Though an objectively petulant person, the killer accepted that the Wraith was the best tool for this job and that the plan it had recommended was the best one available. Once he killed the target, the alarms would go off anyway, and a wise assassin would be fleeing at maximum speed when that happened. He was not a wise man, but the Wraith made up for this deficiency and he could not fault it. He possessed enough self-awareness to accept his own limitations and sufficient selfishness to prevent them from turning fatal.
So, he stepped over to where his machines told him to step, and he aimed where his machines told him to aim. His personal power cell charged the gun to the level the Wraith told him was correct, and with a sad sigh he fired.
If the weapon had any recoil at all, it did not show. His arms, designed specifically for use with his tools, absorbed and directed the reaction force of firing without letting the muzzle twitch. There was no trigger pull to spoil his aim, and no flinch reaction either. His brain told the gun to shoot, and the gun complied. Even as the penetrator flechette left the barrel, he sent two beads after it for good measure. The penetrator passed through the roofing material easily, its hardened tip carving a tunnel through the layers as if they were made of soft cheese. The burning metal spike emerged from the ceiling of the penthouse main bedroom and drilled a hole though the woman sleeping there. The wound it made was tiny and would have been entirely survivable had it not bored its narrow path directly through her heart. The target’s eyes did not even get the opportunity to snap open in surprise, because the two following beads arrived mere milliseconds later and finished the job of pulping her thoracic cavity into a mess of ruined organs and bone fragments.
The killer might have been pleased with his work, but he was already moving. If the suite’s sensors did not detect her life signs for twenty seconds, an alarm would sound and security would swarm the penthouse. This did not frighten him so much, but knowing the police and their army of drones would follow soon after put some speed in his step. His powerful legs made a twenty-second head start more than adequate, hurling him across the rooftops at close to sixty miles per hour and covering the yawning gaps in wild leaps. When the alarms inevitably began their baleful howling, he was a third of a mile away. When Colonnade security finally secured the penthouse, he was already close to a mile from the scene of the crime.
When the police arrived, precisely four and a half minutes after his first shot had killed The Widow, he was nearly five miles away and gaining distance every second. Ten minutes later every inch of The Old Fen Way was blanketed in buzzing drones and crawling with steely-eyed police officers. There was no way anything in that zone could hope to escape the notice of the fully-arrayed might of the New Boston Police Uptown division.
But the killer had long since left the zone, and thus he got away scot-free. Unsatisfied, unsated, and underwhelmed with the night’s work, his only comfort came as a single wry acknowledgment.
At least I was discreet.
His headlong flight, linear and unwavering, had him streaking like a black bullet across Uptown and into The Sprawl. The industrial zone melted beneath him, getting dingier and darker as his mechanical legs threw him from rooftop to rooftop. When his path crossed into Dockside, something peculiar occurred to him. The killer knew this place and these streets. He recognized the winding lanes of its alleys and the obnoxious neon glow of The Drag. The staccato patter of his bionic feet slowed to a jog. This would irritate his handlers, but he did not care. His path passed over the alley where Hideaway stood as a dark and uninviting edifice. The gray and ugly slab of a building squatted just off The Drag. A memory pulled at him, strong and unwanted. A pain, a loss. Something happened in this place that made him angry and sad all at once.
He could not remember all of it. The fuzzy veil of his amnesia parted for a moment and he could remember the interior of the bar and he could remember a fight. The harder he tried to recall that night, the faster it all went to black. It felt like a piece of his life had been excised and discarded, and it felt intentional. Not knowing what else to do, he lengthened his stride. To his own surprise, he did not turn north to the rendezvous when he should have. Rather, he kept moving to the southeast, drawn by some whispered echo of a memory. In a few blocks he found himself in a reasonably clean residential neighborhood, and in front of an apartment building that made him irrationally furious. Try as he may, he could not drag the details to the front of his mind. Who lived here? Why did he hate the man? Was it a man? It was. There. A detail. It was a man.
