by K. W. Jeter
The little girl walked right up to him and tilted her head back to look him in the eye. “I’m glad you brought him here,” she said. “They told me it was a boy. What’s his name?”
“I . . . don’t know.” He was taken aback by the girl’s forthright manner, like that of a miniature adult. “I don’t think he has one yet.”
“Oh.” Aalice looked disappointed for a moment, then brightened. She reached out and touched Noah’s hand. “Then maybe we can think one up.”
“Yeah . . . I guess so.” Noah felt the other humans’ gaze weighing upon his back. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the men watching him, as though waiting for him to do something. But he didn’t know what.
When he turned his head around, he saw that the little girl had gone back over to the cart. She reached down and carefully stroked the baby’s cheek.
Noah still didn’t know what to do. Or what was going to happen.
C H A P T E R 1 4
SHE TOLD HIM everything he needed to know.
“And then—you’re not going to believe this—Cathy got pregnant.” Emily drew herself upright where she sat on the couch, radiating the triumph of someone who can impart secret information. “With Uncle Matt’s baby. I mean, Uncle Matt’s the father of the baby. Isn’t that wild?”
“How do you know all this?” Buck regarded his sister with suspicion. “Did they tell you all this? Maybe you’re making it all up.”
“Hey—” Emily looked offended. “Nobody has to tell me stuff, for me to find it out.” She gestured at the living room and all the rest of their parents’ house surrounding them. “I live here, right? I hear Mom and Dad talking all the time—well, I did when Dad was still living here . . .”
“You little snoop.” He saw again what a good international spy his kid sister would make some day. It was a real advantage to have a source like her, right on the spot like this. “What were you doing, putting your ear to their bedroom door?”
“Well . . . if I’d had to, I would’ve.” Emily’s expression turned to one of slight embarrassment. “But I didn’t! You know how Dad’s always complaining about how flimsy the walls are in these new houses, and how he was going to put in soundproofing so he and Mom wouldn’t be able to hear the CD player in my room—”
“Maybe he should put it in.” Buck smiled at her. “I’ll remind him about it, the next time I see him.”
Right now, the house was empty and quiet, except for him and his sister talking. He had come over here on the sly, straight from the hotel, the memory of the news broadcast he had seen on the lobby’s crappy TV still fresh in his mind. He had parked the motorcycle a couple of blocks down the street and walked the rest of the way, so the noise of its barely mufflered engine wouldn’t alert his mother, just in case she had been at home. He really only wanted to talk to his sister Emily.
As it turned out, nobody was in the house except her. And she had some good news for her brother—excellent news: their dad had come home, just that morning—what could be better news than that? And he had swept up their mom, his wife, into his arms—to use the words of Emily’s soap-operatic account—and had carried her away, taking the baby with them to the nearest park. They had a lot to talk about. “They were like reconciled,” Emily had announced, her face all wide-eyed and glowing. “It was better than a TV show.”
Buck was glad to hear that his father had come to his senses and knocked off that crap with that stupid cult, those Carriers of Flashlights or whatever they called themselves. Though now he had to wonder if their dad had been up to something else all along. Maybe he had just been acting, pretending to have joined up, all as part of some police investigation. Buck wouldn’t have put that past his father. From what Emily had told him, their dad still had a lot on his mind—maybe the investigation hadn’t come off the way he had hoped—but at least he could go back to being a full-time, living-at-home husband and father. That accounted for the newly reunited Mr. and Mrs. Francisco going off to the park, to have some time together; having the baby with them wouldn’t cramp their style as much as having Emily the spy around. Maybe when they got back, they would see if Emily wanted to do a sleep-over at a friends’s house; even if that would interfere with her checking out the progress of her parents’ reconciliation, the all-night gossipping potential would be too attractive for her to resist.
“Anyway, that’s the story.” Right now, Emily sat on the couch beside her brother, her legs tucked up under herself. “Neat, huh?”
