“Fairchild as in the Fairchilds?” They own most of Pasadena.
“One and the same.” Chang puts the files in order and hands them over to the detectives. “Here’s all my reports.”
Red Feather hands her his card. “You hear anything about that logo you call me right away.”
“Last thing.” Chang looks back and forth at Günn and Red Feather. “Before I got locked out of those three encrypted files I caught a glimpse of their DNA results and I tell you what—those three are decidedly not human. Couldn’t put it in the report because I’ve got no proof. But I tell you, when I saw their cell structures,” Chang purses her lips, “I almost peed myself. In theory, there is nothing in our known universe that looks like that. If I were you, I’d start by interviewing those three because I’ve got a feeling they aren’t gonna be in your custody for much longer. Someone was notified when their DNA showed up in our system. My spidey sense tells me whoever is behind that pyramid logo is already on their way to collect them.”
Red Feather and Günn exchange a glance. “Good tip, Stacey. Thanks again for all the help.” The detectives rise in a collective sigh and Chang nods. Too much has happened already and it’s only just revving up.
Red Feather has another memory surge—the vision of the heavenly circle of chanting beings. Maybe Chang is right, Red Feather thinks, there is a bestseller in here somewhere.
Günn clears her throat. She wastes no time on feelings, especially for potential murderers, no matter their age or circumstances. What she can think is: Potential alien life forms in our custody. In spite of her pragmatic and scientific worldview, the truth about aliens has always been Günn’s most secret passion. For the first time today, she feels a flickering of excitement as the world changes.
8:45 AM LAPD Headquarters
Police Captain Ward Anderson is in the eye of a shitstorm. Conjunctivitis here he comes.
“How could you have let an incompetent like Detective Murphy, without ONE SINGLE commendation under his belt, even go near the perpetrators of the biggest terrorist act our nation has ever seen?!” Agent Dilbert Linus from the FBI’s elite Red Team—the group called in during emergency situations that answers directly to the FBI head—feels like he’s about to have a heart attack. Or stroke. Or embolism. Or all of the above. He takes a deep breath pushing his hypochondria to the side and continues shouting. “I mean, my God, man! This is the fucking Los Angeles Police Department, not the sheriff’s office of Deliverance, Idaho! How how HOW can I be dealing with this level of…” Linus stops, not wanting to say the word incompetent again. Loses his train of thought.
“Listen, Special Agent—” Anderson says, meek as a lamb belying his physical stature, which towers over the slight Linus. Linus raises a finger up for silence. Train of thought still lost. He exhales with a boom.
“What, then? What have you to say for yourself, Captain Anderson?” As if it’s his alleged name.
“Look, sir. I did not give him the go-ahead to interview that suspect.” Anderson’s voice raises a decibel level, the pounding in his chest makes his eyes water. His jaw aches.
“Come again?” Linus cannot fucking believe what he’s hearing.
Anderson sees his job security, pension, his entire life going up in smoke. Numbness trickles down his left arm. “He went in there of his own volition! Christ on the cross, I would never have let that half-wit even near those guys. I specifically told him to stay away, that he wasn’t even on the Crane Massacre task force. The asshole went all John Wayne.”
Linus is floored. Add seizure to the list of things happening inside his body. “Are you so blissfully unaware of the reality of this situation, living in your LA bubble?!”
Anderson looks down, his head throbbing. “Agent Linus, you have my deepest apologies. You can’t imagine the morning this has been, the things I’ve seen. The moment I heard what he’d done I put him under arrest for obstruction of justice. He’s waiting for you in lock-up.”
“And why was nobody guarding the suspects?” Linus’s heart pounds so hard he can barely hear himself think.
Anderson loses his cool. “They were guarded! But Murphy is a homicide detective! Nobody told them not to let anyone in because who the hell would have thought anyone would go in there without consulting with the FBI, CIA, the goddamn president of the United States?” Anderson starts seeing flashes of lights.
“Almost thirty-five thousand people lost their lives last night,” Agent Linus also continues reeling from the news. “That means there are close to seventy THOUSAND parents out there mourning their loss. Double that and you get all the others affected. This is the single most horrifying thing that has happened to our nation and what is your response? To send in a half-retarded nepotistic shit to interview one of the suspects, allowing him to lawyer up in the process? STAGGERING!” Now Special Agent Linus starts seeing spots, too.
“For the record, I repeat I did not, DID NOT give Detective Murphy the go-ahead to interview the suspects.” Anderson slams his fist on the table.
Linus jumps, his eyes slits as he glares at Anderson. Linus takes a deep breath. “Effective immediately, this is a federal case. And you are under unpaid suspension pending an Internal Affairs inquiry. Your security escort is on its way.”
Captain Anderson feels a grotesque pain in his chest, an explosion. His face pales as he grabs for the desk that falls away from him. He collapses on the floor.
Linus feels his imaginary embolism, stroke, blindness, fading. “Oh fuck.” He drops to the ground, checking Captain Anderson’s weak pulse. “I need an ambulance!” Linus shouts as his cell phone rings. “He’s had a goddamn heart attack!”
