by James O'Neal
Wilner finally got around to saying, “I just wanted to know something about Donna. It might help me in the case.”
“I thought the checkpoint weenies shot the killer.”
“We didn’t find a body. I want to be certain. Did Donna come in contact with a lot of men?”
“You mean because we were together?”
“No, not really. I just wonder how he picked her.”
“She swung both ways. We both did. It’s just that there are so few decent guys around we sort of gravitated to each other.”
“So it wouldn’t have been a guy from the hospital. You would know that, right?”
“No one here. But she did…”
“What?”
“Well, she liked to gamble. Blackjack especially. Since the government eliminated the Seminole reservations and outlawed casinos she had to look elsewhere.”
“Like the Quarantine Zone.”
Terry nodded. “I didn’t like it but she crossed into the zone a couple of times a month.”
“To the big casino right near the border.”
“Isn’t that where everyone goes?”
“Yeah. I even go sometimes. When I get bored. She ever meet anyone over there?”
“I dunno.” Then she paused. Her blond hair swayed as she tilted her head. “Yeah, I guess she did. She introduced me to a guy last week.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t remember.”
“What’d he look like?”
“Shorter. A little older. It’s hard to say. I just remember he looked like he was in pretty good shape.”
“Where’s he live?”
“I didn’t talk to him. But I bet I could come up with his name. I remember Donna saying it.”
It was all Wilner had. As he was about to ask for more details his V-com beeped.
Leonard had no trouble getting into the hospital. He always dressed nicely and walked with a certain assurance. He didn’t think the cop had seen his face clearly enough to recognize him immediately, but he wanted to be able to make the first move. He didn’t want to be surprised, so he kept his eyes open, scanning every face as soon as it came into view.
The tall blond cop would be easy to spot and then Leonard would find the right moment to spring. It was his old urge building. He had to do something to relieve the buildup of anticipation that had started when he felt the cop so close on the canal bank. The danger of the man had made him the perfect target. Also the fact that the cop wasn’t just assuming the checkpoint guards had killed him. By acting now he would be cutting off the source of any link to him.
Leonard managed to make it through the lobby and first floor without being noticed or questioned. But he had not seen the cop either. He took the empty stairs in the rear two at a time. The second floor had a nursery and some kind of vast maintenance area. He took a quick look on the third and fourth floors but could see quickly that no one was in the hallway. The fifth floor looked like administrative offices. A receptionist looked up immediately. “Can I help you?”
Leonard smiled and said, “No, I’m going to six.” He slid back into the stairwell and shot up the final flight of stairs.
As soon as he opened the door to the top floor he saw the cop on his V-com at the end of the hallway near a wide window that still held a sliver of sunlight. The endless clouds had already started to close formation again. He stepped back into the stairway, realizing this was his moment. The cop hadn’t seen him and no one was around. He took a deep breath and reached into his deep pocket on his synthetic all-weather pants. The rubbery feel of the inside of the pocket slowed his right hand as he gripped the handle of the German army surplus combat knife. He didn’t use the lever to open the gravity-fed blade, instead he opened the combat spike, his weapon of choice for the past sixteen years. He had found it on a merchant seaman he had killed.
With the spike open he knew he could move fast. With the right movement the cop wouldn’t even know Leonard was here.
He peeked out the stairway door and saw the cop still talking on his V-com and now facing out the window to catch a final glimpse of the sun before it was covered by gray formless clouds.
His heart raced, but a smile crossed his face as he prepared to rush the unsuspecting cop. This was going to be sweet.
Steve Besslia had been impatient to find his friend once he arrived at the hospital so he called him on the V-com. It took Wilner a couple of beeps to answer, then Besslia spoke so fast he had to stop, take a breath and calm down.
Wilner said, “What is it, Steve?”
“I didn’t just push my bike to get over here in ten minutes from the Quarantine Zone to tell you over video link. Where are you in the hospital?”
“Sixth floor.”
Besslia kept him on the line as he found the only operating vertical transport shaft. The VTS was a wide bay that was propelled by the expansion and expulsion of gas that acted as a hydraulic. The VTS passed from the first floor to the top floor and back, pausing briefly on every intermediate floor. The idea had been developed when the push to conserve energy had been tremendous. Now that energy wasn’t a concern, no one had the extra cash to convert the slower VTS back to elevators. At least not in the wasteland of Florida.
He was the only one on the big lift system and fidgeted every time it stopped at an empty floor.
NINE
Leonard Hall was ready. He had his weapon and the big cop was still on the video V-com, looking out the window. Just as he started to push open the door, the VTS door opened right next to the stairway door. He instinctively slipped back into the stairs. Through the glass pane on the stairway door he saw a uniformed cop emerge, the two men began to talk. He heard the uniformed cop address his prey. “Wilner.”
He smiled. Information could be as important as a weapon. Now he knew something about who this cop was.
It was obvious the two cops were staying together for a while so he started down the stairs to get lost on a lower floor.