More details came, slowly and with great effort. It was a big man. Strong and hard. He could picture him now. Slab jaw and bald head, arms like tree trunks, black skin and eyes. The killer grew angrier as he remembered, and the things in his head began to fight him, to push him back toward the mission and his rendezvous point. He resisted them because this felt too important to abandon. The face in his mind at last received a name, and with it came a flood of remembered hurts and an insult so horrific it could never be forgiven.
The fixer lived here.
With a jolt, the killer was ripped from his thoughts by a man’s voice calling from across the street.
“Hey, who the hell are you?” It was lightly accented, something Eastern European, its owner gray and stooped with age. The killer knew this man. Not well, but he had seen him before, heard of him.
He was a friend of the fixer’s.
This was his landlord and if the frenetic clanging of his incomplete memories could be trusted, a regular customer as well. Suddenly, a childlike and sullen rage erupted in his guts and sent his thoughts to violent action. Without thinking, a smoking pistol appeared in his hand and he shot the old man through the center of his forehead. The corpse in the street never got the chance to even blink, let alone cry out.
The killer smiled then, a thing he had almost forgotten how to do. Unlike his previous kill, this one had felt good. Then he sped off to his rendezvous and a good night’s sleep.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Roland Tankowicz required very little sleep. He could stay awake for sixty hours before his cognition began to suffer, and if things required it, he could push himself to ninety-six hours before there was any real risk of serious issues. None of this was to say that he did not enjoy sleep, however. He liked sleep very much, especially now that he got to sleep next to Lucia. He was extremely enamored of that part, and interruptions to this often resulted in ill humor bordering upon overt violence.
When his comm chimed at 0345, he awoke and answered within a half second. He had turned the chime down so low only he would be able to hear it, and thus Lucia drooled on undisturbed. He stood as gently as he could and walked out of the bedroom before answering.
“Go for Tank.”
“Roland, it’s Parker.”
“Well, I guess this means bad news, then.”
“Someone just hit The Widow. She’s dead.”
Roland’s guts twisted. “Goddammit. There goes my prime suspect. Same hitter?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. The hit was clean as hell. Completely different MO. If you want to get down here, I can let you get a look at the crime scene. You are kind of the expert on this gangland stuff.”
His response came with a groan. “That means I’m going to have to wake Lucia up. Great.”
Her voice wafted in from behind him. “I’m up already. What’s going on?”
He spoke as he turned. “Someone just hit The Wid—” He stopped talking, words dissolving on his tongue like sugar cubes.
Lucia stood framed in the doorway wearing only the tiny shorts and thin tank top she had worn to bed. The lights were still off, and the scant illumination from the windows ran in pale blue streaks across the curves of her body. She was bleary-eyed with disheveled hair and a posture that conveyed only her confusion and exhaustion. It was that unavoidable vision of domestic complacency that no woman ever really wanted to be witnessed. Yet it was also the most beautiful thing Roland had ever seen. It was often bi
ttersweet. Moments like this, with the purity and honesty of who and what she was arrayed before his eyes in routine circumstances, were when the old fears liked to come calling.
It still bothered him that she somehow thought him worth slumming with. Their relationship defied all logic and made a bad joke out of reason. It was impossible to ignore the differences between them. He was a killer and a machine. She was a beautiful and intelligent woman with a bright future.
Or she had been until he came along. The thought still stung him with a pang of shame.
She deserved so much more than what he could ever hope to give her. Knowing she loved him filled him with as much guilt as it did joy when this happened. It was as if he had stolen something magical away from a more deserving person, like a troll hoarding a treasure he had no right to. A small, childish part of him feared a knight in shining armor would come along to rescue her someday. He knew in the darkest part of his soul he would kill that knight, and this made him sad. The pure of heart only won in stories. In the real world it was the meanest bastard in the room who took the prize, and that bastard was usually him.