“Yeah, that’s cool, all right.” The amount of happiness that his sister radiated had almost made Buck forget why he’d come back here to the house. He had some snooping of his own to do. Fortunately, it was the kind that Emily could help him with. She had already filled him in on the business with Sikes and Cathy and their hybrid, half human and half Newcomer baby—that had taken some doing, getting his mind around that concept. But he’d had to admit that all the other signs pointed that way: the stuff he’d seen on the newscast about the raid on the hospital, all the top-secret security measures that had been in place there—not that they had helped much—plus what he’d already known about Matt and Cathy’s relationship with each other. Buck had seen the way the human police detective looked at his Tenctonese girlfriend; you didn’t have to be a detective to figure out that the guy was totally gone on her. It made more sense to accept that a way had been found for humans and Newcomers to have kids together, than to believe that Sikes had been cheating on Cathy and had gotten some human female knocked up. And if there had been a human/Tenctonese baby in that hospital, that sure would explain the guards that had been stationed there.
“Listen, Em—” He had just been struck by a thought. “Maybe you shouldn’t get your hopes up too much, about Dad being able to spend a lot of time with Mom and you and Vessna. That stuff that was on the news—about the raid on that hospital—that’s heavy business. Because if that was Matt and Cathy’s baby, then Dad isn’t going to take time off to just sit around here with you guys. Once he finds out what’s happened, he’s going to shoot right down to the police station and pitch in with whatever investigation’s going on with that kid.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Emily’s face clouded. She frowned, deep in thinking. “Dad’s not going to leave Uncle Matt hanging there, even if they’re not partners anymore.”
“Okay . . .” Now came the delicate part, convincing his sister of the wisdom of what he wanted to do. “So if we can help Dad sort this all out, and get that baby back where it belongs with Matt and Cathy, then the sooner everything’ll be back to normal. Right?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Emily shrugged. “I don’t see what there is we can do about it, though.”
“You just gotta back my play on this one. Do you know Dad’s password for his computer? The one he’s got in the den?”
“Maybe . . .” She regarded him with suspicion. “Why?”
“I got a hunch about somebody who might’ve been involved with the hospital raid. Somebody I used to know. If we can get into Dad’s files, I can find out for sure.”
Emily mulled it over. “Okay,” she said at last, sliding off the sofa. “Let’s do it—before they get back.”
In the den, Buck watched as Emily flipped on the computer’s power. He pulled up another chair beside her at the desk. “The password is W-G-V-W-S-G,” she said, punching the keys one by one with her index finger.
“What the hell’s that?”
“It’s the letters of Vessna’s name, transposed one more letter down in the alphabet, then two more letters, and so on.”
“How’d you know that?”
“It’s easy.” Emily sat back, waiting for the computer screen to clear. “Dad told me that was how he used my name for his password on the computer terminal he used at the police station. So one day when he wasn’t home, I came in here and fooled around ’til I got it right.” She shook her head, as though in mild disgust. “Really—it didn’t take very long.”
The interface for the p
olice department’s on-line data bank came up on the screen. Buck leaned forward and pulled the keyboard away from his sister. With a few quick keystrokes, he got into the search function, then typed in RAMSEY, NOAH. A few seconds passed, then the face of his one-time high school buddy appeared. The image rocked him back in the chair. It was the same Noah, but different as well; he’d changed, and not in any way that seemed good. The young human’s eyes glared defiantly out at the lens of whatever camera had taken the photo—it looked like a standard LAPD mug shot—and the insignia of one of the Human Defense League’s paramilitary units showed on the points of his shirt collar. His dark hair had been cropped short enough to reveal a healed-over scar along the side of his head. It looked like Noah Ramsey hadn’t been shy about getting into the kinds of street fights that these Purist thugs were known for.
“Oh, this is a nice-looking guy, all right.” Emily’s voice was thick with sarcasm. “And you used to know this person?”
