with black stubble.

  The long, slim body was ravaged and twisted by fire. Incisions had been made to allow different medical apparatus passage. Three of the arms on the surgical ball rummaged inside the corpse, one of them making sucking sounds.

  “There’s the face, of course.” Means said. “The Crime Scene Unit made a tentative idee at the scene when they recovered the DB.”

  On the wall, one of the monitors flared to life. A picture of Larisa juiced the pixels.

  “I got this from the Department of Licensing when I found out the DMV didn’t have anything.” Means said. “Because she worked as a dancer at SybreSpace, I knew Hartsinger would probably be registered. Some of them aren’t, but Amanda Silvereyes runs a pretty tight ship.”

  Skater watched the monitor, keeping the memories at bay. The twisted thing on the lab table wasn’t Larisa. Larisa was gone, hopefully to a better place, but he didn’t know if he believed that.

  The image of Larisa on the monitor shrank and moved over, making room for a view of her burned face. The eyes were open in the picture, looking like ice cubes that had gone gray with age, fixed in a thousand-meter stare.

  “I ran tests on the DNA.” Means said. “I was able to match the skin tone from pigmentation. I did the same for the hair and eyes.”

  The caramelized version of Larisa’s face lightened up, taking on a more human appearance. The gray eyes' turned deep hunter’s green.

  “She’d had her eyes altered,” the coroner said. “I was able to pick up enough of the traces of the cosmetic modifications to get a match on the color. I took a sample of her hair, also modified, from inside her scalp and made that match.”

  On the monitor, the burnt version of Larisa suddenly grew hair the coppery red color Skater remembered.

  “This is what she looked like before she died.” Means informed them. “I can show you what she looked like a few years ago. Before the cosmetic changes.”

  A third picture popped onto the other screen beside the other two. The girl in this one was not as pretty as Larisa. The bone structure was the same, but different. She was definitely slimmer, maybe anemic. Her eyes were a doe-brown, and her hair was mousy brunette, thin and plastered to her skull.

  Skater had never seen that Larisa. It was like looking at a stranger. Except that he could see the other Larisa Waiting to spring forth out of this one.

  He was suddenly aware that there was so much he’d never known about her, that he’d never let her know about him. During the time they’d been together, he hadn’t thought much about it. Life was to be lived now.

  But standing there, looking at the three pictures of her on the coroner’s wall, standing in front of her mortal remains and knowing she hadn’t died an easy death, Skater felt the loss. It ached inside him, cold and hard and edged.

  "You run a check on her?” Paulson asked.

  “Yes. It’s all in my report. The SIN was hers from birth. She has a mother still living in the sprawl. I assume you’ll want to talk to her.”

  Skater didn’t let the surprise show. Larisa had never mentioned a mother. But neither of them had been exactiy forthcoming about their secrets.

  “Yeah.” Paulson said. “We’ll talk to her. But I think we’ve already got the doer in custody.”

  Means slipped his head out of the helmet. Even sitting in the chair, Skater could see that he was tall. He had blond hair and blue eyes, and a lantern jaw. The guy could have been a new anchor on the trid. “Did you check him out for magic?”

  “Came up negative.” Nina said.
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  Means nodded. “Then you’ve possibly got one of the doers. This woman was shot first, then fried with some kind of fire blast.”

  “This guy’s a shooter.” Paulson said. “We didn’t turn up a partner.”

  “Someone else was involved.” Means said. “That woman was hit with a spell that left her like that. Whoever killed her wanted her identified, maybe as a warning. Was she connected?”

  “Not anywhere that we could find.” Nina said. “But working the dance floor at SybreSpace, she could have been. We’re still looking.”

  Skater let the silence that followed draw out for a time, then, “What about the baby?”

  “What baby?” Paulson demanded. “Nobody at the scene mentioned a baby.”

  “Ask him.” Skater nodded at the corner.

  “There was no baby found at the scene.” Means replied. “But my tests show she’d given birth within the last three weeks.”

  A knot Skater hadn’t known was inside him suddenly came loose. He breathed a little easier. Maybe some part of Larisa was still alive.

