by Ian Whates
Security tensed as security is paid to do. I grabbed Kris by one thick arm, again, and shoved him behind the fountain. “A dozen designers are here. Why him?”
“He was M.J.’s.”
A tidbit not in any report I’d seen. Had I gone for ears able to prick up, mine would have stood on end. Means and opportunity. If, I reminded myself, it’d been murder and not error. Still, an error this big wouldn’t help the next season of ‘We Can Make You a Star.’
Who was I kidding? Of course it would. The risk was the draw. New question. Why the secrecy? “Keep your voice down,” I grumbled. I shouldn’t encourage this; my mouth kept going anyway. “Walczak could buy a middling country. Why bother with a career mod?” Something else niggled at me. “And why did Baptiste? Was someone after her job?”
“Don’t you remember? The Veggie Turkey.”
Right. Last year’s Xmas dinner had cooked up more like broccoli than fowl. Consumers had howled. ‘Strains had released a statement about a mix-up with their vegan option ordering and given credit for a month’s supply to any affected family.
Whose wasn’t? Billions lost.
Hale had claimed not to blame her. “Think the company insisted on the mod?” I asked. Insisting was illegal; hiring based on a desired mod wasn’t.
Kris looked offended. Unicorns did that exceptionally well, which gained us a modicum of privacy as people edged away. “M.J.’s – she was – their best. Besides, it wasn’t her fault. Production had rushed ahead for the holiday.” A huff, then he unwound a little. “Sure, she worried about missing the next mistake. She was like that, wanting to be better. Someone could have talked her into the mod and then used it to –” He closed his wide lips over the rest.
“Or maybe” – I used my let’s-be-reasonable voice, the one before don’t-give-me-that-crap – “the mod failed, as many of them do. Murder takes motive, Kris.” This homicide stuff wasn’t so hard.
“You’re right.” His nostrils flared thoughtfully. Then, “What if we have it wrong? What if she was murdered because of her mod?”
Judging by conversations I’d overheard, there were plenty of people in this room willing to murder to keep whatever they’d painstakingly built into their flesh exclusive. Didn’t mean they would. Still...
My pause let Kris keep on thinking. Not good. Sure enough, he ducked to bring his face next to mine, horn passing alarmingly close to my nose, and whispered hoarsely, “What if ’Strains is putting something it shouldn’t into the food stream? Something M.J. would have tasted with her new tongue. They’d have to be rid of her!” He straightened and tossed his mane in triumph. “It was a plot!”
First murder; now conspiracy? I was done here. I pulled out my compassionate voice. “Look, Kris. I get it. A person you knew – you respected – died at the hands of people you employ. It shouldn’t have happened – to her or to anyone. You need to make your” – At his now-stricken expression, I changed ‘peace’ to – “need to think of those still alive. You don’t want to upset the family.” With a nod to our people-filled surroundings. “Or anyone else.”
I was reaching him. Maybe. Then he grumbled, “Why would they be upset? None of them care. I don’t even know why they’re here.”
“For the media –”
I’d forgotten who I was talking to; Kris Rebane made the news when he ordered a multi-grain bagel at Tims. He shook his head. “Not one posed for a feature grab or waited on a personal. They came in here, where there’s no coverage at all.”
Not even the department’s eyes, this being the private part of the function. The more we watched ourselves, Daisie’d said once, the more important surveillance-free space became. I’d laughed and called it nuisance-space.
What I’d meant was scary-space, but I wouldn’t say that to her. No watcher meant no backup, no record, just me.
Like now.
The unicorn looked as uneasy as I felt, so I put on my best everything’s-fine face. “Free food and drink, then.”
“That’s the other thing.” Kris lifted his head to gaze around the room, something easy from his height, then his eyes came back to me. They glowed. “Skin-mods show every gram.”
And the crowd was gorging itself, not to mention draining the beverage fountains.
My street-sense twitched. Not that I was an expert on celebs when they let their figurative hair or feathers down, but something wasn’t right in this room.