“Yeah . . .” He sighed and slowly shook his head. “Used to be a friend of mine, actually.” Buck felt as if that had been a million years ago. They had fallen out over one of their teachers, a human woman named Marilyn Houston—and the difference between the way she had felt about him and about Noah. That had been a real mess, one that he still couldn’t pull up out of his memory without a pang to his hearts. What had happened between him and Marilyn had been just impossible, with no solution except for her to quit her teaching job and move out of Los Angeles to someplace back East. If you call that a solution, he thought bitterly. He’d wound up losing her and his buddy Noah. He’d heard that Noah had started running with a rough crowd, but he hadn’t known that it had gotten this bad, that Noah’s jealousy and wounded pride had warped his mind to the point of him joining up with those Purist sonsabitches.
But that was what seemed to be the case. Buck scanned the ID file and rap sheet that filled the other half of the computer screen. From just about the time that Buck had lost touch with him, Noah had been getting into some serious trouble. The LAPD’s hate crimes unit had Noah down as joining the HDL a year ago, though there might have been some involvement before then. But once the connection was official, Noah had fairly quickly stopped brawling and banging heads in the HDL’s so-called ‘peaceful demonstrations,’ and had begun rising in the League’s ranks. Right up to the top, becoming the main courier for Darlene Bryant herself, bringing her orders out from the women’s prison where she was stuck and making sure that the rest of the Purists snapped to and did as they were told. If that was the level at which Noah was dealing, then it stood to reason that he would have been put in charge of a heavy-duty operation like the raid on the hospital and the kidnapping of this human/Tenctonese baby.
“You know, I think you’re right,” said Emily. “That was the guy they showed on TV, the one who got his face mask torn off.” She looked away from the computer screen and toward her brother. “So now what’re you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” Buck flopped back in the chair. He hadn’t worked it out any further in his head. “So now I’ve established that someone I used to know is one of the jerks who swiped Matt and Cathy’s baby. That doesn’t tell us where they took the kid or what they’re planning to do with it.” He rubbed his chin, trying to figure out what his next move should be.
“Maybe you could just tell Dad. Or you could get hold of Uncle Matt down at the police station and tell him. I mean, that’s supposed to be their job, tracking people down and stuff.”
“Yeah, I guess so . . .” He didn’t consider the notion with much enthusiasm. What would that accomplish, besides giving the police a name to hang on a videotaped face? Big deal, he thought. Their computers were probably grinding that out already, using some high-powered scan-and-match program. An obscure and irrational sense of guilt moved inside him, as though he had let down just about everybody he knew. Noah Ramsey had been his friend, but he hadn’t managed to keep him from becoming some kind of Purist stormtrooper or preventing him from hurting innocent people like Matt and Cathy. “I wish there was something else I could do . . .”
“Come on, Buck . . .” Emily laid her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. There’s only so much you can do. Or that anybody can do.”
“You’re right.” He nodded. What his sister said was true, but that didn’t stop the feeling in his hearts. “Still . . .” He turned away from the computer screen, looking around the small office his father had put together in the den, as if something there could give him a clue.
Over by the telephone, a red light blinked on top of the answering machine.
“Hey, somebody called Dad.” This phone, he knew, was on a separate line from the others in the house; like the computer terminal, it was for police business only.
“I know; I heard it ringing in here just before you came over. So that was maybe an hour or so ago.” Without knowing why—he didn’t even have a hunch, just a lack of anything else to try—Buck reached over and hit the message button.
“And you call me a snoop.” Emily folded her arms across her chest. “Dad would flip if he knew you were doing this.”
“Yeah, and that’s why you’re not going to tell him. Now be quiet, I want to hear this.”
The tape in the machine whirred into rewind, then stopped. Another click, then a voice emerged from the machine’s tiny speaker.
“Uh . . . Detective Francisco? Are you there?” The taped voice paused. “I really need to talk to you . . .”
Buck sat bolt upright. “Hey! That’s him!”
“That’s who?”
“That’s Noah Ramsey! I recognize the voice!”
