by Colin Harvey
Shah nodded, smiling inside.
Twenty minutes later, he was dancing again. He put through a call to van Doorn and the others. "Sunny's first murder victim – the Boston hooker – was called Sharon Wilmette."
"How'd you find that out?" van Doorn said.
"When I checked the Boston death rip against that old Oregon clip I found some weeks ago, I realized it was the same girl. They felt the same. Trouble is, she was born just before The Burning Time. When the secessionist guerillas unleashed a virus into the Census Bureau database they trashed most of it, but not everything."
Van Doorn ran one rip after the other, again and again. "I'd say you're back to full speed." A smile eased the tension from his face "Damned if I'd have made a connection."
"See the way in both clips she hugged herself when she was nervous?" Shah couldn't resist a little grandstanding. "And she liked the same flavored gum. Inconclusive, but enough to be worth following up."
"So what do we have on this… Sharon Wilmette?"
Shah uploaded the details: born April 17th 2025, Sharon had been a few months short of her twenty-second birthday when she was murdered. "He dumped her body into a vat of acid," Shah said. "Damaged it so badly there was no way of identifying any seminal fluid or other contact residue. The DNA was broken down into pieces almost too small to identify."
At the time only the teeth had matched any local records, to a 'Sharon Portland' registered to a Boston practice. No one seemed too broken up about her, Shah thought. I guess that should've given someone the idea she was from out of state. But there are so many of these people. We can't find them all.
Shah said, "That earlier rip, from the Oregon-California state border. She'd have been about sixteen at the time, ran away to the Silicon State, but probably got picked up by a slaver gang instead. For what it's worth, Ma and Pa Wilmette posted a Missing Persons on her nine years ago, but they're both dead. There's no next of kin for Boston PD to notify."
"She ended up in Boston, how?"
Shah said, "Dunno. How important is it?"
Van Doorn considered. "Reasonably. If we can trace her back to Oregon, maybe we can nail the traffickers. Less important to us than other forces but it gives us a few points should we need to call in favors in the future." He added, "We already earned ourselves a few with Boston by clearing up this case."
"I'll keep on it."
"Until something critical crops up."
Shah's eyepiece pinged. It was building management, even more irritated than the last time. "Another package for ya."
Shah spread his hands wide and explained.
"I'll send a uniform," van Doorn said. "We haven't got time to piss around."
Shah settled down to search the web for tags to girls of the right age at the right dates. Then screened the tens of thousands of hits by possible geography and ethnicity where it was listed, and settled down wade through the results. Even watching only the first few seconds with Bailey's help meant brain-draining hours of tedium.
Shah surfaced for a break an hour later with an aching head.
In the meantime the uniformed officer had collected the package, opened it, screened the CD that was in it, and uploaded the message on it to Shah's eyepiece. Shah's voice said, "You can't protect them all, you know."
Shah shivered.
Stickel fired the clip across to CSU with a priority flag, but it yielded nothing, as Shah expected, other than it came from the same set of interviews as the previous one. Bailey said, "Presumably there isn't much out there, so the perp's used whatever's come to hand."
"I guess so." It didn't make Shah feel any better. He didn't like the thought that there was someone spending time putting bits of old conversation together and sending them to him. Getting a conviction for harassment was almost impossible even if they caught the perp, but Shah didn't think it was going to stop at voice clips.
The clip rattled Shah's concentration badly, his already leaden progress through the mass of clips slowing to a standstill. When he finished for the day, his headache had become an almost unbearable vice squeezing his forehead.
He stayed alert all the way home, trying to see if anyone was following him, but no one showed. Any potential stalker could track him easily enough. Shah considered varying his route to and from work, and cursed. Life was already complicated enough without playing such games.
Things weren't much better indoors – Leslyn jumped when he walked into the kitchen.
"You OK?" Shah said.
Leslyn nodded and gave him a watery smile. It had started to rain, and McCoy was bringing in the cushions and newspaper from the balcony.
Only Doug would demand an actual paper copy, Shah thought, smiling inwardly.
His inner smile vanished when he glanced at Leslyn. He knew that the encounter with Sunny had scared her badly. For years Leslyn had been slightly dismissive of his work, for which he had been partly to blame. Shah had been too good at protecting her from the world that he sometimes had to walk through, and his occasional scare stories she had treated as exaggerations.
When she had met Sunny she learned the dismal truth about how vital his work was and how dangerous the world could be. That the threat had barely spoken was irrelevant. Like the CD, it was the mere fact of the intrusion that did the damage, not its appearance.
"I think…" Leslyn said. "That is, that incident with – what's his name? Sunny?"
"That's the one," Shah said.
"It's clarified my thoughts. I've felt for some time now that New York's changed too much since I came here. Not for the better."
"Hasn't everywhere?"
