Ex-KOP

by Warren Hammond

  “What did he want?”

  “RIPs.”

  “I don't get it.”

  “He buys RIPs, man.”

  I still wasn't getting it. “Take it from the beginning,” I told him.

  He took a deep breath. “Ian told me he had a partner, right? An offworlder. I never met him. Like I said, Ian tried to keep everything on a need-to-know basis, so I don't even know his name, but Ian told me the guy's story. This offworlder opened a business doing sex tours for offworlders. But he found out real quick that that shit's a competitive business. He had to take any business he could get. So when he'd get these crazy-ass requests from people, he'd try to accommodate them when the competition wouldn't. No matter how freaky the fantasy, he'd try to set it up. He did that for a long time, long enough that he eventually got known as the go-to guy for anything outside the norm. At least that's what Ian told me.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, from time to time he'd get these S&Mers who were into snuff. They'd never come out and say it, but they'd hint around, see? They'd ask questions like, ‘You ever wonder what it would be like to kill a person?’ So Ian's offworld partner took the hint. He saw a big money opportunity and started checking into how to go about it. He scoped out the barges and found some good isolated sites. Then he hit the streets and started befriending some opium heads and orphans, looking for good candidates. You know, the kind that don't have any friends or family that would miss them. He got it all together, but when it actually came time for his clients to pay up, none of them came through.”

  “Why not?”

  “At first he thought they were just trying to get him to cut the price. So he made it clear that price was negotiable, but he still didn't get any takers. None of them had the guts to go through with it. He almost let the whole idea go, thinking they were all talk.”

  “Were they scared of getting caught?”

  “That's what I thought, but Ian's partner was smart. It occurred to him that the problem might be that these people actually had a conscience, you know what I'm saying? These offworlders aren't used to seeing O addicts and orphans where they're from, and they feel sorry for them.”

  It was beginning to make sense to me. “So he figures that if he can find victims who deserve to die, it might help sales.”

  “Right. He dropped all that snuff talk and started marketing it as your chance to be an executioner. Shit, that's when it took off. He had enough customers lining up that he was able to auction off the first RIP. We're talking serious money.”

  “How many did he do?”

  “I don't know. I didn't count. At least twenty.”

  “And he auctioned every one of them off.”

  “Like I said, big money.”

  Maggie was disbelieving. “So you're trying to tell us that instead of putting the death row inmates into the gas chamber, you sell them off so the highest bidder can execute them?”

  “Right.”

  “But that's impossible,” she said. “All the gassings are authenticated by witnesses.”

  “Those witnesses aren't in the same room, though,” he said. “We bring in the judge and the families, and they watch it from the visitor's center, on a vid screen. That photographer guy, the one that took pics of the Juarez girl, I let him come in one time to film the gas chamber. That guy can work some magic, I tell you. He just puts holos overtop the gas chamber background, and it looks real. He does the whole thing, the executioner doing the strap down, the cloud of gas that keeps getting thicker. Hell, I couldn't tell the vids weren't real, and I knew they weren't real. All I have to do is run the vids on the vid screen in the visitors center.”

  I let go of his head, the constant bailing having finally lowered the water level enough that his face could stay above the surface without my help. My brain blossomed with understanding. So many things suddenly made sense, starting with why nobody ever missed the barge murder victims. They were all going to die anyway. And then there were the offworlders who were checking out the nudie pics of Adela Juarez, the whole lot of them preparing to outbid each other for the right to execute her. Or how about the realization that there was no serial killer, just a string of rich offworlders playing dress-up, which explained why it was so hard for Maggie to match up murder dates to a single offworlder.

  “How do you get them out?” Maggie asked.

  “They get moved into solitary two days before they get gassed. I just go back there and walk them out through the kitchen. I bring their bodies back in the same way.”

  “Then what do you do with the bodies?”

  “We bake 'em until they're nothing but ashes.”

  “You handle this whole operation by yourself?”

  “No. The executioner who runs the gas chamber is in on it. And so are two other guards.”

  Maggie pulled out her digital pad. “Names.”

  “Jay Reedy, Karim Fahd, Hideki Saito.”

  “And that's it?”

  “That's it. Pretty sweet deal, huh?”

  Maggie was staring at him. She looked like she wanted to spit in his face.

  “I don't know why you two are getting so worked up,” he said. “You guys are cops, right? You know that getting gassed is way too humane for these animals. They don't deserve that kind of respect. They never showed that kind of respect to their victims, you can be sure of that.”

  “What about Adela? Has she been moved into solitary yet?”

  “Yes. And I led her out and gave her to Ian a couple hours ago.”

  Maggie's voice took on an alarmed tone. “But she's not scheduled until tomorrow.”

  He tried to shrug his shoulders.

  twenty-six

  MAGGIE and I raced from block to block, our splashing feet splattering angry pedestrians. We'd dropped off the skiff back at the dock we'd rented it from. When the owner saw the giant upended bug jammed between the seats, I paid him a little extra and told him he might want to get some butter. I wasn't worried about the guard calling Ian. He wouldn't want anybody knowing he was a rat.

