“Yes Chief.”
The deputy chief stormed back to his office. Mac pointedly kept his back to Kiersten’s picture, as if it hurt too much to see her image. Her curly mop of brown hair. Her dark, sultry eyes that stole a man’s soul when they peered at him. The too-red thin lips of her about-to-get-into-trouble grin. But no matter where he stood, the weight of her profile bore down on him. “You didn’t mention Elia to him.”
“Because I have an uncooperative witness who hasn’t confirmed that it was her.”
“Is that what I am?” Mac asked.
“Not everything goes into my final report all at once. I still have questions. I need to be able to frame things in context. And I know where to find Elia should it prove to be her.”
“The fact that this case keeps coming back to Chike has nothing to do with it?”
“Mind your own.”
“I am. That’s how I got here in the first place.”
“Hollander’s true to his word.” Ade nodded to the monitor. “Tin Tin’s on his way to holding.”
Two guards escorted Quavay Middleton into the holding facility, which would double as the courtroom as a judicial net monitor burned to life. It was easier to hold the preliminary trial and motions at the station in order to streamline the judicial process. The overly pixilated image of a judge sputtered, the connection not very good, as Stream use for government use had even lower priority than those mandated for public access. The high mounted lights winked on, a single column illuminating Tin Tin’s space.
“Quavay Middleton,” the face of the judicial net said.
“Tin Tin,” he corrected.
“You stand accused of the murders of Harley Wilson and Kiersten Wybrow. How do you plead?”
“I didn’t do that shit.”
Mac turned to make a smart-ass comment to Ade, only to see that the detective’s pallor flush. He teetered for a bit, a tall tree on the verge of falling.
“What is it?” Mac half rose to steady him. “You don’t look okay.”
At first Ade’s face simply went slack, enraptured by images only he could see. Then he doubled over as if a searing blade sliced through his head. Mac caught the big man as he fell forward.
“Something’s wrong,” was all Ade could muster.
The image of the judge flickered, grayed with static, then went black. Quavay stood alone in his circle of light, surrounded by shadows. Too many shadows. He gestured wildly and appeared to be screaming, but no sound transmitted. Then that image, too, flickered, grayed with static, then went black.
“What’s going on?” Mac asked.
Ade pointed toward a console and Mac helped him to it. Ade slid the nail of his pinky finger back, revealing an exoport embedded in the tip, and he plugged into the panel. The feed on the monitor changed, and a new image burned to life. Tin Tin huddled in a corner. The point of view of the camera had changed. No longer was it a sweeping arc from the side of the room. It was much closer, peering down at Tin Tin. From the point of view of whoever was in with him. “Someone’s hijacked the signal to my eye.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Someone with juice. This tech isn’t easy to hack. This is what I’m seeing.”
“Yeah, I’m betting whoever installed that isn’t exactly in the refund business.”
The electric wail of a weapon discharge halted them in their spots, and their attention drew back to the screen. A hole had burned neatly through Tin Tin’s chest. His clothes still smoldered from the energy beam. Tin Tin’s body filled the screen, from the perspective of the assailant inspecting his (or her) handiwork. Then the contact signal broke. The screen went black, then reflected itself, as it was what Ade now saw. He withdrew his finger from the port.
“Lock the building down,” Ade said in a spent voice just above a whisper. Unsteady getting to his feet, his head seemed to clear as other Security Force officers pushed through their initial shock and their training took over. Mac followed, all but ignored in the ensuing rush. By the time the officers got back to the holding chamber, a crowd blocked the door. The two guards were being attended to by medics, returning to consciousness but otherwise unharmed. Tin Tin’s vacant eyes accused the gathered throng.
“I’m not exactly weeping over this one,” Hollander said.
“Sir?” Ade asked.
“They kill one of ours. They paid the price. Case closed.”
“Our brand of ‘blue justice’?”