"Maybe. But New York's gotten much too dark lately. The children are grown up. Rex has his own life. I suppose you could say Perveza has, though what kind of life she has…"
"You're moving out of town. Going to one of those clinics."
Leslyn nodded. "For years I've been a wife and mother first. But now it's my time."
Shah said, "You sure that you're not using the situation as an excuse to do what you've always wanted to do?"
"You bastard!" Leslyn cried. "I've been sitting here worrying about how I can afford it, and arguing with Doug about what it does to you, and that's what you come back with?"
Doug interrupted with, "I'd have just told you when it was time, instead of worrying sick about whether you'd have enough time to find another co-tenant."
That's because you're a jackass. Instead Shah said, "I'm sorry. When do you go?"
"Three weeks," Leslyn said. "I can come back after the first treatment, but…."
"I know," Shah said. "Not a good idea to go anywhere with augments, least of all round here, right now."
He poured himself a coffee, and raised the cup to Leslyn in a toast. "Good luck," he said. You're going to need it.
LVIII
Thursday
Aurora's doorman gave Shah a thin smile. He and his colleagues were starting to recognize Shah, which wasn't necessarily a good thing. The ambiguity of the last tape worried Shah.
He'd discussed it with Aurora the evening as she sat on the other side of Marietetski's bed in the hospital. "We're all bugged," she had said. "Get used to it. And that's my greatest protection at the moment. If Abhijit's people are listening, they'll know I'm no threat."
She sounds more hopeful than optimistic. While Aurora hadn't told Shah where any of the bodies – actual or otherwise – were buried, he wasn't sure that Kotian would care. Any hint of supposed disloyalty might arouse the man's anger.
Shah entered the elevator, keeping a watchful eye on the man who leapt in at the last moment, but the weasellooking guy with gray bushy hair and stubble left on the twenty-fifth floor, whereas Shah was headed for the thirtysecond.
Aurora opened the door before he could knock, and drawing him in by the tie, kissed him on the lips. He tried not to notice how short her dressing gown was.
"I see the door guy's doing his job," he said, smiling.
She smiled back. "I've
got him well trained." She pushed the door shut.
She bustled into the kitchen and he hung his coat up. Again he looked away from the glimpse of thigh as she walked. He wasn't sure that she wasn't simply teasing him, and she was still technically a person of interest, however peripheral her involvement. But for that he would have bedded her in a heartbeat. He wondered why she hadn't pushed the issue. Perhaps, he thought, she doesn't realize how much I've changed. He hadn't told her that he couldn't understand why Shah had been so scared of her sex.
"There's something you ought to know." Following her into the kitchen, Shah told her about Leslyn's leaving New York.
Aurora frowned. "When was this?"
"Tuesday," Shah said. "I should've told you last night, but I needed time to think about it." Unlike most days Shah hadn't called Aurora that evening because he'd felt it wrong to run to her for comfort, even though that had been his instinctive reaction. That he'd needed comfort proved there'd been more left in the relationship than he'd thought. Or the severing of one of your last few ties to the old Shah is what hurts, a cynical inner voice said.
"I thought you were a little… distracted last night," she said. "What will you do now?"
"I don't know. Probably advertise for someone to share the rent." A co-op maintained the building. "Part of me wouldn't mind moving out altogether."
"Move in here," Aurora said. Her eyes widened as if she'd spoken a thought aloud, and only realized it afterward.
"Yeah, I'm guessing that you hadn't really thought that through when you said it – and then you did." Shah grinned. "I'd cramp your style."
She said half-defiantly, "I'd just make outcalls, not have any patrones calling here."
Shah cocked his head to one side, as he took the proffered coffee. "You don't think that that could make things… messy?"
"Why? Am I under suspicion?"
She was, though not by Shah. But she was too close to Kotian, at least while the investigation was live, and while they'd done nothing wrong, it could look bad if someone in the media wanted it to. Shah frowned, wondering why Kotian hadn't leaked it already. Or was he waiting until he had something really juicy, like shots of them in bed together?
"Not under suspicion," Shah admitted.
Aurora stepped closer, fiddling with the tie of her dressing gown, allowing it to fall open and drawing his gaze to the shaven junction of her thighs. He'd expected to see a penis, but she was like any other woman. "You could stay the night."
"No I couldn't. However much I might want to." Shah gulped his coffee. "Things are still too chaotic, too – oh, I dunno!"
"Things aren't chaotic," Aurora said, watching him. It was easier to meet her gaze than to look down again. "It's your mind that's chaotic, I think. Leslyn moving out's rattled you more than you want to admit."
"Maybe.But that's why it'd be wrong to stay the night, now."
She smiled, and retied her gown. "It's straightforward for me," she said. "I want you in me. I think you want me."