  Unfortunately, George didn't know where Ian had taken Adela. Ian had no reason to tell him. We'd have to find her ourselves, and fast.

  Maggie entered the restaurant a step ahead of me. Dinnertime was at its peak. We crossed the main floor, pausing multiple times to let the hustling wait staff through. We sped through the kitchen, the steam clinging to my lungs. We took the steps up, the duffel bag bouncing on my shoulder. I banged on the door, then when there was no immediate answer, banged again.

  The door opened to an alarmed Liz, who, upon seeing Maggie and me, soured her face into a pucker. “What do you want?”

  My heart was racing, and not just because we'd run up the stairs. I shoved my emotions down and tried to lock them up, “We need to talk, Liz.”

  She didn't hold the door for us. Instead, she just let it hang open and stepped away, letting us in but making sure we felt unwelcome.

  She took a seat on the sofa. She was wearing a black robe that was tied short of snug. Half her hair was up in curlers while the other half rolled down the left side of her face. She was somehow prettier in this disheveled state, yet her sex appeal was now completely lost on me. Knowing her history, the emotional wounds she'd suffered at the hands of her father, she was no longer the stuff of erotic fantasy. Instead of wanting that robe to fall the rest of the way open, I wanted to find a blanket to cover her up. Where I'd once had flashes of holding her down under my bucking, sweating body, all I wanted to do now was hold her like a bird with a broken wing. It was like Niki all over again.

  “What do you want?” she said as she pulled a curler free.

  Maggie said, “Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes.”

  “We need your help. We need you to tell us where Ian is.”

  “Why would I do that?” She winced as the second curler got hung up on a knot.

  “Because an innocent girl is going to die if you don't.”

  “That's not my problem.�
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  “Yes, it is,” I said.

  “I'm not responsible for Ian.”

  “Yes, you are. You're his big sister, aren't you?” I could have punched her in the face, and she still would've looked less stunned than she did now. “We know who you are, Michelle.”

  She looked away and pulled out another curler, dropping it into a growing pile on her lap. She pulled at the coil of hair she'd unleashed, stretching it down past her chin before letting it spring back up. She met my eyes as she spoke, somehow mustering up some fragile dignity. “So the two of you are better detectives than my brother gave you credit for.”

  “You called me,” Maggie said. “You knew Ian was responsible for the deaths of Hector and Margarita Juarez. When you saw that their daughter was convicted, you called me and told me you knew who the real killer was.”

  “That wasn't me,” she said.

  “You called because you knew your brother did it.”

  “No. That doesn't make sense. Why would Ian kill them?”

  Maggie laid it out as simply as she could. “He and Horst are in the snuff trade. They sell the executions of death row inmates to offworlders. Ian killed the girl's parents and framed her so she'd get the death penalty. He wanted to sell her.”

  “Ian wouldn't do that.”

  “You know that's not true, Liz,” I said. “As soon as you heard that they were whipped to death, you knew. You knew. Just like we knew when we talked to Sumari. He told us about the whipping games you liked to play. He showed us the dent in his head, the dent he got when your brother brained him.”

  She stayed silent for a long minute, her eyes taking on a faraway look. When she finally spoke, her tone was less than convincing. “That wasn't Ian's fault. He didn't understand,” she said. “He was too young. He thought he needed to save me. He felt bad afterward. He was a good kid. Really, he was. It's not his fault he turned out this way.”

  “How can you be so sure he was trying to save you? Maybe he was just jealous.”

  She ignored me. She kept working the curlers, her eyes staring off into nothingness. Maggie reached across and took her hand, forcing her to snap out of her trance. “You called me because you wanted to save Adela. Help us, and there's still a chance we can.”

  “But what will happen to Ian?”

  “It's too late for him,” Maggie said. “He's beyond saving.”

  Michelle's eyes began to cloud over. “I don't know where he is.”

  “You can call him. We'll run a trace.”

  “He won't answer. You can't track him if he doesn't answer.”

  “That's why we need you to call. He'll answer for you.”

  “No. I can't do it.”

  “They're going to kill Adela,” Maggie insisted. “Ian and Horst. They sold her execution to the highest bidder. That's what they do. Don't you understand? They smuggle death row inmates out of the Zoo, and they sell them.”

  “So? Those people deserve to die.”

  “Not Adela. Adela's innocent. Your brother framed her. He killed her parents and set her up to take the fall. Some rich offworlder is going to torture her, and then he's going to kill her. He could be torturing her right now, Liz. She's already lost her parents. She's been through enough.”

  Liz stopped with the curlers, although she'd missed two. They were both on the same side of her head, making her hair look as unbalanced as her mental state. She was staring off again with blank, vacant eyes that said nobody was home. “You can't make me betray my brother,” she stated unconvincingly.

  “You already have,” I said. “You called Maggie. You knew then that it might come to this, and you still made the call.”