“This better be fucking good!” Linus barks into the phone as he undoes Anderson’s tie and loosens his collar.
“Special Agent Quatro, the CIA interrogator, is en route,” says the voice on the other end of the line. Agent Dilbert Linus’s embolism, stroke, seizure returns.
9:00 AM Spruce-Musa Hospital
The previous fourth floor patients are tucked away in new digs, with many of them threatening to sue the hospital for the inconvenience. This is Beverly Hills’s most elite medical establishment after all, and socialites don’t take kindly to their needs being made second tier to anyone, not even the sole survivors of a cataclysmic event.
As the recent additions to the list of Crane Massacre survivors adjust to their new surroundings, hell breaks loose. The three women CSI Stacey Chang IDed as aliens get the party started:
The cyborg, gray skin shimmering, shoots poison darts through her skin, killing the nurse attempting to sedate her.
The lizard lady—green, crocodilian, with ridges down her back and forked snake tongue that slithers out every so often—gives an orderly a concussion after knocking him through a wall with her tail.
The woman who smells like oleander puts the doctor on call into a coma after he touches her skin with his bare hands.
If Red Feather and Günn had any doubts about CSI Chang’s theory of the alien entities, they’re dispelled.
Nurse Pratchett rattles off various points from an injury waiver Detectives Red Feather and Günn need to sign before they talk with the survivors. “And you tell your people they are not to enter the rooms, under any circumstances. We are stretched thin as it is. Understand?”
The detectives nod and sign on the dotted lines.
“Ready?” Red Feather raises an eyebrow at his partner.
“As a Freddy. Let’s go.” Günn takes a deep breath, wishing they’d worn Kevlar vests. Red Feather feels a surge of adrenaline as if he were about to interview a perp, not a victim.
Red Feather knocks on the lizard lady’s door. “This is Detectives Red Feather and Günn. May we come in?”
“Door’s open.”
She sits in a chair by the window, looking decidedly human: a
female in her late twenties with fair skin and long blonde hair in a green velour tank top and matching trousers.
Red Feather twinges with disappointment. Günn notices her hospital gown folded in a neat pile on the dresser. Where did she get the outfit?
“Don’t look so sad. I can change back if you want,” she says, her hair rippling like seaweed as she turns her head.
“Excuse me?” Günn didn’t realize she was wearing her interest in meeting an alien on her sleeve.
“I’m a shapeshifter. See?” She takes a long look at Red Feather, closes her eyes, breathes in. As they watch she turns into his identical twin, down to the scar on his forehead from his first ever fistfight in high school. She shivers and turns into Günn’s mom, joint in hand and all.
“Whoa,” Red Feather and Günn in chorus.
She laughs. “You’ve seen The Matrix too many times.” The alien shivers and changes into her lizard form. “This is my true shape.” Her tail curls at the end like an iguana, and like a chameleon she has black patches indicating her discomfort. Her eyes are the color of light amber and they blink both ways. Red Feather finds it hypnotic.
“Since we’re playing show-and-tell, wanna see something else?”
She doesn’t need an answer, the eagerness in the detectives face gives them away.
“Got a pen knife?”
Red Feather fishes in his back pocket and pulls out his Swiss Army knife, the last gift he received from his Grandfather before his passing.
The alien presses the blade against her thumb and begins sawing.
“What the fuh—” Günn begins, but the alien silences her with a sharp glance.
In a quick moment she’s holding her thumb, shows the stump to the detectives who watch as it grows back. Not slowly. “Think fast,” she says, tossing the amputated digit towards the detectives. Günn catches it, horrified. “Be careful what you do with it. My blood stays active.”
“They call me Chamelia. Pleased to meet you. Sort of.” She shivers again and is back in human form, her olive skin glowing and her hair tangled. She works out the knots with long green-tipped fingernails. Günn looks at the tidy pile of hospital issue gowns and realizes the alien can shapeshift into clothes and accessories as well as other forms.
“Did you do all this?” Günn asks, fishing an evidence bag from the video camera case and placing the thumb inside.
“All this what?”
“Bringing everyone back?” Maybe there’s a scientific explanation after all.
“I wish I knew what you were talking about.” The alien’s thumb finishes growing back and she wiggles it at the detectives. “Show and tell is over. What do you want?”
Red Feather clears his throat. “Um, so, we’re Detectives Günn and Red Feather. We’re here to ask you some questions about the rave last night.” At least we know how you grew from the piece of your tail we uncovered at the vaporized party site.
“Fine. Get on with it. They’ll be here soon enough.” She’s resigned. “You’ll need all the time you can get to prepare.”
“Who’ll be here?” Günn asks, starting the video recorder, relieved that she can see the survivor through the viewfinder, but it’s like looking at a double exposure: Günn sees Chamelia’s ultimate form superimposed over the meatsuit of a twenty-something human woman.
“The barbarians from the Roswell Institute. They’ll want us back in our cages yesterday. And all your people here are in danger. They shoot to kill. All witnesses. But never me.” Their program would be nothing without my intelligent blood and DNA. She looks out the window, her hands shake.
