Bone Wires

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Bone Wires Page 10

by Michael Shean


  He tried to imagine himself in the killer’s place, closing his eyes there, cup of coffee in his hand, the steam licking upward into the cold air of the dying morning. He could see himself holding the theoretical weapon, the wide, tapered, paddle-shaped blade posited in the medical examiner’s report. The point of it passing into the wiry topography of Askew’s back, drawing an apocalyptic furrow from the back of his neck to just above his hips. If the blade nicked the spine, there was no evidence of spalling or fragments; it would take a deft hand, a surgeon’s touch, to lay open the muscles like that. And then…the neat breaching of the sacs between the vertebrae on both ends, delicately severing the spinal column. The hissing of fluid, the smell of roasting tissues that had never seen the open air. If Askew had not died yet, he certainly would have at this point as his half-cooked organs failed and necessary autonomic instructions failed to reach the survivors. Askew would lay there, the muscles would relax, the light would vanish from his eyes, and that would be it. The killer would then leave with his or her gory trophy. It must have been a male, he thought. It would take strength to do what was done, even with the help of a heated blade. Bone would still require power to cut through. The spine would have to be pulled away from any viscera. And both men were very solid; it would take strength to arrange them into the hideous pose in which both had been found. But then again, perhaps it was a strong woman. Muscular, or perhaps on stimulants or with some form of bionic augmentation…

  The possibilities of modern technology, and the people who used it to murder other people, gave him all manner of horrible avenues to consider.

  Gray opened his eyes, took his palm computer out of his coat pocket with his free hand, and thumbed the power button. The holographic display fired up, and he called up the medical examiner’s report on both murders. In both cases the cutting seemed to be done from the neck down, and both 'bonings' had been done after the victims had been put into position. He thought about Donner, how thin and ghoulish he had been. Too weak, he thought. Definitely too weak. Well who the fuck else could have done it? Not Mrs. Kim, who had been too old and fat to do much of anything other than run that place as best she could. No, something was fucked up. Something was missing. His face screwed up in irritation as he killed the display and piled himself into the Vectra.

  Starting up the car, he saw a message alert on the console’s display. “Play messages,” he announced to the computer, and instantly the unsure face of Officer Park, the kid from the Askew’s building, sprang into view. He had his helmet on, but Gray could tell it was him under the visor that covered his eyes; the kid’s face was unmistakable, the kind mouth turned down at the corners with indecision, his cheek marred with the livid purple blotch of a bruise. “Hey, Detective,” he said, sounding almost painfully shy as he spoke into whatever public information terminal he was using; a run-down Verge street stretched on behind him. “Uh, I just wanted to say thanks. H.R. got in touch with me today, and asked me about what all had been going on with Officer Manson….I guess you told them about the situation. I told them what I knew. I’m getting reassigned.” His face brightened at that, then dipped again. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with Officer Manson, but I don’t think he’s going to get in trouble. I think they’re just making it go away, you know how it is. They’re putting Flint and me together! I think that’s pretty great. So, ah, I just wanted to say thanks…and you can always count on me if you need something. I owe you one.”

  You probably do, kid, thought Gray as he cycled to the next message – he figured that his next brush with Manson wouldn’t be anything close to kind. He’d made an enemy there, and a Pacifier was not the best kind of enemy to have. Pacifiers were street cops. They had the everyday power. They were usually the first on the scene. If Manson was willing to strike a civilian for no reason other than to shut her up, he was most likely not above trying to fuck up Gray’s day if he got half the chance. Fucking Pacifiers, Gray thought. Riot cops given routine patrol duty. That’s what you get when local civilization is surrounded by murderers and thieves on the best of days. Except for folks like Flint and Park, your average Pacification Officer had a nasty streak that made real what last century’s public only feared as a possibility in their police. It gave the company a bad name in Gray’s opinion, and he knew it didn’t help his job any when he went down into the Verge. Paranoia had become reality, which only proved to Gray that most people were, in fact, out to get you after all.