  “Was there anything in the Montgomery files about a baby?” Paulson asked his partner.

  The troll flipped through her notes. “No. The apartment was leased in Hartsinger’s name only. The rent was paid to the Montgomery account by the first of the month ever since she moved in three months ago.”

  “She was making the payments?”

  “Yes.” Nina responded. “From an account with Garrison First.”

  “How old was the account?” Paulson asked.

  “Three months.”

  “Amazing, huh?” Paulson asked sarcastically. “Can we trace the money that went into that account?”

  “I’ll make a note.”

  Without giving the appearance of listening, Skater memorized every word. He’d been set up. The team had been set up. Now, it was looking like Larisa had been set up, too. He still didn’t know if she’d known his head was being put on the chopping block.

  “What do you think about this?” Paulson asked, turning to face Skater. “You think your girlfriend could have made the kind of nuyen she needed to live in a place like the Montgomery from her salary and tips?”

  “She was a good dancer.” Skater answered. But he knew the high life wasn’t something Larisa would have been comfortable with. She liked having people she could talk to. “Damn sure doesn’t look like it now.”

  With some difficulty. Skater managed to let the comment slide by. His grip on himself was tenuous, and he knew it could snap at any time if he wasn’t careful.

  “How did you know about the baby?” Nina asked.

  “I saw the crib.” Skater said.

  “Nobody mentioned a crib.” Paulson said, looking at Means.

  The coroner shook his head. “After that fire, it’s hard to say.”

  “That where you got the teddy bear you had on you?” Nina asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Any special reason for picking it up?”

  “I figured if the baby got scared, the teddy bear might calm her.”

  “Her?”

  Skater nodded. “The baby is a girl.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “I saw the room before it burned. It was made up for a little girl. The clothes were all for a girl.”

  “So where is she?”

  “I don’t know.” Skater tried to answer in a neutral tone, like it didn’t matter. He thought Nina might have seen through it.

  “The baby could have already been gone.” Means said as he poured soykaf from a thermos. “Larisa Hartsinger had been dead at least an hour before the fire got to her.”

  “You’re sure?” Paulson asked.

  The coroner nodded.

  “You want to tell me about it now?” Paulson said, disgusted.

  Skater just looked at him. “I’m tired of talking.”

  10

  “You really think you’re some kind of tough guy, don’t you?” Paulson demanded. He swung the cell door hard. The lock clacked and clanked and seized up.

  Seated on the cot bolted into the wall, two and a half meters away from the crossbars keeping the groundhound out, Skater sat back against the wall and didn’t say anything. The cell was dark, spartan, and held a dank chill shoved deep into the bowels of the earth under the sprawl.

  Without another word, Paulson stalked off. Nina stood there looking at Skater with her big troll eyes, softer than they had been. “If we hear about the missing baby, I’ll make sure you know. And, here.” She unfolded her big troll fingers to reveal the stuffed, purple bear.

  “Thanks.” Skater stuffed the toy into his jumpsuit and looked up at her gratefully. “I owe you one.”

  She nodded, but the look she gave him told him that the only time she expected him out of the cell was for relocation to Metroplex Prison a few streets down and over. She walked away without saying anything else.

  The undercurrent of jail conversations broke out around him. Threats, wheedling, promises, crying, and the hopelessness of the lost surrounded him, mixed in the odors of blood, sweat, and sour flesh. Skater made himself comfortable on the cot and tried not to think about how many things might be living in the cell with him, six-legged as well as fungal.

  Being locked up scared him. He’d always hated being confined. As a boy growing up on the Council lands, Skater often liked to slip away by himself for hours at a time. When he got older and the old man had begun teaching him what he knew about surviving on the land, the two would go out for days. Andrew Ghost-step was a loner who didn’t talk much, leaving Skater to his own devices. It was a freedom the boy had savored.

  He was exhausted and tried to sleep, but images of Larisa kept darting through his mind like blood kites riding rebellious thermals. He remembered her face when they’d been together, how hard it was when she told him she didn’t want to see him anymore, and the way it was in the coroner’s office.

