“Miss me, Chief?”
“You need to come down to the LaPierre Towers.” His tone of voice was off. He maintained a casual air as best he could, but something grave undergirded his words.
“I don’t exactly work for you anymore.”
“You’d want to be here. Besides, I distinctly recall a report coming across my net-log about a brawl between a tweaker and a peeper.”
“Is that any way to speak of so noble a profession as mine, you fat fuck?” Mac provoked him, hoping to unsettle Hollander enough to get a moment of honesty from him. Even just a glimpse.
“Get your ass down here and it gets buried.”
“Well, you do know where all the bodies are buried.”
Mac sighed with every movement, as if sleep had only left him even more exhausted. He shambled to the sink. No sign of whoever he had spent the night with. His muscles ached. Bandaged wounds opened up slightly, spots of blood soaked through their wraps. His joints creaked and popped as he moved; the body in the reflection was easily a decade older than his thirty-nine years. He splashed water on his face.
Mac had always imagined that he’d have an office with one of those classic pebbled glass door panels with the words Mac Peterson, Investigations in bold black letters across it. The letters might be chipped around the edges to add character to the sign. Instead, he had a message service and a table in whatever establishment in Old Town was open.
“You ain’t pretty,” he started in at his reflection. “You ain’t that bright. You ain’t that funny. Or charming. There’s nothing in you worth loving.”
Like an offering to the stirring serpent in his belly, he repeated his daily mantra aloud. His core truths to begin the day, bottoming himself out; that way the day could only get better from there.
Maybe the eruption event had been a sign of the end and the apocalyptos had it right.
Rows of phosphorous blue lanterns blotted out the night sky, creating an alien vista, completely different from the memory of only a few years ago, the only remnants of the caustic dust kicked up those nights twenty years ago. The glowing canvas rendered the downtown skyline in a perpetual twilight, like a forest under a thick canopy of tree branches. Giant stone buildings rose in the dimness, obsidian behemoths, like death’s bony fingers protruding from where they had inexplicably ruptured from the ground. Since the eruption event, the city-dwellers liked to whisper stories of men and women, those mixed-up souls ready to end it all, blissfully swimming upward through the opaque, dense air until they reached the top of the alien structures, where they found paradise and disappeared into the forever of the cosmos.
“Bullshit,” Mac whispered to no one in particular.
Mac viewed life through a lens of skepticism and impatience; the towers and the flight to heaven—complete and utter nonsense. Surrounded by a mess of blood, brain matter, and pieces of bits he could only guess were the remains of internal organs, the crime scene told another story he struggled to make sense of. Two bodies had exploded like human grenades upon impact after falling from the top of the tallest structure. His gaze followed the jutting stone until it disappeared into the haze. Maybe these two had been evicted from heavenly paradise and tossed to their deaths, he mused. The foul stench failed to turn the detective’s stomach, as he’d long grown accustomed to the stink of death. Thousands had died when the tower first shattered the mantle of the earth’s surface. It appeared as if this tower had simply claimed two more.
Mac lit up a Redi-Smoke and inhaled. Genetically engineered to mimic the effects of nicotine, the companies benefitted from using chemical formulas that hadn’t been banned yet. The packaging of the Redi-Smoke produced only wisps of smoke, which dissipated in the mouth almost immediately. The company’s marketing campaign preyed on the ritual of smoking itself, per VCC regulations. All Mac needed to know was that the burn leeched away at his lungs; the genetically-enhanced tobacco-like buzz hit hard and quick, dispelling most of his annoyance at being called out in the middle of the Godforsaken night for yet another tower death. The victims had been falling for months now, one or two a week. No leads, no evidence. Nobody could make out whether the jumpers were murdered or simply succumbed to an inner nihilistic cry, compelled to commit suicide. Whatever the case, Mac wished the bullshit would end.