  The next message came from Carter. He was calling from his sedan, a massive Beguero Lapis that looked like it could seat six hookers in the back seat – better suited for Vice, in Gray’s opinion, not for Homicide. But then again, that’s the kind of cash the higher tiers made. “Looked into the situation that you told me about,” he said, looking down into the camera of the car’s console. Despite the angle that Gray had, it felt as though he was being looked down at by the senior detective even now. “Looks like there may be something to it. Jimmy Black-Eyes is actually James Black-Eyes, a member of the Duwamish Sons. You know I was telling you about them using an industrial waterknife to cut a guy up that owed them money a few years ago – I heard there might be some bizarro faction among their numbers that you might do well to look into. Tribal stuff, you know, real card-carrying stereotypes. Anyway, this guy is down with his crew down the Waterway, over near the old park. They hang out there since it’s been abandoned – though I’d watch out if I were you. I hear they don’t like ‘them palefaces’.” He winked at the last bit before killing the message, and Gray shook his head. He could never be sure if Carter was racist or if he was just getting his chain jerked. Gray checked the time (eleven fifty-two,) checked his allotted project hours remaining (forty three hours, ten minutes,) and then checked the car’s onboard map. Oh boy, back to White Center! And down by the Duwamish Waterway! If he didn’t get killed by an angry Son, he might just get a wonderful case of heavy metal poisoning just being close to the shore.

  Gray heaved a sigh and pulled off the curb, and started off down the street as the meager shafts of noontime light raked the city like a halfhearted satellite strike. He’d prefer that to having to go down to the old park and deal with these jokers any day. Maybe he’d get lucky and a beam would bake the car.

  Though he wished the whole way down that one of the errant beams of noontime light that broke the clouds would be an errant laser, Gray found his course unharried as he drove down along the Duwamish Waterway. The New City fell away and the Verge began, and the water was a rainbow-filmed ribbon as it sloshed dubiously on its way toward the Sound. Gray had only been down this part of town once or twice, and it was never as far as the Waterway – this was new territory for him, new and dangerous, though he was somewhat sure that he would be able to make his way along unmolested. As he drove past an intersection, an example of that which made him so sure of this swung into sight – a trio of Pacifiers were busy roughing up a pair of kids in monocyle leathers with kinetic batons, bending them both over the hood of a patrol car. Heavy clubs across the backs of their thighs, they twisted in misery.

  Between that brutality and the automatic shotguns fixed on the backs of the Pacifiers, Gray believed two things: that the everyday folks down in this area were going to be respectful or at least very shy of anyone who even looked like they might produce a badge, and that there was a great possibility that those boys down at the park might very well drill him as soon as they saw him coming. Or maybe he’d get lucky and the Pacification boys had worn them down into a state of cooperation.

  As he picked his way along the lonely stretch of highway that ran along the turgid water, he wondered if he might find himself very soon dumped in with the rest of the junk.

  Eventually he pulled off the highway and made his way down South Kenyon around the bend into the park proper. The water glittered as the feeble light of the sun danced across it, like a pane of black glass into which islands of trash and wrecked barges had been embedded. Really, it was amazing that this sort of
thing went on long before the city had its troubles; Gray had always grown up thinking that the city had been at least somewhat better than this before the economic collapse that gave birth to its current zoned existence, but sights of the rusting bones of vessels and equipment that jutted out of the water made him wonder. His attention was pulled away from the rotting industrial corpses as he drew up on Tenth Avenue, which ran parallel to the park.

  The park itself wasn’t much, just a strip of land ending in a small stretch of beach. Bracketed by the street and an industrial lot, a waist-high railing of iron painted blue stretched around it like a cordon. As Gray parked the Vectra along the street opposite the park, he saw that his arrival had gotten attention; a pair of young men in street clothes had emerged from the wooded expanse, their faces tattooed heavily in what someone might have imagined to be a native totemic style – the leering faces of Owl and Jaguar were emblazoned on their skin in livid red ink like death masks. It was a cartoonish affectation, but effective in conveying the violence that the Sons were known for. It made Gray’s blood quicken and he was glad for the weight of the Hornisse against his ribs.