"So why do you want me?" Shah said. "Look at me – I'm ten pounds too heavy and twenty years too old for this."
"Has it ever occurred to you that I might not want anything? That I might just want to be with a man who treats me kindly and doesn't want me to dress up in leather or tie him to a rack and whip him?"
"I guess." Shah moved reluctantly to get his coat. He'd been looking forward to an uncomplicated evening of making small talk.
He left wishing he didn't have to and feeling like a fool, albeit a virtuous one.
Friday
Shah spent the next day studying rips that might be Sharon Wilmette, but which all turned out not to be. He and Bailey left the office together at shift-end. "See you tomorrow," Shah called as they headed in opposite directions.
"Nah, I got a day off," Bailey said.
Shah stopped. "Going anywhere nice?" It was a question from when people went out of town, to the beach, on vacation. He wished they still could: New York was like a furnace already, and July and August promised to be unbearable.
Bailey shook her head. "Not having to get up tomorrow works for me. See ya next week."
"Yeah." Shah wished too for that easy familiarity that Old Shah had with Marietetski. Every conversation with Bailey that wasn't about work was like walking through a minefield. Bailey never got angry. She just clammed up, which made it harder to understand what he'd said to make her clam up.
Shah varied his route, as he had for the last few nights, and passed by the institute. He wondered whether Tosada was working, and on impulse called in, passing by a couple of big men standing in the doorway. They looked familiar, but Shah couldn't quite place them.
If he had called ten minutes later, he thought afterwards.
Instead as he entered the building, he passed Kotian. Damn, they're his bodyguards.
Kotian curled his lip. "Murdered any more young men lately?"
Shah still owed Kotian a slap for the way the guy had treated Aurora, and damned if he would let a gangster smear him with comments like that, however upset he was. "You want to know about murder?" Shah leaned into Kotian's face. "I got a clip for you of your scumbag son strangling a girl as he fucked her, together with the clip of her dying. You want me to send them to you? Or did you know about them already?"
From the way Kotian paled the old man hadn't known, although he must have guessed. "Lies!" Kotian snarled. "You could've had him alive if you'd worked with me, but you wanted him dead!"
"Yeah," Shah breathed, staring into the old man's eyes. "You were going to give him up, 'cause you knew deep down what he was like, and either it scared you, or you didn't care.
All you cared about was it might make you look bad."
"Bull!"
"And now it's all gone wrong, the guilt's eating you alive. You can't bear the thought that he'd still be alive if you'd done it differently."
"You bastard!" Kotian swung a fist.
Shah saw it coming and grabbed Kotian's lapel. "You want me to arrest you for assaulting a police officer?"
"Arrest a grieving father, why don't you?"
Weeks, months of bottled resentment came pouring out. "You've never grieved for a damned thing in your life, you cold-blooded snake."
The moment he said it, Shah knew he'd made a mistake.
LIX
Monday
"Shah." Van Doorn stood in reception. "In my office. Five minutes."
Shah had been about to trawl the web, but the look on van Doorn's face said refusing wasn't a good idea.
He carried his coffee into the captain's office.
"Shut the door," van Doorn said.
Shah pushed it closed with his foot. It closed with a clunk.
Shah's voice echoed around the office: "You've never grieved for a damned thing in your life, you cold-blooded snake."
Shah winced.
Van Doorn said, "Want me to play it again?"
Shah shook his head. "Not my finest moment."
"I could say lots of things, Shah. Like what the hell possessed you?"
Shah held his hands palm up, in a "what-can-I-say" gesture.
"I was going to come in especially on Saturday to tell you your fortune. Lucky for you my wife warned me last week that if I even thought about leaving the apartment before we'd finished decorating she'd make herself a widow. That's about all that that saved you. I've had forty-eight hours to calm down, but give me one good reason why I still shouldn't fire you?"
Shah could've argued that the captain couldn't dismiss him without going through the disciplinary process, but now didn't seem a good time for that. He stayed silent.
Van Doorn sighed.
"Would it help if I apologized?"
"Probably not," van Doorn said, confirming Shah's suspicion. Kotian wanted Shah's blood. The captain continued, "I told the commissioner that you'd been receiving death threats – I played them up – and it was starting to take its toll. Even so, it was all I could do to stop her from chewing you a new win
dpipe personally." He jabbed a sausage-like finger at Shah. "You can take this as a final warning about your future conduct, Officer. If you give me any reason to, I'll remove you from the case and fire your ass."
Shah lowered his chin. "Cap–"
"Not a word, Shah. You'll walk on eggshells. Got it?"
"Got it."
"Then close the door when you leave."
Shah left the office as Bailey arrived. She raised her eyebrow in a silent question.
"I got a promotion. Been made chairman of the Kotian Fan Club." He added, "Keep your coat on, hon, you just got lucky."