“Hey, Mac. Sorry to call you in, but you know how it is.” The city’s deputy chief of police appeared out of the fog. Hollander grimaced at the scene around them before he shook Mac’s hand. Gray hair wrapped like a horseshoe on the chief’s otherwise bald head. He sported a Hitler mustache on his egg-shaped face as if he could bring the affectation back, but his extra jowls only accentuated the ridiculousness of his appearance. And his hands were too soft, like a woman’s. The blue haze darkened his eyes, seeming to erase them. Mac held the pack of smokes out to him, but the deputy chief declined.
“Yeah?” Mac pushed his hat down over his face, covering his eyes in shadows. “Well, fuck you. You want to tell me why the fuck either of us are out here stomping through the remains of some sorry-assed tower jumpers?” He knew the dance of bullshit when he saw it. The chief was holding back. No way was he going to be on scene, much less call out Mac, unless it was important.
“It’s a bad one.” The chief stepped gingerly around bits of innards. “It’s one of our own this time.”
“What do you have?” Mac asked.
The chief grabbed Mac by the elbow and led him a couple of feet away from the nearest set of ears. Mac couldn’t help but think that his former boss didn’t want to be seen with him. “A lot of shit is going down and I need you braced for it. Does the name Harley Wilson ring a bell for you?”
“Not even a little.”
“Goddamn, Mac, you live in a cave?”
“Hey man, fuck you. I don’t have a Stream connect, so I also don’t get the latest news on your favorite teen pop stars. You’re lucky I have a cop-net linkup.”
“Right. Whatever, you Luddite piece of shit. Harley Wilson’s that gangbanger out of Easton. Suspected of making that hit on, shit…”
“Shit? Seems strange that a loving mother would take a look at the sweet product of her loins and name it ‘Shit,’” Mac said.
“Always with the jokes. Anyways, I can’t remember the name. Some corporate muckety-muck. It’s in my notes back at the office. But this isn’t about him. It’s about Kiersten.”
“My ex?” That serpent in his belly stirred. The gentle swell of anxious nausea left him uneasy, and Mac wanted Hollander to just spit it out. “Last I heard, she’d been working undercover. Bravest lady I know.”
“Kiersten had been running with Wilson the past couple of months.” Hollander stared at his feet. “The squints in the lab have confirmed that the bodies who fell tonight were Harley Wilson and Kiersten Wybrow.”
The world lost its axis, and Mac leaned against a storefront wall. Kiersten. A rush of emotions hit him at once. Mac covered his face with his hand. The azure haze of the night skies shifted with the clouds, hiding his grief. He pushed the pain back, down into a personal dark space, a well to draw upon when needed, when the time was right.
“You all right, Mac?” Hollander stepped closer, concern underscoring his voice.
“Me and Kiersten were still…close…” A moment of silence passed between the two men. The bottom fell out of where he thought he had bottomed out. Only a yawning chasm of grief awaited him. His head went light with the vertigo of pain, but he steadied himself before anyone else saw. He scanned the onlooking sets of eyes just in case.
“I’m sorry, Mac. I had no idea.”
“I’ll go check out the scene.”
Hollander placed his hand on Mac’s shoulder. “You know I can’t let you do that. We need background, then your ass is going home.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“You’re too close. The judicial net would make any case we built that included your involvement ass-wipe worthy. But you should already know: folks who kill one of our own do not go unpunished. We don’
t need the other predators getting it in their heads that it’s open season on LG Security Force members. They need to know who runs these streets. No one, and I mean no one, sleeps in Easton tonight. We’re rounding up all of the Easton MS crew. Hitting all of their spots. We will knock down every door, bust every head, and make business very difficult for them until we have who did this. I hope you hear me on that, Mac.”
“Who’s working it?”
“Ade Walters.”
“Spookbot?” Mac reached for another Redi-Smoke, doing his best to hide the slight tremor of his hands.
“Don’t let him hear you call him that or you’ll be in sensitivity reprogramming for a month. Or in a full body cast.”
“Can I get some professional courtesy at least?” The unsteady strains of pain crept into his voice. “Someone’s got to speak for her.”
“You need to be careful. Grieving people are prone to rash decisions and poor impulses.” Mac met him with a stony, eye-to-eye glare. Hollander eventually sighed. “I suppose Ade will have a few questions for you. But don’t make a mess of the scene. It’s his show.”