  She kept her eyes aimed up and out, like she was talking to somebody floating in the air. “I knew Hector Juarez,” she whispered. “He was a pervert. Yuri and Horst used the Libre studios to film my … my movies. Hector would let us in late at night, when nobody else was there. He liked to watch. He'd always be there during filming. I had a hard time performing when he was there, always staring at me with these hungry eyes. I asked Horst to make him leave, but he was afraid he'd lose the studio space. There aren't any other quality studios on Lagarto. I eventually learned to pretend he wasn't there. I'd come in for my scene, and I wouldn't look at him. When he'd stand by the camera to get the best view, I would keep my eyes on my partner, or sometimes I'd just close them. If I didn't look at him, I could tell myself he wasn't there.”

  “Tell us about that night, the night he and his wife were killed.”

  “Ian came to me that night. He had bloody clothes, and he had burns on his wrists. I wanted to clean him up, but he wanted to … to …” Her mouth was still open, but the words just stopped coming out of her, like she was a windup toy that had run out.

  I gave the turnkey a twist. “He wanted to have sex, didn't he?”

  She nodded—just barely. “He was passionate. He told me he had just broken up a robbery. He said they had lase-blades, and the burns he'd gotten were defensive. He said he could've died. That's what I thought it was about. I thought he'd just had a near death experience and he wanted to, you know, celebrate. I didn't know about Hector then. I heard about it the next day, but I didn't make the connection. All they said on the news was that Hector and Margarita were murdered in their own home. To be honest, I didn't really care that much at the time. When the news said the daughter confessed, I believed it. I had no reason not to. I figured that with a father like that, it was no wonder the daughter was so screwed up.

  “But then I saw a news report about the trial. It had to be a month later, maybe more. And they mentioned the lase-whip. They'd never said that before. Up 'til then, they'd just say ‘brutally murdered’ or ‘senselessly slaughtered.’ They never said anything about a lase-whip until it came up in that trial. That's when I knew he did it. He did it, and then he came to be with me right after.”

  Liz looked like a ghost. Maggie looked like she was about to shiver.

  “And then you called Maggie,” I said.

  “I don't care about Hector. He was a pervert. But why did Ian have to kill his wife, too? And the girl, she never did anything wrong. How come he has to be so cruel?”

  “He's not that little boy you used to take care of, anymore,” I said. “He's changed. The brother you knew is already dead.”

  “But that can't be. He's still in there somewhere. He has to be.”

  I shook my head. “You really think Ian could do the things he does if the brother you knew was still in there?”

  “Horst did this to him, you know. Ian was a good boy until he met Horst.”

  I said, “We don't have much time, Liz.”

  She looked at me, her eyes begging for mercy, begging me to tell her she didn't need to do this, that there was some other way.

  “Call him,” I said.

  twenty-seven

  “TRY it again,” I said.

  “He's not going to answer.”

  “One more time,” I said for the third time.

  She did it, and a second later, Ian's holo blinked into existence. Gotcha, asshole. Maggie was already up, holding out her digital pad, showing me the map with the blinking red dot.

  “What's wrong?” said Holo-Ian with a hint of panic in his voice. “Are you okay?”

  “I-I'm okay,” Liz responded with a stammer. “I just needed to talk to you.”

  “Don't scare me like that. You called me six times.”

  “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. It's just that your partner was here. She came with Juno, and they started asking all kinds of questions. I thought you'd want to know.”

  “Did you tell them anything?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Listen, when I'm done here, I'll come by. Okay?”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  Liz didn't say anything.

  “I'll be by soon, okay?”

  Again she didn't speak, her eyes getting glassy.

  “Okay?” he repeated.
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  “Okay,” she said.

  Holo-Ian vanished. Liz kept looking at the place where he'd stood. I opened my mouth to say something, but didn't. Maggie was at the door. She had it opened, with one foot standing in the hall. I followed her out.

  I hustled down the steps to the pier, almost slipping twice but not slowing down. Maggie was already at the bottom, waiting for me. We split the cache of weapons. Maggie took two lase-pistols in addition to her standard issue. She had one in hand, one in holster and one strapped to her ankle.

  I kept the broad-beam. It had a limited range, but it didn't require much accuracy. I checked my three blades, waistband, ass pocket, and ankle. I slung the lase-rifle over my shoulder and carried the broad-beam lefty.

  We jogged across the quay, sticking to the shadows and keeping our bodies hunched over, making ourselves smaller targets. A fence separated us from the gangway, which ran diagonally up from bow to stern of the Jungle Pride. The gate was hitched but not locked, and in an attempt to make as little noise as possible, Maggie opened it in super slo-mo.

  We stepped onto the gangway. I took the lead and crept slowly up the steep slope. I kept my eyes peeled on the top of the gangway, ready to fry the whole fucking area with my broad-beam. I let my hip rub against the railing, using it as a guide so I wouldn't have to look where I was stepping. It wasn't raining, but the air was soggy, and the railings were sweating giant-sized drops that soaked through my pants and ran down my leg. The gangway creaked under our weight and bowed down under each step, getting maddeningly bouncier and squeakier as we approached the middle.

  We were halfway up. There was only one way on or off this boat, and this was it. If they'd posted a guard, he'd be at the top of the gangway. It was dark, but not so dark that he couldn't have seen us cross the quay if he was looking. He could be watching us right now, waiting in the shadows, letting us get nice and close. …