Fine. There was someone left to question; someone who’d know all about this crowd, as well as Baptiste’s death.
After all, he’d had a hand in creating both.
Sir Bolivar Walczak.
FUNERAL HOMES HAVE their egalitarian side. Coffins might range from minimal to ridiculous but, no matter who you were, eventually the food and drink would send you to the Train Depot.
Unless you were a cop with a liner, but I could fake that when necessary too.
It became necessary when Walczak finally made his excuses to Hale and stood. I made sure to leave promptly enough to be inside the restroom before his security. No chance they could clear the public facility for their boss, not with Baptiste’s former husbands cuddled in mutual misery on the anteroom couch.
I judged the private Sir Bolivar Walczak would have had his fill of the crowd outside. Right I was. I heard him order his protectors to stay with the husbands.
I delayed in the stall till I heard the sterilizer field hum. As I approached, he turned his head and fixed me with a blue-eyed stare as cool and collected as any I’d seen. “Cop.”
Two kinds of people greet us like that. Those with experience avoiding us and those who’ve hired those with experience avoiding us.
Interesting.
“Homicide,” I returned agreeably. “Inspector Martin. Sorryforyourloss. Were you a friend of the deceased?”
“Her designer.”
I didn’t pretend to clean my hands. “So your mod killed her.”
“Far from it.” Walczak paused to suck some rinse and spit. Why the stuff always smelled of mint, I don’t know. “I recommended against any mod. M.J.’s job was to taste new products the way any of us – any unmod – would. What was the point of her becoming a living chemoanalyzer when it was her discrimination and sense of taste that mattered?” He ran a towelette over his sweaty head and nodded to his reflection. “She listened. Seemed to like what I said and agree.” Tossing the crumpled towelette at the disposal, he turned back to me. “Then... this tragedy.”
My bullshit detector flaring into the red zone, I smiled nicely. “What changed her mind?”
“Who,” he replied without hesitation. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To uncover the truth about her death.”
I was here because Ortmer – I gave up making the excuse to myself. I’d blown my original assignment the moment I’d listened to the unicorn. “There’ve been – questions – raised.”
“You think she was murdered.” Walczak smiled. “A CMF would be the perfect weapon, wouldn’t it? Talk someone into a cutting edge mod – untried, exciting, risky – and design it to be fatal. Not right away, of course.”
“Why not?” Was I hearing a confession? Maybe homicide wasn’t as hard as I’d thought.
Maybe dogs could learn to juggle geese.
“The clinic would be accused of a poor incursion. There’d be an inquest. No, the mod would have to settle in and work as promised first. Anything goes wrong after that, well, it’s a skeleton in the code.” At my frown – who doesn’t hate jargon? – he went on, “An undetected conflict within the client’s genome.”
“What are the odds of that?” Though how Baptiste died wasn’t going to clear anything up. To be murder, someone had to want her dead.
“Higher than we like to tell clients, but slim.” Walczak took one of the two easy chairs at one end of the restroom. There were such paired conversation spots everywhere in the Forever Gardens, each with its small table bearing a box of tissue and bowl of candy. He waved me to the other chair, clearly
in no hurry to return to the funeral.
I obliged, well aware he wasn’t trying to be helpful. This was no unicorn. This was a highly intelligent, self-assured villain. If he’d frequented my streets I’ve have ordered up all the surveillance the department could muster. Surveillance that wasn’t in this both public and very private space.
For some reason – maybe for that reason – Walczak smiled again. Then, as if he’d pulled the thought from my head, he commented, “The real question is why.”
I didn’t smile back. “Any ideas on that, sir?”
“If I were to speculate...” He leaned back – his belly testing the buttons of a suit that likely cost more than I made in two years – closed his eyes and worked his lips in and out.
More bullshit. I stood to go.
His eyes shot open, anticipation gleaming in their depths. “You really should speak to Kamea, Inspector. Mention the Ministry of Health and – oh yes – do ask her about using the consumer food stream as a delivery mechanism, will you? And what M.J. thought of it. If you’re any good at your job, you might find your reason. If it was murder. These things do happen, you know.”