Terry started taking down notes of what she remembered of the man she had met with Donna in the zone as soon as the handsome UPF detective had left.
She had been so upset by the news of Donna’s death that she never would’ve come into work today but she was needed in the new nursery. They had three babies for the first time since she had been employed and she didn’t want to miss this special time. Talking to the cop had helped by giving her a purpose. Almost like giving her some control over what had happened. She needed to help.
She stood up and straightened her clean white and blue uniform. Her prosthetic fingers functioning like her own except for feel. If she watched what they were doing she could do intricate work, but she never felt what she touched. There was a rumor engineers were very close to new technology that could transfer some sense of touch to the fingertips. She looked at her titanium hand and started down the stairway.
The nursery was on the second floor near the facilities and maintenance area where they stored building supplies, nonmedical supplies, fixed equipment and burned anything not recyclable. The huge furnace reduced the size of the hospital’s trash output by 80 percent. The filters kept the emissions to a minimum. It bothered her that they used the furnace to cremate patients as well as burn trash, but that was the way things were now. Practicality overtook sentiment.
Near the second-floor stairway door she slowed as she saw someone coming. She paused to let them pass.
She saw the firm shoulders of a compact man, then smiled at him out of good manners and habit.
She froze as she realized who she was smiling at, then heard the man say, “You remember me, huh?”
Tom Wilner said, “You sure of this, Steve?”
The thin uniformed cop nodded his head. “There’s a trail of crumpled brush that goes right from the bank. It would explain why there’s no body and we didn’t even see any blood.”
Wilner knew his friend was right. He had a hunch the killer had escaped into the zone the night before. The qu
estion was, where had he come from? Was he a zone resident or just hiding there?
Wilner looked out the window and saw the last ray of sunshine disappear into the clouds. He knew this one was going to keep him busy for a while.
TEN
Tom Wilner sat on the floor with his children watching a show designed to explain to kids the current issues going on in the world. It was produced in Toronto, which was now considered the broadcasting and video filming center of Western civilization. With its modern electronics and the layout of the Canadian city it was extremely attractive to the entertainment industry. The city had thought ahead in the early century and had installed efficient, reliable mass transit and had all but outlawed personally owned vehicles. The cost at the time was widely criticized but after ten years when the city started to flourish everyone jumped on the environmental and comfortable bandwagon.
Prices of apartments and houses soared, sending many to live in other cities. Homelessness was dealt with by constructing a permanent lodge and updating laws eliminating panhandling. Now if someone was on the street they were given a choice to leave or be housed in the clean, warm lodge. The big gray building could house four thousand in one of fifty wide dorms.
The show Emma and Tommy were watching had a young girl with light features talking about what the current news issues might mean for young people. The first story was always the approaching Uralians. Since they were estimated to make live contact in just under five years the young people of today might well be the military of tomorrow. But the commentator made sure to point out that there was no reason to think the Uralians were anything but friendly. Their messages, which had been arriving regularly, talked about sharing technology and culture.
Wilner laughed at the idea. He wondered if the aliens had any idea how little technology had been invented in the past twenty years and hoped the whole world wouldn’t be in armed conflict when they arrived. He had some reason to believe the United States might be done with several of the current wars it was fighting. It appeared that the Syrians had been pushed farther out of Lebanon and that Damascus in ruins had given them something to think about. The U.S. peacekeepers in Latvia and Estonia were also due to be pulled out soon.
That left Germany. What would happen if they moved forward into Poland? Negotiators worked night and day to resolve the conflict, but if they did continue their advance it would be a war unlike any living person had seen. Except one of the Simolits or Hallecks. He knew both families had a number of members who had fought in World War II. In fact both families fought against the Nazis, although in different ways. That was how he had discovered his wife was a member of the Simolits. A photo from 1945 showing her and Tiget Nadovich cheering the surrender of German troops and the freedom of their beloved Serbia.
The differences between humans and the other humanoid race were so subtle he had not seen it during their marriage. But later he realized she had not aged. Svala had still looked nineteen even after two kids. She had never been sick; not even a cold. She didn’t work out yet looked like a model every day.
Now he looked at the children he had raised as his own and wondered how they would react to the news that they were something other than human. There would come a day when they wondered why they were never sick. Why they aged so slowly. How they recovered from injuries so quickly. And all these questions were only if one of their blood relatives didn’t track them down and tell them first.
As he considered all this his V-com beeped. He didn’t recognize the caller’s ID, but allowed the video and audio to broadcast anyway. On the unit’s tiny screen he saw a man in a well-lighted room, then recognized him as a UPF lab technician.
“Detective Wilner?”
“Yeah, what’s up in the lab?”
“I have something interesting on the fingerprint you brought in from the homicide in the Lawton District. Can you come by and talk to me tomorrow?”
“Yeah, sure.” He didn’t mind the ride up to the Northern Enclave. “What’s up?”
“I’d rather discuss it in person.”