“No, no. Of course not. I’m launching a full investigation. You can’t pull this cowboy shit on my watch,” Hollander said in an unconvincing tone. He all but signaled a going-through-the-motions investigation, strictly an exercise in filing paperwork. “I’ll just shake his hand before I Mirandize him. Or her.”
“How did he get in here? Or get out?” Ade asked.
“Double-check all personnel. I want to know who all has been in and out of this building,” Hollander said.
“It won’t matter. Whoever pulled this off had access. I bet every clearance is accounted for. They are one step ahead of us and two levels above our pay grade.”
“At least.”
“That stunt with my eye wasn’t easy. However, it automatically recorded the entire episode. Full spectrum analysis. I’m running a protocol now to see if I can backtrace the signal.”
“Let’s get this scene processed and let me know what you find. I’ll get everyone out of here. Short leash, Peterson.”
Already kneeling, Ade examined the weapon, which had been discarded without a care of it being traced back to the perpetrator. “A Cougar PT-10, like yours, except that this one is military grade. Energy charged.”
“Mine was a souvenir.” His Cougar PT-10 was the only token from the Michigan incursion. Prior to him being drummed out of military service, the Lifthrasir Group had initiated a hostile takeover of the Michigan territory but was rebuffed. The skirmish had lasted two years and Mac had served three consecutive tours in the futile engagement.
“After a couple hundred years,” he said, almost absently, “the design of a handgun hasn’t changed all that much.”
“There’s a romance to the image,” Mac said.
“You mean the image of men waving around their junk to see whose is bigger?”
“Let’s not be sexist: women wave around my junk too.”
“Right. Not sexist at all.” Ade continued, “Look at this: the primer has been shaved down so it wouldn’t snag if drawn quickly. And the grips are custom made. No fingerprints, no DNA.”
“Professional hitter?”
“A little beyond these disds.”
“It might be beyond them, but the case dead-ends with them. Once he was logged into the judicial net, it was a matter of prosecution.”
“Out of our hands.”
“Other than some paperwork, case closed.”
Mac hated the way things remained, like he’d been presented with a new sweater with a few threads dangling that he had to yank free. On paper it could work. The Easton MS crew got wind that Kiersten worked for Security Force. One of their hitters took out her and her snitch, Baraka or Harley or whatever the hell he was calling himself. It could have been Tin Tin, who then went after whatever evidence she had. Once detained, he had become a liability, either because of what he knew or to whoever actually carried out the hit. Regardless, there was still a killer to track, and a case to close if anyone cared: Tin Tin’s if not also Kiersten’s. But what truly bothered Mac was the sense of something bigger pulling at them and the investigation. Someone with the resources to hijack Ade’s eye, get in and out of LG Security Force headquarters, and have access to military hardware. Events moved too quickly, too neatly, not giving anyone a chance to think things through.
There were times when Mac dreamed of plunging his hands into soil, of getting dirt under his fingernails so thick that he would never seem to get completely clean. Of pulling weeds and tending to his young sprouting plants while sweat beaded along his forehead, falling in lar
ge droplets, and his shirt became completely drenched. The nagging sensation never left him, but he couldn’t put his finger on what exactly troubled him. The blaring wail of an incoming call only served to increase his growing irritation. The call was blocked, so no image or information came through. This was exactly why Mac didn’t have an office, only a messenger service that forwarded his calls through a series of anonymous proxies. That way he had no unexpected visitors, which meant no unanticipated mayhem and/or property damage.
“This better be good. I haven’t had coffee yet.” Mac tamped out a Redi-Smoke and put it between his lips, holding it there without lighting.
“Are you Mac Peterson? The investigator?” the voice sounded vaguely familiar, though hushed and muffled.
“Who’s asking?”
“Jesse Honeycutt.”
“Who?”
“Duppy.”
“Oh, Duppy.” Mac lit his Redi-Smoke. He let the rush hit his system and the smoke halo his mouth before he continued. “How are the eyes doing?”