Most of the time she made it easy to forget that he was built to be a monster, but every once in a while, her presence would serve as a painful reminder. With her perfectly athletic body on display, traced in faithful relief by moonlight, this was one of those times. As was her way, she shattered his carefully constructed melancholy with a single blow. Flashing a knowing wink, she cocked a haughty hip at him, presenting the sweep of her buttocks at its most eye-catching angle. The sight was nothing short of spectacular, and his physical reaction was predictable and obvious.
“Eyes up, soldier. We’re on the clock.”
Just like that, his funk evaporated, and Roland got back to himself again. In her own inscrutable way, Lucia always knew exactly what to say. Now he regretted his bout of self-pity for the childish pique it was.
Life was not a fairy tale and indulging the drama of his own personal insecurities was pure foolishness. Lucia had one of the most powerful brains in the galaxy. If she decided a worn-out army surplus cyborg was the right man for her, then a wise old soldier would be well advised to shut up and take her word for it. She seemed convinced of this, so he enjoyed the view without guilt and got his damn fool head back in the game.
Parker had been talking the whole time, but Roland had missed most of it. “Sorry, Sam, missed that last bit.”
“I was saying,” the detective repeated, “that you might as well bring your whole squad. Mindy will have a lot of good insights. This looks like a real pro to me. That Venusian kid is your infiltration guy, right? I want his take as well.”
The young detective seemed very well read on Roland’s team. “You got a file on me, Sam?”
“Nah, I’m just a real good listener. See you down here.”
“Right,” Roland said and closed the connection.
“The Widow, huh?” Lucia asked with raised eyebrows.
“Dead,” Roland confirmed. “Sam says it looks like a pro hit, too. Not a massacre like over at Madeleine’s place.”
“And done just a few hours after you went to see her, no less.” Her tone contained a question, though both the nature and answer of it seemed just outside her reach. She shook her head to clear it. “I’ll get dressed while you call Manny and Mindy, then.”
“Take your time,” Roland said, wearing an expression dangerously close to a leer.
“World’s largest teenage boy,” she sighed. “But I suppose that’s why I like you.” Though she projected frustration, Roland detected an extra wiggle in her walk as she turned to look for clothes.
“Wanna go steady?” he called to her back as she slipped back into the bedroom.
“We’ll see. Go put on a suit.”
“I hate suits,” he grumbled under his breath.
Resistance being futile, the big man stomped over to his closet and selected the next suit in line. He chose a gray one, and he elected to omit the tie because he just plain hated wearing ties. He dressed in two minutes flat, with all the seams and lines of the jacket and slacks arrayed in crisp military order.
Lucia took longer than he did, but she managed to emerge from the bathroom in less time than she might normally take. Her outfit was as practical and nondescript as his. Black pants, black shirt, a light jacket and sensible shoes combined to cast her in drab shades of professional blandness. Or it would have if she did not look and move like a dancer, at least. Some things just made no sense to Roland, fashion chief among them. It bothered him that Lucia made a burlap sack look good while he made a two-thousand credit suit look terrible. He had given up on ever figuring that out, so he did not invest any time or energy on it.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Let’s go,” she replied, still looking and sounding like she could use a few more hours sleep.
They pinged for a ride and managed to get Uptown in good time. The Colonnade fairly buzzed with activity and police drones swarmed the block like angry bees. Roland met Parker at the police cordon by a mobile forensics lab. The young detective looked bright and energetic, despite the pre-dawn hour.
“Roland! You’re here. Good! Forensics is wrapping up.”
Roland nodded. “Detective Parker, this is Lucia, Mindy, and Manny.” He indicated each in turn with a brusque sweep of his hand. Parker’s eyes lingered on Mindy for just a touch too long, but otherwise he acknowledged each with a polite nod.
“Pleased to meet you all,” he said. “Here’s the short version. Single eight-millimeter penetrator delivered through the rooftop, followed by two standard HVBs. Get this, all through the same hole in the roof.”