My words to Kris, back in my face.
I didn’t bother to respond.
As I pushed my way past Walczak’s waiting security, I caught myself hoping that, if it had been murder, I’d be able to nail their boss with it.
So I turned at the door, looked the nearest goon in all three eyes, and snapped, “Walczak stays available.”
“Sir Walczak.”
As if.
People killed each other every day for the simplest of reasons. You smell funny. You’re in my way. You have what I want. You took what I had. You don’t love me. You love me too much.
Baptiste?
Maybe one of the husbands decided to do in a rival. Who the rival was remained moot, considering I’d last seen the two in a tight embrace, but they could have worked together. Then there were the daughters. Not an uncommon motive, impatience to gain an inheritance, but it didn’t wash here. Both had substantial trusts tied to their ages, not their mother’s life.
Which took me back to what was way past my pay grade: Kris’ notion of a conspiracy by All Your Favourite Strains to be rid of their top taster because of something they intended to put in our food.
I really hated that idea.
For one thing, it’d mean recalls and shortages and nothing got the streets uglier than shortages – real or imagined. For another, Daisie didn’t have a cop liner in her gut to protect her. If there was something wrong with the food on our table, if something might have harmed my family...?
I stopped myself there. We’d have to know. That was what mattered. Again above my pay grade.
Give me an angry guy with a bat standing over a still-twitching body any day. For an instant I considered calling Ortmer. No. New fingers? Probably out working on his golf swing.
I could take Kris to the station, unicorn head and all, sit him at my pretend desk in homicide, and start a file. They could stick me with it. More likely, they’d hand it to someone who didn’t know him or the District.
For a moment I thought of begging off, of reminding Kris I wasn’t his cop any more.
But I was. I’d wiped his bloody nose after a fight behind the arena. Gone to a game or two or ten when his mother couldn’t be there. Taken him to a synth clinic where they wouldn’t ask questions when he’d gotten himself twisted about trying to get back his game during the strike.
I’d helped his mother find polish for his stupid horn. If that wasn’t being a fucking hero, I don’t know what is.
Kris, who’d met me outside the Train Depot, gave me a bright-eyed hopeful look that meant all my thinking had shown on my face and I was toast. “I want to talk to Kamea Hale,” I said, giving in.
“Great. I’ll come with you. She knows me,” this rather urgently.
I recognized the light of battle in his eyes, despite their lilac. If I didn’t let him tag along, he’d start asking his own questions. Great. “You,” I told him, grabbing the horn and using it as a handle to shake his head in emphasis, “will leave the talking to me. Got it?”
You’d have thought he’d won the Cup. “Yes, sir!”
ALL I HAD was a dead taster, a unicorn, and a villain. Not even a murder, not for sure. Yet I trusted my instincts. Something was off in the reception hall. The crowd of brave new humans – or crazy fashion extremists, take your pick – had gathered for another reason than a funeral.
Kamea Hale? Her scaled hands trembled as she lifted her glass to her lips. Her huge eyes were haunted. As Kris and I sat across from her in the alcove, the couch creaking under his weight, she sipped and swallowed and looked as guilty as anyone I’d ever seen.
I showed her the palm of my hand, activating my badge with a tap of my ring finger, then shut it off again. “I’m sorry for your loss –”
“Kamea, did you kill M.J.?”
What part of –? Using the tissue table for cover, I tromped on Kris’ bare foot, ceramic soles being good for that. He shut up, giving me a hurt look. Unicorns.
“There’ve been some questions raised,” I said smoothly, ignoring their source. “Sir Walczak suggested you could be of assistance. If you have a moment.”
“Bolivar?” Up close, the scales of her skin-mod didn’t touch one another, letting me watch her cheeks go ash white. She set her cup down without taking her eyes from mine. Kris quickly saved it from missing the table; I doubt she noticed. “This doesn’t – I don’t see –” Her voice firmed. “This is hardly the time or place, Inspector.”