Disembodied, the words unwound into the room. “It’s really important . . . so if you’re there . . .” Another pause. “Shoot. Look, uh, my name is Noah Ramsey . . .”
Buck nudged his sister. “See, I told you it was him!”
“I know that you’re Matt Sikes’s partner, so this is something that you should be pretty interested in.” Frustration seeped into the voice on the answering machine tape. “It’s about what happened at the hospital . . . and that baby and everything . . .” The words suddenly rushed faster, the voice edging up a notch in tension. “Look, I can’t say any more right now—I’ll have to try and get ahold of you later—” With a sharp click, the connection had been broken.
“Wow.” Emily gazed at the answering machine in amazement. “Why would he have called here?”
“You heard him. He wanted to talk to Dad.”
“Yeah, but about what?”
“Jeez, who knows?” Buck shook his head. “Maybe him and the rest of the bunch who took the baby want to negotiate a ransom payment. Or maybe he just wanted to screw around with Dad’s and Matt’s heads.” Even as he spoke, he knew that none of those possibilities seemed right; the sound of Noah’s voice on the tape had sounded too weird, scared, and anxious. As though something had gone wrong—but what? “What he wanted to talk about isn’t as important as figuring out where he was calling from.”
“You must not watch very many cop shows on TV.” His sister looked at him with exasperation. “Otherwise you’d know that it’s not very likely he called from wherever they’ve holed up. Even Purists aren’t that dumb.”
“But if we could figure out the general area . . . that might help.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so? That part’s easy.” Emily slid off her chair and went over to the phone stand. She lifted a strip of paper that curled out of a smaller device next to the answering machine. “Dad’s got one of those caller ID gizmos; you gotta be a policeman to have one in California. It’s really neat—look.” She pointed to the last string of numbers on the narrow paper. “See, that’s the number of the phone that this Noah guy called from.”
Buck peered at the number. The Area Code was 503. “Where’s that?” It wasn’t a California prefix, he knew. “Where’s a phone book?”
“Why do it the old-fashioned way?” She went back over to the computer and s
tarted punching away at the keys. “Boy, it’d take you forever to find out anything.” Noah Ramsey’s mug shot and rap sheet disappeared, replaced by a crawl of digits. “Okay, here we go.” Emily put her fingertip on the screen. “According to this, 503 is the Area Code for the state of Oregon.”
“He was calling from Oregon?”
“So?” Emily shrugged. “They gotta be somewhere. And it’s just up north.”
“Okay, okay—but where in Oregon?”
“Give me a minute, will you?” She leaned forward, studying the computer screen. “Let’s see . . . this says that the number is for a pay phone—that makes sense; that’s where a call like that would come from—and it’s in a little town called . . . hold on . . .” She drew back, her voice indicating triumph. “In a town called Vindoma. Ever hear of it?”
“Course not.” Buck put his head next to his sister’s, looking closer at the screen. “Is there a map on this thing?”
“Sure.” She punched more keys. A couple of seconds later, a red circle flashed around the point where two almost perfectly straight lines crossed each other. “There it is.”
“Man, that’s the middle of nowhere.”
“What did you expect? They’re not going to go hang out at the mall.”
Buck reached over and switched on the printer hooked up to the computer. “Give me a hard copy of that map.” When the printer had ejected the sheet of paper, he glanced over it, then folded and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
“What’re you going to do?” Emily perched on the chair and watched him. “Are you going to go up there?”
“Maybe.” He zipped up his leather jacket. “But not right away. Listen, when Mom and Dad get back, don’t tell ’em I was here. And super don’t tell Dad that we got this stuff off his computer.”
“Are you kidding?” Emily rolled her eyes. “You want to get into trouble, you can do it on your . . . wait a minute.” She grabbed his forearm. “Their car . . . I can hear it in the driveway! Quick—you gotta get out of here!” She turned off the computer, then jumped down from the chair and pushed her brother toward the living room.