  The two men stopped on the other side of the street, where they leaned against the park fence. They were casual about it, even when Gray got out of the Vectra – and why not? This was their territory, after all. Gray was the interloper here. Jaguar tilted his head toward Gray as he approached.

  “Hey, man,” he said, “What’re you here for? You wanna buy some Shard?” Jaguar sneered a little at Gray, looking him over with green eyes that had been doctored to look as though they had slit pupils.

  “He looks like he’s buying for someone else if he is,” said Owl. Owl was a bigger man than Jaguar, and his gaze made Gray feel as if he was getting an inspection from a hand sensor and not a man at all. Cold, penetrating. “Look at the way he’s dressed.”

  “True enough,” said Jaguar, whose sneer had widened. “That it, man? You buying for some uptown cunt don’t want to get her shoes dirty?”

  Gray took a moment to judge the two men. He could probably bullshit past Jaguar, but his friend had too good of an eye – and if he lied to them, he’d probably end up dead either way. Instead he reached for his pocket, slowly enough that the two men wouldn’t be alarmed, and produced his Blue Shield.

  “Detective Gray,” he said. “Homicide Solutions. I’m here to see James Black-Eyes.” Gray held the badge in his left hand, so that his right could go for his gun if he needed to. Even now, he felt his body preparing for action if need be.

  “Shiiiiit.” Jaguar stared at the badge for a moment, then looked back at Owl. “We kill anybody lately and nobody tell me?”

  “Not that I know of,” Owl said, though he gave the badge a squint. “Blue badge. You junior dicks don’t usually get sent down here.”

  Gray felt his blood heat up. “Not so junior,” he managed to say without hissing. “Tier Three. I’m not here to try and bust your chief, just talk to him – respectfully, you understand?” Civil as he tried to sound, he’d had loved to pistol-whip Owl for fucking with him concerning his rank. Which was probably why he was still a Tier Three, he reminded himself. “No trouble for you boys at all.”

  Owl and Jaguar looked at each other for a long moment; they seemed to reach an understanding with one another, however, because Jaguar looked back at him and nodded. “All right,” he said, “We’ll take you at your word – but I’ll warn you, man, you take a step out of place it’ll be the dumbest chance you ever took in your life.” His hand moved – no, blurred – across his chest, dipping into his jacket and coming out with a four-barreled snub pistol whose wide barrels yawned like angry mouths. The draw had been so fast it was as if it had been plucked out of the air. “You get me?”

  Gray’s brows arched at the movement – the kid was boosted, bionics or nerve-enhancement surgery. Now that was unexpected, and suddenly Gray didn’t feel nearly quite so confident that he would get out this alive if something went wrong. “Hey, don’t worry about me, man,” he said, lifting his free hand in a conciliatory gesture. “I just want to talk. Do you want to take me to him, or should I come back later?” With a full Special Tactics unit, he thought. The paramilitary arm of Civil Protection were heavily armed and well-armored, perfect for dealing with borged-up people like Jaguar in the kind of language they understood.

  Though Gray did not say the latter, the sentiment seemed to float into Jaguar’s brain anyway. He gave Gray a narrow look, then blurred the gun away. “Sure,” he said, something like appreciation dawning in his altered eyes. “Let’s go talk to him. Just keep your hands at your sides, you get me?” He swung a leg over the low park fence and headed back inside. Gray followed him, with Owl bringing up the rear. Together the three of them headed across the narrow strip of parkland toward the beach.

  The park itself had seen the ravages of the water; the grass was yellow and patchy, the ground beneath it an unhealthy gray-brown. Shattered glass glittered among the beer cans strewn across the ground. More of the Sons sat on rusting benches or on lawn chairs, their faces branded by the livid red of totem faces like the rest. Cat, Bear, something that looked like a shark, all of them lurid masks that promised death and ruin. Behind a withered tree, someone was getting head from a girl who, though on her knees and largely hidden by the trunk, seemed to Gray to be very young. Then again, her face was also tattooed, and it was very hard to determine precisely what her age was.

