Trancehack

by Sonya Clark

  “Did you ever see him here?”

  “What, Forbes here? Of course not. He was far too hoi polloi to be slumming at a zone club.”

  “Did you ever see him anywhere with anyone you know to be involved in the illegal nightshade trade?”

  Vadim sipped his drink. “No, Detective, I did not. You’ve got me all kinds of curious, you know. Was the esteemed doctor involved in something dastardly? Oh, please, tell me it’s so.”

  “It’s possible there’s a connection between the doctor’s death and nightshade. It’s also possible there’s not. I have to investigate every lead.”

  “Do you? You sure about that?” Vadim’s sharklike grin unnerved Nate.

  Calla said, “A guy like Forbes was connected. You know how it is.”

  Vadim stood, crossing the room to a surprisingly modern security system with a bank of video feeds. That kind of equipment cost plenty, especially for a Magic Born. The club must have been rolling in money but then, considering the size of the crowd out there, that didn’t surprise Nate.

  “Yes, he was connected. Connected to wealth and power and all the right people and the right organizations. You think he was connected to something else, though, don’t you, Detective?”

  “Robbery’s been ruled out as a motive so yes, I’d say chances are he was involved in something unsavory.”

  Vadim slammed his drink down and whirled around. “You think nightshade is the most unsavory thing he could have been involved in? I’d laugh if that weren’t so tragically stupid on your part.”

  “The drug trade—”

  “Is nothing compared to what they do. Taking babies from their families. Treating us like we’re less than human. Were you raised by your birth parents, Detective Perez?”

  He had to force himself not to look away. “Yes.”

  “Allowed to vote? Live where you want, go to college, pursue the career that suits you best? Are you allowed to marry?”

  Shame filled him. He flicked a quick glance at Calla. She was staring at the floor, something etched in her face he couldn’t name. No wonder she didn’t want to dance with him, flirt with him, have anything to do with him. He looked back at Vadim because it was too hard to look at Calla. “Yes. I can do all those things.”

  “You probably think your life is better for it, having so much privilege. In some ways it is. But here’s something to chew on. For all those rights and privileges you so enjoy, they’d still take your child from you if their DNA tested positive for magic. They treat us like we’re less than human, like we’re freaks of nature. Normals look down on us. We’re the trash they wipe their feet on. They come in here slumming, looking to score some drugs or sex or a charm to make their neighbor’s grass stop growing so they have the nicer lawn or some stupid shit. But we’re the ones who get to keep our children, Detective. So tell me, who’s the law’s bitch? Sometimes it’s hard to tell from where I’m standing.”

  Nate had no answer and no intention of getting into an argument with someone so obviously high. He knew the laws of course, everyone did. He knew the consequences too, even if a man like Vadim would have no sympathy. The first crack in his marriage had been his wanting a child and his wife refusing to even consider taking the risk. He’d accepted her fears, even shared them, and accepted her decision. Looking back though, he knew those conversations had been the beginning of the end.

  It wasn’t something people talked about, but he knew a lot of couples who’d decided not to risk having kids. If it was discussed at all, any and every reason for it was given. Money and careers always topped the list of excuses. The Magic Laws were never mentioned, but the possibility of having your child taken away hovered like storm clouds over everyone his age he knew. People his parents’ age and older seemed to have accepted it but his generation, not so much.

  Still, as far as he knew there was no talk of changing the laws outside of anti-government radical groups that were few and far between. The Magic Laws were so deeply entrenched that no one could imagine changing them anymore. Especially after the spate of terrorism thirty and forty years ago.

  Nate pulled himself back into the moment. “Look, all I’m trying to do is my job. Right now my job is to solve a murder so I’m following the best lead I’ve got.”

  Vadim refilled his glass. “So you are. Let’s talk about connections again. As far as you know Forbes had all the right connections, but what if someone close to him had a wrong connection? That might be something, wouldn’t it?”

  Nate added the last of his cash to the pile on the desk. “What do you know?”

  Vadim stepped aside and indicated one particular screen. Nate strode to the bank of monitors and leaned over to look. Vadim said, “That young idiot there fancies himself a dealer in the making. He’d be better off sticking to his day job shoveling fertilizer in a biofarm. Just doesn’t have the constitution required of a drug dealer. The balls of steel. Or the discretion. The big boys won’t let him play because he can’t keep his mouth shut.”

  The black-and-white image was sharp enough to make out plenty of detail. The kid was scrawny, wearing mostly black and sporting a face full of piercings. He was talking animatedly to another man who had his back to the camera. Nate pointed at the other man. “Who’s that?”

  “Here’s where it gets interesting.” Typing rapidly, he called up an image from another camera, this one capturing the kid’s back and the face of the man he was talking to.

  “Son of a bitch,” Nate whispered.

  The other man was Ronald Jenkins, Forbes’ assistant.

  Chapter Eight

  Bringing them in for questioning was easier than Nate expected. He grabbed the kid, who was too scared to run, first. Jenkins was too smart. They were in separate holding cells now, waiting. Nate changed back into a suit at the station. He’d had to leave the club so quickly there’d been no time to talk to Calla, just an exchanged glance that he couldn’t read. Time to put that away now and go to work.