The gore on the street and walls now had a name. Kiersten. Bits of her covered the whole area. The force of impact reduced her to a crimson smear. “Isn’t this the scene?”
“This is just part of it. Follow me.” Hollander patted Mac’s shoulder, careful not to have too much or too lingering contact. Mac had never been comfortable with people touching him. Hollander escorted Mac to the penthouse roof as if not trusting him to go alone.
The Lifthrasir Group was the fifth-largest multinational in what remained of the United States and the American DreamTM. As America’s debt load grew too large for even it to service, several corporations had purchased statewide territories. The Lifthrasir Group owned what had once been Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. Those territories were especially hard hit by the eruptions and the subsequent societal upheaval called The Trying TimesTM, but the Lifthrasir Group funded their own internal security forces.
The duo entered a nearby stone building and took the elevator to the top. People’s resourcefulness never ceased to amaze Mac. Once explored and examined, the structures had been declared sound and people had begun using them as homes. At first only the desperate and needy, but they had been dislocated by the hipsters and nouveau riche, making it the popular thing to do.
When the doors opened to the rooftop, a wind gusted inside and carried along with it the towers’ signature smell of sulfur mixed with burnt ozone. The stink gave Mac a headache. His tongue suddenly felt coated with paste.
The pair walked over to a figure crouched near the edge of the roof.
“Detective Ade Walter, Former Detective Mac Peterson. Mac here was…acquainted with the deceased.”
“Kiersten Wybrow,” Ade said, then paused as if reading an invisible file. “Her jacket’s exemplary. She even disclosed your relationship once the two of you started seeing one another, as required by protocol. Her file had been sealed due to her temporary assignment.”
Mac grunted and glanced at Hollander.
Ade stood up and faced them. At six foot seven, Ade easily towered over the two of them. He had bulk on his frame, too, but carried it with the easy grace of a boxer. Spent too much money on his pin-striped suit, much less that custom brown trench coat that he’s sporting, Mac thought, suddenly self-conscious of his tattered raincoat—despite its dampener lining—worn over an off-the-rack jacket.
Then there was Ade’s face. The left half had been replaced. Around the eye, down the left cheek, and down to the collarbone, the silver gleam of metal glinted in the cerulean light. Mac could barely make out the tube, stemming from Ade’s neck before it wound into his suit. It attached somewhere to a pack on his side that released scheduled fresh supplies of nanobots into his bloodstream to facilitate the workings of the cybernetic implant. An affectation of the wealthy, most of whom had the common decency to get the skin grafting to cover the prosthetic.
“Others in her acquaintance are still under ethics inquiry.” Ade sniffed in Mac’s direction.
“Is that right?” Mac turned back to Ade.
“Standard procedure, Detective,” Hollander answered.
“Since when?”
“Gentlemen, you want to bicker all night or work the case?” Ade asked.
“Fine. Wanna lay it out for me?” Mac asked.
Ade glanced over at Hollander, who nodded, before he fixed his high-res imager on Mac, taking in whatever data streamed across his screen. “Signs of a struggle. Microabrasions on the floor. Trace amounts of DNA. Unidentifiable residue.”
“So you’ve got nothing. Like the rest of the Goddamned jumper cases.”
“We could…use help running down a few things,” Hollander said. “Off-the-books stuff. Like a consultant.”
Ade fixed the red gleam of his implant squarely on the chief. “I appreciate the offer, but I have things covered.”
“Now hold on; perhaps the esteemed deputy chief makes a good suggestion,” Mac said. “Besides, you don’t expect me to sit on my ass and do nothing, do you?”
“No. I expect you to preen about like the Neanderthal throwback you pretend to be. You’ll suffer through the pain of Ms. Wybrow’s loss alone because you think that’s how men do things. As that rarely works, you’ll drink yourself into a stupor to quell the pain rather than deal with it. Then once that temporary measure proves as empty a gesture as it ultimately ever is, you’ll fix yourself on vengeance by way of ‘finding who did it.’ And then do your level best to shit all over my fine case. So can we skip all the cliché cop bullshit? I’ll keep you in the loop—but I need you to give me room to conduct this investigation. Are we clear on that?” Ade again glanced in Hollander’s direction, but this time for Mac’s benefit.