  Or at least, that’s what he told himself. Not his problem, not his crime. She was branded with the mark, obviously a part of the gang, and that’s how life was. Eyes ahead – and toward the beach, and toward whatever would get him the hell back out of there unscathed. He wasn’t a coward, he told himself. There was no point in getting drilled over someone who was obviously part of the system.

  Up ahead the beach loomed. Perhaps it had been dark before, but now it was nothing more than tar sand. A cluster of Sons stood around at the edge of the water, their hair in various crested, angry styles, all of them carrying various kinds of guns. Some of them wore body armor. One of them, right in the center, sat cross-legged on a large leather chair that once had been overstuffed but had been vented in places by tears and what appeared to be bullet holes.

  Upon this corpse of a chair was a tall and powerful man, so tall in fact that his head still made it to the shoulders of his fellows. Unlike the rest of the Sons, whose racial heritage had been diluted by obvious intermarriage, this man was obviously the real deal – his skin was coppery and his handsome face set with the strong nose and high cheekbones of his people. His head had been shaved, covered with red tattoos of not just one but all the totem animals that Gray had seen upon the faces of his followers – each one biting into the other, forming a bizarre mask that tugged at fear circuits of Gray’s primordial brain. His scarred body seemed impossibly lithe, every inch of him cut and muscular, as if he had been built from an idealized template; as if in recognition of that he sat wearing only a pair of black bicycle shorts, but these were as out of character as a fig leaf taped over the crotches of Michelangelo’s nudes.

  James Black-Eyes fixed his gaze on Gray as he approached, and Gray saw that the term was not a surname but a chilling descriptor: his eyes had been completely removed, the lids shaved away and the black pits of his empty sockets staring back at the detective with full and obvious recognition. In the far back of each tiny studs glittered, sensor studs of some kind. This man was an apex predator, the culler of others in his species, and it made Gray’s skin crawl as if it wished to detach itself and flee his presence.

  “Alexander, Marco.” His voice was a rumbling that made Gray’s innards clench; it took him a moment to realize that Black-Eyes was referring to Jaguar and Owl. “Who is this that you bring before me?”

  “Uh, he’s CivPro,” said Jaguar, his tone slightly nervous. Gray saw from the corner of his eye that Jaguar could not look directly at his chieftain. “Homicide. He, uh, says he wants to talk to you.” Then he added, very
hastily indeed, “But he doesn’t want to start any shit.”

  “No?” Black-Eyes turned his pits fully on Gray, who was busy attempting to keep his expression flat as his every herd instinct screamed for him to flee. “That is a very strange thing to hear, a policeman who comes to my realm and does not wish to cause…trouble.”

  “It’s true in any case,” said Gray, in a voice which he was at least a little proud to say did not stumble. “Detective Gray. Homicide, as he said. I’m just here to talk to you.”

  “I see,” said Black-Eyes, and he smiled – revealing sharp teeth, canine transplants yellowed in their sockets. The herd animal inside Gray shuddered. “And what do you want to talk about, Detective?”

  Gray pursed his lips and collected himself. “Did you know,” he said, “That someone is taking spines in White Center?”

  No response. The wind stirred, the water sloshed. Behind them, the soft, rhythmic gasps of the girl from behind the tree as things escalated between herself and her boy. Gray felt as though something was building between them, a tenseness that, if it snapped, might well see the horror-man biting out his throat.

  But instead Black-Eyes only smiled again, and that was an awful relief. “Are you coming to make accusations, Detective?”

  “Not at all,” said Gray, feeling himself in a little more of a balanced position now. “On the contrary, I’m here to ask if you know who might be trying to defame you. After all, the only people we know who’s done anything like this was the Sons, though that was done with a waterknife. You recall that, I imagine?”

 

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