  He gave up and switched on the public trid built into the wail. A small retractable earpiece was mounted in the wall. He held it for a moment and considered the possibilities of someone jacking into the security system through the trid grid. Archangel would probably know how to do it, but he didn't. And even if he did, he had no deck.

  Slipping the earplug in, he listened to most of a commercial put out by DeGear’s Electronics. Then the news came on and the anchor switched to a reporter named Chelsea Sable. She was lanky and black, the irises in her eyes metallic gold with jet flakes. Her voice was calming and captured an audience easily with its huskiness.

  “So far," Sable told the anchor and the trid audience, “it looks like the bio to open a Seattle branch of the Tir Taimgire corporation of NuGene is going to meet with none of the roadblocks originally threatened by local opponents of the move. If anything, support for NuGene CEO Tavis Silverstaff is gaining momentum.”

  The trid cut to footage of an elf getting out of a luxury sedan in front of the Charles Royer Building. He was tall and impressive, with blue-black hair styled long, and a beard and mustache that lent him an air of royalty. He wore a crimson suit that set him off from everyone around him, accessorized by a white cape with gold trim. The footage had been shot during the day, and the jewels set into his gold walking stick glinted in the sun. His bodyguards stayed near him at all times, a protective wall of flesh and bone.

  Silverstaff reached back into the car and a female elf jointed him, clinging to his arm. She was a full head shorter than he was, delicate and slender, except for her obvious pregnancy. Her dress was conservative, in a crimson that went well with the man’s.

  “One of KTXX’s sources today told this reporter that support for NuGene’s expansion into Seattle is part of an effort to keep the elven nation of Tir Taimgire from redeveloping Portland as a major port city. As economists often point out, re-opening Portland to any degree would cut deeply into Seattle’s position as prime port of entry for trade goods in the region. UCAS interests have also thrown in their support for NuGene be
cause a reinvigorated Portland would slash their tax-base in Seattle.”

  Silverstaff shook hands on his way into the building, a genuine smile on his face.

  Skater closed his eyes and put his hands behind his head, willing himself to relax. The woman’s voice was soothing, and he focused on it the way he used to do with his grandfather’s words.

  Harsh voices interrupted his unexpected drowsing. Opening his eyes, Skater glanced at the trid. For a moment, he thought he must have slept through the news into a movie. Then he realized the jerky quality of the footage wasn’t from a cheap budget. It was because it was being filmed live from a hand-held unit.

  Four Lone Star uniforms were inside a house wreathed in spider’s webbing. Plywood sections covered the windows. The blue crew split into two groups, each armed with high-intensity flashlights and automatic weapons, which they fired freely into the dilapidated ceiling and walls. Trapped inside the house, the gunfire was a rolling onslaught of systematic thunder that challenged the trid’s stereo capabilities.

  Skater blinked, realizing he was scanning pictures of human beings that looked like they’d been torn apart and devoured by wild dogs. Two of them, their sex unknowable anymore, lay in the living room. The news team followed one group of uniforms into a dusty bedroom and turned the portacam on a young man who’d apparently been stabbed to death in his bed. Guts oozed out from huge rips in his torso. Another man, the supposed murderer, was stumbling around the room swinging what seemed to be one of his victim’s organs, occasionally going back to the bed and hovering gleefully over the gruesome corpse. The man’s clothes were soaked with blood and he was laughing, his head rolling around on his neck like a gyroscope. He seemed retarded, or demented. Skater watched, hypnotized.

  The man’s skin was yellowish, almost jaundiced-looking, and looked loose and flabby, as if he were hollow inside. His eyes were a mass of exploded blood vessels, rounded and red except for a small black dot for a pupil, the iris completely obliterated. He gazed stupidly at the high-intensity light and let out a peal of laughter.

  The Lone Star uniforms ordered him to move away from the dead man, but the demented man suddenly lunged at them instead. In an instant a hail of bullets chewed him up and threw him to the floor like a rag doll.