  Nelson Santo, age nineteen, employed at a biofarm shoveling fertilizer like Vadim said. Poor grades, lots of juvy arrests by both DMS patrol and off-zone cops. Several were drug related but only using and holding, no selling or distribution yet. He had an adoptive family in the zone, making him different from Calla who grew up in the orphanage. Santo’s father worked at the same biofarm, in one of the highest-paying jobs a Magic Born could hold, and his mother worked as a gardener for a wealthy Normal family. The Santos were well-off by zone standards, but the kid had to be an idiot anyway.

  Nate straightened his tie and entered the holding cell, eschewing the secondary officer some used when questioning a Magic Born. Having a gun trained at his head the entire time was unlikely to get the kid to talk. Santo looked at him but kept his mouth shut. Being hauled in by a homicide detective was a whole new ballgame for him.

  Placing a photo of Alan Forbes on the table, Nate said, “Do you recognize this man?”

  The kid twitched, made to pick up the photo then didn’t at the last second. “Uh, yeah. From TV and stuff mostly. I may have seen him at the clinic once. Forbes, right?”

  “Dr. Alan Forbes, head of the DMS clinic and his own private clinic. He’s dead. You know anything about that?” Nate took the seat opposite Santo.

  “No, no, no.” Santo rubbed his face, which was losing color fast. “I don’t, this is—I don’t know anything.” His hands couldn’t be still. Whether from nerves or drugs or maybe both, Nate read it as a major tell. The boy knew something, and it didn’t look like he’d be hard to crack.

  “The quicker you tell me the truth, the better it will be for you. Do you know anything about this man’s murder?”

  Santo began to shiver. He wrapped his arms around himself. “I’m never getting out of here, am I? No matter what.”

  “You’re here for questioning. That doesn’t make yo
u a suspect.” Not exactly answering the question, but not lying either. Although Nate was more inclined to believe that Santo had witnessed something rather than committed the crime himself. “Just tell me what you know and I’ll see what I can do about getting you out of here sooner rather than later.”

  “I saw you with that Vesper chick.”

  Nate nodded. “She brought me to the club.” He wasn’t sure how much to tell the kid. On the off chance Santo had any real connections with anyone dangerous, Nate didn’t want to get Calla in trouble.

  “She’s cool. I bought my girlfriend a bracelet from her.”

  “She makes nice things.” Come on, kid.

  Santo stewed for several minutes, constantly shifting in his chair and moving his hands. “I thought they wanted to buy nightshade.” His voice quaked, sounding even younger than he was.

  “What did they want?” Nate kept his demeanor calm so as not to spook the kid.

  “They wanted to know how to make it.”

  “They wanted the recipe?” Vadim had said the big boys wouldn’t let him play—how had this kid gotten the recipe?

  Santo nodded. “I told them it would take more money than they were offering. I had to steal it, so I needed a bigger payday to make it worth it.”

  “Is that what you did? You stole the recipe and gave it to who exactly?”

  “Jenkins. I gave it to that guy Jenkins. They couldn’t do it ‘cos of how you need to enchant the stuff. So he found me at the club again and said they’d pay me to do that.”

  “Did you?”

  Santo ran his hands through his hair. “I wanted the money, okay? That’s all. I went for the money. But I can’t do that.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t do that?”

  “I don’t know the spells. All I got was ingredients, not the spells. I tried to fake it, but they could tell and that guy—” he pointed at the photo, “—he stun gunned me and took the money back.”

  “When was this?”

  Santo flexed his fingers. “Uh, Friday night. Late.”

  Friday night. Forbes had been killed late Sunday evening, found shortly after his death when Jenkins came to the office to check on some kind of lab work. A cleaning service went over the place top to bottom every Saturday, which would have removed traces of Santo’s DNA, if there had been any. “Did they talk about getting someone else to do it?”

  Santo shrugged. “I don’t know. I got out of there.” He shifted forward in his seat. “Look, I know it sounds crazy but I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know why they wanted to make the stuff when they could just buy it.”

  That was the big question, or one of them. Nate hoped Jenkins could answer it. “Is that the last time you saw Alan Forbes?”

  “Yes.” The kid nodded eagerly. “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, sit tight.” Nate stood and walked to the door. “I’ll be back if I have more questions.”

  “Can I go home? I gotta work tomorrow.”

  “Just sit tight.” Nate closed the door behind him. He nodded at the uniform guarding the door and made his way down the hall.

  Another detective, an older man by the name of Mullins, stopped him. “That the guy?”

  “I doubt it. Seems a little too passive for murder.”

  “You never know with them. They’re running his DNA for a match.”

  Nate blinked. The DNA was unregistered. Only a handful of people knew that though. “On whose order?”

  Now it was the older cop’s turn to look nonplussed. “Decker. He came in with the senator. That’s some high jingo you stepped in, son.” Mullins clapped him on the back a little harder than necessary. “Hope you don’t fuck it up.” Mullins walked away, a grin cracking across his dark face.

  The uniform behind the desk called for Nate. “They want you in the chief’s office, Detective,” she said.