“Not a sniper then,” Mindy said.
When they all looked to her for explanation, she followed up. “Beads and flechettes have very different flight characteristics. They follow different arcs.”
Parker caught on and gave an emphatic nod. “Right! They won’t travel through the same hole unless you are at point blank range because that’s where the parabolas for both are almost flat. Good observation.”
“Thanks, Mister Policeman,” Mindy giggled. The detective very nearly blushed at this, delighting the sadistic assassin to no end.
Roland shut her down. “Knock it off, Mindy.” Then he turned to Parker. “Ignore her when she does that. Messing with boys is her favorite thing to do.”
“I get that,” the detective sighed. To Mindy he added, “You’re an interesting woman, Miss Carter. Your reputation precedes you. You can consider me impressed if you want.”
“Carter?” Manny gasped at Mindy. “Your last name is Carter?”
The look she gave Manny would have frozen a lake, and the icy timbre of her country drawl made the corners of Parker’s eyes twitch when she replied, “You may consider me impressed as well, Detective.”
“Told you he was good,” Roland said with a shrug. “You really do have a file on us, don’t you?”
“Just doing my job, Tank.”
Lucia changed the subject before things got confrontational. “How did you snag an uptown case, Parker? I thought your beat was Dockside?”
“Two reasons, Ms. Ribiero. One, there’s a lot folks who think Roland might have done this, and I am the expert on Roland for the department.”
This elicited a string of raised eyebrows from the group. Detective Parker raised a hand to calm them. “But I managed to convince them that this is probably the same guy who hit Madeleine. That’s reason two.”
“The gun?” Roland asked.
“Yup. Eight-millimeter, powerful, flawless marksmanship. What I don’t get is why this time he decided to be such a pro where last time he went on a rampage.”
Lucia had a theory. “He did not want to fight the security or deal with the police. Over at Madeleine’s he had already beaten the security system, and he knew he had all the time he wanted. Over there he indulged himself. He enjoyed it.” She paused, glassy-eyed while a million little nanobots aligned hundreds of potent
ial scenarios into plausible narratives. “He was having fun at Madeleine’s. But here he knew that his kind of fun would get him caught. Therefore this time he behaved.”
Parker nodded his head slowly. “That makes a bunch of very creepy sense, Ms. Ribiero.” He sighed. “So we are dealing with a high-end professional with a sick sense of fun. Great. We are still sorting out how he got to the roof. Cameras never saw him.”
“Get me to the roof,” Mindy ordered. “I’ll figure it out.”
“Follow me, then,” said Parker.
Under the withering glare of assorted Uptown detectives, the rookie investigator led his motley crew of consultants past the police checkpoints. Roland acknowledged the dirty looks of the well-dressed and well-heeled Uptown policemen with his customary glower. To Parker he opined, “We aren’t making you real popular up here, are we?”
“Fuck them.” Sam did not appear too concerned with the good graces of his Uptown brethren. “Cops have been ignoring Dockside for fifty years. Now they want to get bitchy because Dockside has no use for them? Hah.”
Roland suspected something else might have been amiss, too. He ventured a guess. “Sam, just exactly how high were your scores at the academy?”
Parker did not turn to look at Roland, so the big man did not get to see the smug twist of his lips. “High enough.”
“Right.” Roland shook his head and grimaced. “A couple of rich sons of senators got their asses kicked by a longshoreman’s kid from Dockside, didn’t they?”
“They had it coming.” The curt response gave clear indication that this was all Parker had to say on the matter.
“Keep that chip on your shoulder, kid,” said Mindy with more than a hint of appreciation. “It’s doing right by you.”
By this point, they had arrived at the lift and they all squeezed in. Roland’s presence made it a tight fit, but they managed. At the penthouse, Parker signed them past the officer guarding the crime scene and they split up. Mindy went to the roof with Lucia while Parker, Manny, and Roland moved to inspect the bedroom.
Dead Man Dreaming Page 11