“Yeah, we’re clear,” Mac said with a sour grin and amused eyes.
“Good.”
Hollander turned on his heel. As soon as he was out of earshot, Ade stepped near. “I remember you from the Ritenour case. You were stand-up then, even if the brass didn’t see it that way. What was it you said then?”
Carlos Ritenour. What a mess of a case. It started when Mac was dispatched to a domestic disturbance. A man had beaten his three-year-old adopted son so badly both legs were broken and his entire head was an off shade of blue from all of the bruises that had amassed. Mac called for paramedics, never once taking his eyes from the boy.
“Do. Not. Move,” was all Mac said to the man, not turning around to look at him. The man froze. Ten minutes until medical help arrived. Only the sound of their breathing broke the silence. The man didn’t so much as twitch. Mac never said another word the entire time, only stared at the boy. The boy shivered, a thin trail of mucous streaming from his nose, in too much pain to even comfort. Eyes swollen shut so he couldn’t make out Mac even if he could lift his head. Mac loomed over him, his rage building.
The paramedics on the scene circled Mac with a wide berth, sensing the mounting fury. They treated the boy, comforting him with meds and soothing tones as they loaded him for transport to the hospital. Right before he left the scene, the paramedic took one last glance at Mac and of the father, but thought better of asking any questions.
As it turned out, Carlos Ritenour was one of many children brought in as a part of an underground sex ring for the nouveau riche. All of their predilections and perversions spent on children brought in from around the globe with no citizenship status. Thus, in the eyes of the law, they didn’t exist.
Mac led the team who busted the ring. All sorts of powerful businessmen and politicos were brought low in the scandal.
No one ever found the body of the man accused of beating Carlos Ritenour. Nor were any charges filed. But the swirling rumors about the disappearance centered around Mac. Not to mention that the enemies he made of the friends of the rich and powerful brought low by the scandal created enough behind-the-scenes furor to cost Mac his job.
He never regretted any part of that.
/> Mac placed his thumb and forefinger on the bridge of his nose and concentrated on getting his head straight. The memories didn’t help. The job was the job and his days on it were numbered from the jump. Mac was never going to make rank. He wasn’t that kind of cop. He made cases, even if it meant putting his thumb on the scales of justice every now and then. He didn’t have to think very long for the words that had made him famous among the rank and file for a season. “‘The law has a way of getting in the way of justice. Our true calling is the pursuit of justice no matter where it takes us. That’s what binds us together and makes us family. And family is family.’”
“Yeah, that’s it.” Ade fished in his pockets for a pair of designer gloves and slipped them on. “Anyway, not much is on the Stream about the Easton MS crew. The set not jacked in?”
“Nope. Staying off the Stream is part of their code.”
“You close to them?”
“Close as I need to be.”
“I could use some street-level intel I can depend on,” Ade said.
“Meet me at Fourth and Transom in two hours.”
When they broke their conspiratorial huddle, they spied Hollander frowning. He shook his head and skulked off.
As only a few could afford cars, there were few streets in Old Town, only emergency corridors. Most people made do with either the sidewalks or the tram. If they were crazy enough to take the tram. Or crazier to walk. Mac took the underground tram to Easton, not having any patience for street preening and the ritual eyefuck of those who made him as a cop. He had never lost that cop walk, that puffed-up, straight-backed waddle of owning all he surveyed. Times like this, he wished he could still flash his badge to clear the car. Instead, nestled near the rear of the car, he hunched over on a bench. Despite being surrounded by people, he was alone. He dreaded moments like this. The stillness. When he had time to think. And feel. Grief threatened to devour him, to suck the marrow from his bones. His hands trembled with helplessness and he stuffed them into his pockets as if that would magically quell his racing mind and the torrent of memories. His mouth watered at the thought of a drink. The rusting steel wall across from him held a bit of wisdom scrawled into the surface with a knife: “Escape is the way to salvation!”
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