  Nate hustled upstairs, not sure what to think. Beckwith’s bodyguard hovered in the hall. Nate found the chief and the senator waiting for him, looking pleased. For some reason, that didn’t fill him with confidence.

  “Congratulations, Detective,” Decker said. “You did it. In short order, too.”

  “Sir?”

  Beckwith spoke. “While I have the greatest respect and confidence for the police laboratory, I realize mistakes can be made. We’re only human, after all.” His white teeth flashed in a perfect politician’s smile. “I had the DNA from the crime scene retested at the DMS. We were about to call you with the results when you walked in the door with him.”

  Fucking hell.

  “That was some excellent work,” Decker said. “Especially for having to work alone and in an unfamiliar environment. Good job, Perez.”

  Nate finally found his voice. “Sir, he admits to seeing Forbes as late as Friday night, but he claims that was the last time.”

  “Oh?” The good humor fled Decker’s face.

  Nate plowed ahead, relating the kid’s statement. It was met with silence.

  Beckwith spoke first. “Well, it sounds to me like he must have come back later hoping to get that money. There must have been an altercation and that’s when it happened.”

  Decker said, “Sounds logical.”

  Beckwith rose, reaching for Nate’s hand. “I want to thank you for not only solving this but for being so discreet. I won’t forget it, Detective.” He nodded at Decker and left.

  Nate opened his mouth to speak, but Decker cut him off. “Just shut up. This is over.”

  “Sir, why was Alan Forbes trying to make nightshade? I’ve still got Jenkins in holding—”

  “No you don’t. I had him cut loose.”

  “What?”

  “Listen to me, kid.” Decker pointed a meaty index finger at him. “Senator Beckwith is pleased with the resolution of this case and wants me to give you a commendation. I’m happy to do so, but if you piss me off I don’t have to act like it’s on your record.”

  “Doesn’t anybody want to know what Forbes was doing? And do you really think our lab screwed up?”

  Decker threw his hands in the air. “Mistakes happen. Ones like that are rare, but they do happen. Besides, there’s no such thing as unregistered Abnormals. That does not happen.”

  Nate had to admit that a lab mistake made more sense than finding an unregistered Magic Born. There were still too many unanswered questions for his taste though. “I still want to know why Forbes was messing around with nightshade.”

  “Yeah, well I want my hemorrhoids and heartburn to disappear, but we don’t always get what we want, now do we? Look, you closed an important case. Go do whatever you do to celebrate and forget about it.”

  Nate stood there, not quite believing what had happened.

  Decker turned his attention to his computer. “Good evening, Detective.” The sound of dismissal was loud and clear in his voice.

  As he left, Calla’s words from earlier in the day echoed in Nate’s head. Resolved doesn’t necessarily mean solved. It was just after midnight, but he figured she would still be up. He wanted to talk to her. He knew he shouldn’t, but there it was anyway. He had no idea what he would say and still didn’t know when he knocked on her door.

  She wore a look of barely restrained fury. “What do you want?”

  Nothing I can have. “I just wanted to let you know the case is over.”

  She leaned her hip against the doorknob. “Yeah, I know. I know you helped railroad a kid too soft to kill a mouse for a murder that’ll get him the death penalty. Get the fuck off my doorstep.”

  “Calla, his DNA was at the scene. He had an altercation with Forbes two nights before. It all fits.” And it did, but that didn’t make him feel any better.

  “I’m betting your senator made sure of that.” She tried to slam the door in his face.

&n
bsp; He caught it. “You knew this was a murder case and I’d arrest someone. Please, I just—”

  “No! Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.” Disgust twisted her features.

  He removed his hand from the door, defeated. This time she did slam it. He stood there, feeling stupid. Angry. Like something had slipped away before he even knew what it was.

  It took a while, but he walked home through the alternating light and dark of the city night.

  Chapter Nine

  Nate cruised through the next two weeks on autopilot. He filed reports, drank bad station coffee, exchanged shop talk and gossip with other cops. Kept his thoughts to himself when told he’d have to have his picture taken with the chief and Senator Beckwith in a public commendation ceremony. Now that an arrest had been made, the senator seemed willing to milk his friend’s murder for all the publicity it was worth.

  A pair of blue-gray eyes hovered in his thoughts all the time.

  Instead of going home at the end of the day, he trudged through the humid heat to MacGruder’s, the nearest watering hole that wasn’t a cop bar. He found an empty stool as far from the loud vidscreen as possible, ordering a whiskey and soda. It was much better than the rotgut at the club, and the smooth burn took some of the sting out of the day. He made short work of the first and ordered a second, trying as hard as he could to focus on nothing at all.

  Close to the end of that second drink a woman took the stool next to him. “Can I buy you another?”

  Nate met her eyes in the reflection of the bar’s mirror. Long auburn hair framed a conventionally attractive face with just a touch too much makeup. A low-cut blouse put on an impressive display of cleavage that didn’t interest him at all. He shook the ice left in the glass. “I need to stop at two, thanks.”

  “You sure about that?” Her smile was meant to entice. All it made him do was think of someone else.

  “Why do people keep asking me that?” He hadn’t intended to say the words out loud.

  “Asking you what?” She sipped her white wine.