Couldn’t argue with that. “You’ll come to the station, then,” I said cheerfully. “Thank you.”
Hale collected herself, a glint of what helped her successfully run an international megacorporation in the lift of her head. She looked at me, not Kris, but her first words were to him. “I most certainly did not kill Marie-Jeanne. She was one of my dearest friends as well as a valued employee.” To me. “As for questions about her death? It was a horrible way to die and a tragic waste of a life. What else could you want to know?”
Walczak thought he was using me. The difference between us was that I didn’t care. “What did the deceased think of the government using ’Strains’ consumer food stream?”
“M.J. hated it,” Hale replied without so much as a blink. Good or honest or both. I reserved my opinion. “Not the reason – who could argue with testing our ability to deliver emergency rations in a crisis? – but how it interfered with her work. She didn’t like any strain being released to the public without being tasted. She was a proud person. Responsible.” She dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “Irreplaceable.”
Kris’ horn dipped and rose as he nodded.
“Her sense of taste was that good?”
“Better than any analyzer money could buy, Inspector. Raw components don’t matter. M.J. infallibly predicted consumer mouth response to any food we dreamed up. She guided the research responsible for putting strains into almost every home. Including yours.” Hale frowned and leaned forward. “Bolivar told you about the ministry. That bastard.” She pointed a scaled forefinger at me. “There’s your suspect, Inspector.”
“What’s Star Power got to do with food production?” Kris asked, looking as puzzled as I felt.
“I’ve no idea,” Hale admitted, sitting back in her seat. The frown, I noticed, remained. “Bolivar tried to hire M.J. away from us. When she refused, he bribed someone in production to discredit her. He denied it, but I have” – another glint – “a very efficient security staff.”
“What else did they learn?” Her hesitation was as good as an admission. “Your friend suffered, Kamea. No one should die like that.”
“No.” A long pause. “Nothing concrete,” she said at last. “A rumour at best. They could be using grey source DNA to shortcut their mod development.”
Great. Now vice would start sniffing around. “How grey?” Used to be grey meant corpses. Now it could be an
ything from trafficked children to some test tube concoction.
Her lips twisted. “Animal.”
On the face of it, using DNA from other species wasn’t a big deal. We shared most of ours with everything from bananas to whales. But the devil, as my grandfather would say, was in the details. In some instances, our cells didn’t use interspecies DNA in the same way, or to the same results. The earliest animal mod attempts – because oh, yes, they tried – had been so horrific the entire world had agreed to ban them.
It hadn’t slowed the synth clinics; our own DNA has virtually no end of possibilities. Turn on the right gene and you’ve a penis to your knees.
“You blackmailed him,” I concluded with admiration.
“I didn’t need to,” Hale replied primly. “I planned to put M.J. in charge of the overhaul of our production staff, with full authority to fire anyone she suspected might be involved with Walczak or Star Power. If only she’d –” Her eyes went past me and widened impossibly. “What’s Belle doing with him?!”
I stood and turned to look, Kris looming like a golden-maned monolith beside me.
Sir Bolivar Walczak stood in the doorway to the reception hall, one of M.J.’s daughters – the elder – snug at his side. As my thoughts immediately turned to a less complex and time-honoured motive for murder, namely a mother with better taste, the air above the couple filled with incoming media eyes.
Then the lights went out.
THE UNICORN’S EYES glowed in the dark. That, I’d expected. The glowing horn, not so much.
The skin of everyone in the room emitting light?
Okay, not mine. Yes, I checked.
We seemed the only ones shocked. Chants of “Star Power! Star Power!” mingled with cheers and the joyful smashing of glassware.
I looked over my shoulder at Hale. I’d been wrong to think it a glow. Her skin pulsed with fluorescence, greenish light marking her every vein. No, moving through her every vein. She stared at her bare arms, her face a ghastly mask, then her mouth opened and she screamed.