“Ok, that’s a lot at once. Let’s just start off easy. Um, what are you?” Red Feather can find no other way to put it diplomatically.
“Not from around here.” Chamelia does not want to talk about this.
“We figured,” Red Feather says. “So…”
Chamelia looks at their expectant expression and feels more tired than she’s ever felt in her entire life. She’s fed up of explaining herself. Exhausted from this banal human curiosity with her and her people. Will this ever end?
Günn looks at Red Feather, brow creased.
“Let’s come back to that later,” Red Feather says. “What do you remember about the rave last night?”
“I wish I remembered less. What a mess.” Chamelia shakes her head, the black patches on her skin deepen.
“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” Red Feather urges, sitting down on the edge of the bed with his notebook out. Günn stands by the recording camera, again thankful that this creature hasn’t pulled a disappearing act like the so-called vampire, Icarus Lazlo. She doesn’t know which survivor’s statement will be harder to believe.
“First, there is something very wrong with human men. I wasn’t even at the party and a security guard tried to rape me, my friends too. You’ve seen a little of what we can do; although NRG is probably devastated with guilt about the nurse she killed.” Me, not so much.
“NRG?”
“The one with the knives.”
“Oh. She was with you?”
“Yes, and the girl with the poison skin, Secrete. We also had a human with us, a one-eyed girl named Lily Green. Did she make it?” Hope is a beautiful thing.
Red Feather looks at Günn, eyebrow raised. “Yes, she did.”
“Oh thank the Gods. Sweet child. She ran away from her orphanage after the supervisor tried to molest her.” A serious expression comes across Chamelia’s face as she studies the detectives, Red Feather especially. “Really, what is wrong with you men? You need to force yourselves on women and children? That’s how you’re taught to treat others?” Chamelia’s eyes flash red.
“Not all men are like that.” Red Feather’s shackles rise even though he knows she’s right. How many times has he seen it? He’s long since lost count.
“Yeah, but every woman has her story so you do the math,” Günn agrees. Chamelia throws her a crooked smile.
“I’ll never understand you humans.” Chamelia shakes off the line of thinking. “So, the rave. My friends and I don’t do drugs. We only go—went—to those kinds of parties because we could be ourselves for the night. I find this human costume exhausting. And NRG and Secrete get stared at wherever we go, which can be dangerous because they are also easily annoyed. You can imagine how that’s turned out.”
Spitting knives and poison skin, doesn’t take a genius.
“We’d been on the road for a couple weeks, never staying in the same place more than a couple days. Sometimes out in the woods when it was warm. Otherwise, motels. Switching out our license plates just in case someone spotted us. The Institute’s got moles everywhere. We picked up Lily hitchhiking a few days before the rave—thankfully it was us and not some other pervert.” She shoots another look at Red Feather, who bristles. It’s becoming personal. He’s not like that. Not one bit. Red Feather feels the urge to explain himself, how he’s worked overtime solving sex crimes, the ones that nobody cares about, the child prostitutes, the trafficked women, the missing girl cold cases he takes home to mull over, burning sage and leaving offerings for dreams that might help him crack their whereabouts. But this isn’t his story hour. Chamelia stares at the detective, who tries to keep his frustration in check, almost succeeding.
“I apologize. I think I might have unfairly judged you.” Chamelia says to Red Feather, the anger gone from her voice.
Red Feather is taken aback. Gotta work on that poker face. He’s starting to take on some of his partner’s less personable qualities.
“No need to apologize. But thank you.” Red Feather pauses, trying to remember where they were in the interview.
“We were talking about Lily before I insulted you. She was with us for a few days. We go to the party and make it past the security guards a
nd their attempted gang rape—”
“A gang rape?” Red Feather interrupts.
“Attempted. We killed them. Self-defense. It was them or us; we chose us.” Chamelia holds her head high and looks the detectives straight on.
Günn smells nothing hinky. No way.
Red Feather starts taking it in stride. “And then what?”
“It was bizarre. They were giving away free water at the party. Great, we thought! It usually costs your soul for a small bottle. Then, just like that, we’re all hallucinating. The water was spiked.”
Red Feather makes a note in his pad. Spiked water, also confirmed by Icarus Lazlo.
“I’d never been on drugs before, except the tranqs they would shoot me up with at The Institute.” She pauses. “Turned out it wasn’t so bad. Fascinating even. We met some nice women and then we were actually having fun. Can’t even remember the last time we experienced actual fun. Chatting, dancing, lovely moments shared. Should have known the euphoria couldn’t last, because all of a sudden we’re surrounded by security guards like hyenas and they try to take Lily away. We fight them, of course, so they grab all of us, too.
“Dragged us up a creepy tower that sort of appeared out of nowhere. That mansion was insane. There was an old man up there waiting to offer Lily as some kind of human sacrifice.” Chamelia is disgusted. “I thought I’d seen everything, but that was the most. He had this iron maiden all set up to drain her blood. He said now he’d live forever. One of the women with us—don’t remember her name—it looked like her vulva detached from her body and grew, like that movie in the fifties with the pink ooze?”
Crime Rave Page 10