“Me fe gwon spend two days after the clinic recovering,” Duppy said, then tired of putting in the energy for his accent. “We need to meet somewhere.”
“What for? Our last encounter left me ill disposed to meeting with you.”
“I have information.”
“What information could you possibly have interesting enough to make me go meet you somewhere, especially when you might harbor feelings of a violent nature directed toward my ass?”
“It’s about Tin Tin. He wasn’t where they said he was. He was with me.”
“Look, I’m sorry about your man. I know you two were close, but there’s nothing you can do for him now.”
“There’s the truth. That mattered to him.”
“Why not go to the Security Force?”
“The Security Force ain’t interested in the truth. They just want their cases closed no matter how many dead disds it takes to get there. Someone’s got to speak for him.”
The words had the echo of sincerity, but Mac also knew that junkies could be the sweetest of talkers. “All right. Meet you at Monument Boulevard. Is ten thirty past your bedtime?”
“Fuck you, you two bit bomboclott. Meet me at Lot Forty-Two.”
“Don’t you want to tell me to come alone?”
“Would it make a difference?”
“Suppose not.”
“Then let’s keep it honest.”
Waverton, like many cities, had its shadow side. The victim of benign neglect and the original site of Waverton, Old Town existed in the penumbra of the towers, like a suburban spread abandoned and forgotten. On the clearest nights, the glow of the blue lanterns in the sky penetrated even the ghost of a city like Old Town. The Easton neighborhood of Old Town bumped up against Waverton, separated only by the Liberty River, which acted as a natural dividing line within Waverton. But one had to live in Old Town for a while to know about Portsmouth Street. And one could know about Portsmouth Street without knowing about the warehouse complex known as the Shroud. The buildings of the Shroud district were boarded up, the area always on the list for demolition, with that day never seeming to arrive. A warped fence surrounded the property, rusted and bordering a cracked pavement walkway. Winding midway through the complex, Portsmouth Street opened up against a break in the fence, large enough for a single vehicle to pass through. If one knew what one was looking at, the graffiti on the buildings told a story: a star with one of the points ending with an arrow, a crown on its side, all directing toward another building.
Lot 42 had a boarded-up front, but the grates were metal and had none of the markings of city inspectors. The pavement around the building appeared worn, but only in the affected way of folks who wore distressed clothes as fashion. Lot 42 was a bar, one off the grid of Security Force, who intentionally turned a blind eye to its patrons’ untaxed synthehol trade and boutique drug use. The street brand of Stim had found its launch place here.
Mac and Ade parked outside the fence and walked the rest of the way to Lot 42. A lone figure stood outside of the crate of a building. A black man about the height of Ade, but twice the width, wore all black. A band circled his head, covering his eyes.
“We got a problem…officers?” he said after casual scrutiny of them.
“Don’t start none, won’t be none,” Ade said.
“We’re strictly off the clock,” Mac reassured him. “Here to meet a friend and conversate.”
“Who?”
“Duppy. We go way back.”
“We don’t take too kindly to recording devices.” The man tapped his eye band while staring at Ade.
“I am upfront about it, which is why I didn’t have the dermal overlay procedure. It helps me see, but there’s plenty I choose to not see.”
The man stepped aside and a doorway arch appeared. The pair passed through the opening.
“They not worried about us carrying?” Mac asked.
“I’m guessing everyone in here is carrying,” Ade said. “Some more than others.”
They made their way over to a booth just off from the main bar. A figure slumped low in its confines, as if not wanting to be seen with them. The closest patrons edged away from the pair, preferring to be out of earshot or direct lines of vision anyway.
“My man, Duppy,” Mac said a little too loudly as he slid in across from Duppy.
“Cho,” Duppy said with the disgust of sucking his teeth at them, “keep your voice down.”
“You chose the place.”
“My home turf, true. Still don’t like to advertise.”