Wilner agreed to the meeting and closed his V-com.
“What is it, Daddy?” asked Emma.
Wilner smiled at his beautiful, dark-haired daughter and said, “Just work, baby. Nothing I need to worry about tonight.”
Leonard Hall sat at the long bar of the Quarantine Zone’s most popular nightspot, the Chaos Pit. He was thinking about his visit to the district hospital, the cop named Wilner and the nurse’s friend he had met at the casino. She had been a complete surprise.
She had no idea why he was there when she saw him on the second-floor stairwell. She had surprised him as much as he surprised her. He had the combat spike already out for the cop so it was an instinct to thrust it without thinking into the nurse’s neck. Even though she didn’t have much of a neck. Her head sat atop thick, strong shoulders but the blow had done the trick.
She never uttered a sound as he withdrew the spike, then eased her to the ground.
The only trick had been dragging her body to the furnace. He didn’t know what he would’ve done to dispose of her if the furnace hadn’t been on the same floor.
He had spent a few minutes admiring her artificial hand before shoving her into the wide steel door of the large furnace. He had noticed when he stuck her with the spike that her hand had splayed out in an odd manner. It was amazing how they got those things so connected to a person’s muscles and nerves now.
He took a drink of the homemade vodka with some orange crushed into the glass. He liked most aspects of the gigantic bar except the noise. Between the music for the dancers, the loud conversation of the patrons and the hoots and shouts of the men watching the dancers, the place sometimes gave him a headache.
He found some of the dancers attractive. He didn’t much care for the dancers missing legs or with some other unusual feature. He liked the ones that looked like they were happy to be alive and didn’t mind showing what they had. Sure, he was always attracted to long, graceful necks but there were other things he found appealing too.
Right now it was the dancer on the little stage closest to him. Her short brown hair stuck out in wild directions and her compact, shapely body swayed to the rhythm of an old rock anthem. She had a wide, bright smile and seemed to look right at him every time she swung around on the brass pole.
The music finally stopped and the beautiful little dancer carefully stepped down the stairs to her stage. She didn’t look comfortable in the high heels.
She walked along the bar collecting U.S. suds, UN traders or the new zone currency from each of the rough men who had been watching her up close. She slowed when she came to Leonard. His cleaner appearance obviously made him seem wealthier than the other men.
She held out a tiny hand and said, “What’s your name, handsome?”
“Leonard,” he answered as he tried not to focus on her neck. She had the most spectacularly sculpted breasts he had ever seen. But a neck that was a little short.
“What are you doing tonight?” Leonard asked.
“You,” she said, followed by that great smile.
Leonard didn’t know if he could take all this excitement in one day.
Unified Police Force Detective Tom Wilner had dropped his kids off at school, checked in at his office, then started the drive north out of the Lawton District into the Northern Enclave. The enclave was basically the former counties of Palm Beach, Martin and Hendry merged together. When Florida was reorganized into twelve areas, dropping everything from Miami south, the enclave became a nice compromise for coastal and southern living. It had about three times the population of the Lawton District and was one of the three areas, along with the district and Pointe Florida that made up what was now considered South Florida.
He pushed his new hive up over a hundred, knowing that there was no real traffic and that Steve Besslia was one of two traffic cops for both the Northern Enclave and the Lawton District. He pulled onto the old, decrepit Interstate 95 and hugg
ed the inner left lanes. The outer two lanes held the remnants of crashes and broken-down cars that had been just shoved to the side. Practicality had overcome any need to make the highway pretty. With so little traffic two lanes handled the population well and people had gotten used to the mountain of twisted metal and rotting rubber on the side of the road.
The UPF lab was just off the interstate in a one-story building by itself. They had maintained the lab in this spot because the force couldn’t find lab people and one of their main lab techs lived nearby and insisted the lab stay where it was.
Wilner pulled into one of the ten open parking spots and entered into a reception area. The last few times he had been inside the building the lone lab tech was the receptionist, forensic specialist and the janitor. He hadn’t been shy about expressing his frustration about it either.
Today a young woman sat behind the glass-enclosed reception area.
“May I help you?” she asked, a smile lighting up her eyes.
This was something unusual: a friendly government employee in South Florida.
“I’m Tom Wilner.” He was about to go on when she buzzed the door and said, “We’ve been expecting you, Detective.”
Wilner walked through the door into the lab where the lone tech looked up and immediately stood and rushed toward him.
“I’m glad you could make it.”
Wilner looked back at the receptionist. “Looks like you got some help finally.”
The man shook his head. “New arrivals. We got so many they don’t know where to stick them all.” He tugged on Wilner’s arm, pulling him through the lab to a computer on a table by itself.
The lab tech said, “I know a little of what you and Besslia got involved in a few months ago.”
“You do?”
“I have my own theories. I saw some of the DNA work. I know you guys had some rough times down in the district.”
“Did you take a sample of the blood on the chair fragment in this case?”