“A man is certainly judged by the company he keeps,” Ade said.
“How do you know Tin Tin?” Mac asked.
“We ran in the Easton MS crew. Came up together. You gotta understand, we Old Town through and through. Born here, die here. We know the drill,” Duppy said.
Mac had grown up with kids like this. The streets had their own call. A siren’s whisper of absent fathers or homes bereft of love or too full of drugs or abuse. Hard life any way he sliced it, and once everything became a matter of day-to-day survival, it ground away luxuries like hope. Or dreams of tomorrow. His own world had become a tunnel, and all he had seen was a life in Old Town until he’d gotten into trouble in his neighborhood, which he’d escaped by joining the military and then the LG Security Force. But in his heart, the watering hole he kept returning to was Old Town.
“You do a bid in Sizemore?” The Sizemore Correctional Facility was the stop of choice for Old Towners on their way to Wallace Field, the cemetery for those buried who left no one behind who cared about them.
“Yeah. Me and Tin Tin both. I wouldn’t have survived without him. Barely did with him.”
“That where you got the rune wear?” Mac had run across such tattoos before. Woven biocircuitry, like a synth net, which allowed the wearer to feel or be connected neutrally to another. The designs of the tattoos acted as brands, labeling the connected partners.
“The synth tats?” Duppy held out his arms, inspecting and displaying them. “Yeah. But when we got out, we wanted to get out of the life. That’s when we started talking to Chike.”
“Chike? What’s he got to do with it?”
“Chike’s like a prophet out here. Always trying to turn folks. Get them out of their life and into his. Trying to get everyone to be straight edged like him and the Carmillon.”
Ade went silent, his unblinking red eye fixed on the man-boy in front of him as if locked in, assessing him. Or Chike.
“How did Tin Tin’s prints get all over Kiersten’s place?”
“At the tower? I don’t know. We were crew and all, but it’s not like we shugged like that. I’m telling you, he was set up.”
A plaintive echo of truth filled Duppy’s words. Mac sifted through the facts. Tin Tin’s prints were found on objects that could have been placed there, like drinking glasses. Not on any surfaces. It was possible that Tin Tin could have been set up. “So what was Tin Tin doing down t
here?”
“He was shugging behind that donut shop down there on Crennant Avenue, behind the tower, to see if they threw out any jellies. He was a fiend for them jellies.” Duppy grew wistful, with an odd curl to his lips as if caught in a pleasant memory. Or a part of Tin Tin only he knew.
“So he was digging through garbage?” Mac asked.
“Chike, I’m telling you, had him rethinking his priorities and way of life.”
“Must’ve been persuasive. The man does have a way,” Mac said.
“Tell me about Baraka, then. What was he like?” Ade pressed forward.
“Dude was fierce. One of them stone cold, fearless types. He was the first to leap into a situation. But he was ambitious, too. Always had his eye on his next move.”
“When you say that, you think he was running game?”
“Don’t know. He always had an agenda he was working. Like he was down with the crew as it suited him, but he wasn’t true. Then he started rolling large. Latest gear. Tossing credits about like he’d found a fountain of them.”
“He putting in extra work?”
“Not that we saw. We were all on the line. It’s not like you got employee of the month or anything,” Duppy said.
“He skimming a little off the top for himself?” Mac asked.
“That’s what we thought. Then Baraka went to ground before we could…discuss it.”
“To ground. That’s an interesting turn of phrase,” Ade said.
“I just meant we couldn’t find him. No one could. Until…” Duppy’s voice trailed off.
“You weren’t worried? He was your boy and all,” Mac said.
“Our lifestyle ain’t conducive to worry,” Duppy said. “Besides, I thought maybe he’d gotten out the game for real. Start over somewhere. Get himself set up.”
“What made you think of that?”
“Like I said, brother was always secretive. Liked to play things close. Calls. Meetings. It was his way. He was a ghost.”
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