“No way, Juno. After all this, how can I just go home? I have to see this through.”
“Listen, Maggie, from this point on, it's all about protecting your plausible deniability. You have to take the long view. You can't clean up KOP until you get to the top, and you won't get to the top going out on assassination runs with me. You can't take the risk. Just let me do what I do.”
She stayed silent for long seconds. “I wanted to do this clean,” she finally said.
“I know you did. But there's no other way. Please, Maggie, just let me do what I do.”
I fought through the scrub, vines snatching at my ankles. I kicked through, ripping up clumpy root systems that dragged along behind me. I was on the south side of the Zoo, crossing through an open field that was overdue for a slash and burn.
George told us that they'd snuck the inmates out through the kitchen. There were three separate cargo bays on the south side. Which one was closest to the kitchen I had no idea, but I was certain that the Zoo's mess hall was on the south side.
I stopped short of the road that ran alongside the south walls, and far short of the reach of the tower lights. From here, I had a good view of the three bays, all of which had their doors sealed shut. I took the lase-rifle off my shoulder. I had no intention of getting into a duel with Ian. I'd take him out at long range.
I kneeled on the ground, a blanket of weeds bending under my knees. Targeting could be a problem with my shaky karate-chop hand. I experimented a bit, trying different ways of holding the rifle before settling on lying face down in the weeds with the rifle jammed against my left shoulder, the barrel resting on a rock. I kept my right hand in the weeds where it could shake all it wanted without affecting my aim. This could work.
I kept my eyes on the cargo bays, waiting for him to come out. Something was biting me, down on my ankles. I tried to make it stop my rubbing my ankles together like a cricket. Where is he? Was I too late? No, I thought. Ian had gotten a head start on me, but he wouldn't have raced the river the way I did. He had a dead body with him. He wouldn't have wanted to attract any attention to himself. He would've taken the trip slow and casual. Then he would've needed help carrying Adela's body up the riverbank. No, he couldn't have come and gone already. He was still inside. He had to be.
Maybe not. I might've spent too much time talking to Maggie on the pier. I caught some movement in the corner of my eye. There he is. Damn. He was coming from the wrong direction. I was expecting him to come out of the Zoo, but he was coming from the river. I was wrong about him needing help carrying the body up the riverbank. He had the body bag draped over his right shoulder and seemed to be doing just fine without any help other than the 'roids raging through his body. I was surprised I'd beaten him here. He must've made a couple stops on the way. Or maybe he'd been waiting all this time for his zookeeper accomplices to give him the green light to bring the body in.
He was crossing the same field I'd crossed, but from a different angle. I was facing the wrong way. I rolled over once, twice, reorienting my body in the process. Without a rock to rest the rifle on, I used my right forearm as the fulcrum on which I could pivot my aim. The balance was all off, but it would have to do.
My heart was fucking pounding. I told myself to calm down; I had plenty of time, so just calm down and do it right. I slowly swiveled the rifle until I had him in the scope. I could see him clearly with the night vision, his smug face, his arrogant stride. I couldn't keep the crosshairs level, but it didn't matter. I didn't need them to line up perfectly. I fired the targeting device, a bug-sized heat seeker that only required an accuracy of ten meters. It squealed out across the weeds, honing in on his body heat. He heard it and knew what it was. He dropped the body bag and sprinted back the way he had come. He yelped when the heat seeker hit him, not from the pain but from what he knew would be coming next. The heat seeker itself didn't carry a deadly payload. It was built for speed and maneuverability. It dug into his flesh, deep like a tick, and then it began broadcasting a signal back to the lase-rifle. All I had to do was hold the trigger down and swing the rifle in his general direction, or better yet, aim way out ahead of him and just hold the weapon steady, waiting for him to cross the rifle's path. When the rifle locked onto the heat seeker's signal, it would fire a single pulse at the speed of light.
He stopped running. He was a dead man, and he knew it. “Juno!” he yelled. “Is that you?”
Damn straight it is.
“Juno! Where are you?” His voice came rolling across the jungle brush, desperate, pleading. I pulled my finger off the trigger and watched him through the scope. He had his shirt pulled up, and he was digging into his side with his fingernails, trying to get to the heat seeker. “Juno!” he cried. “JUNO! Don't do this, Juno. Please! Please!” He gave up on the heat seeker and dropped to his knees. “P-please!” he wailed. His face was all wrinkled up, a giant, bawling baby's face.
Looks like Ian hasn't changed so much after all. In the end, the guy is still a pussy.
I held down the trigger and swept the barrel from one side to the other until the automated firing system let loose. People always imagined the burst barreling across the open space like one of the spokes of an exploding Roman candle. But the pulse moved faster than the eye could track. One instant Ian was groveling on his knees and the next, he was blown back in a burst of bright energy.
I stood up and swung the rifle over my shoulder. I reached down to scratch my ankles, and then I crossed the fifty meters, stopping when I reached Ian's body. I bent over the corpse and pulled up the pant legs. Nothing. I rolled him face up. He was crisped beyond recognition. Twisted metal poked out from his biceps, his freakish strength enhanced by mechanical implants. Evidently, the steroids hadn't been enough for him to erase his inner weakling.
I looked over at the Zoo. I heard no sirens, saw no searchlights. The guards in the towers hadn't seen anything. They'd been facing the other way, looking toward the inside just like they were supposed to.
I pulled Ian's smoldering shirt open. There, inside a charred leather sheath, was the blade. It was hot, too hot to touch. I used my left hand and tried to snatch it out fast without ever really grabbing hold. It took three tries before I managed to pull it free and fling it into the weeds.
I pulled the penlight from my pocket and shined it on the knife. It was stained with blood, Raj Gupta's blood. True to form, Ian was carrying it on his person, ready to plant it on me as soon as the cops nabbed me. I picked it up and dropped it two more times before it had finally cooled enough to hold.
twenty-nine
DECEMBER 5, 2788
I PUTTERED up to the Jungle Pride, me and my two-cadaver cargo, one still in the wrapper, the other cooked medium well. I wondered how Yuri was doing in the dark. A check of my watch told me it had been more than two hours since we'd left him cuffed to that pipe. It was already half past midnight.
I'd stayed in that field with Ian's body for at least an hour, hashing it all out in my head. The plan was solid. All I had to do was get Maggie to sell it to her lieutenant. The rest was up to me.
I killed the motor and stood up, my legs telling me they weren't ready for more exertion. Hauling those two bodies out of that field had wasted what was left of my strength. And after having used these same legs to hold off a group of panicked offworlders, I hadn't had much to begin with. I suddenly remembered the knife, the one used to kill Raj. I picked it up from the boat's floor and heaved it into the river. That was a murder that would remain unsolved. I tied off and hauled myself up to the rippled pier. I made my way along the decrepit docking, choosing my path carefully, trying to stay away from the collapsed portions.
Yuri was going to have a hell of a time carrying those bodies across. I'd have to check the skiff for life vests. He'd need one if he fell through.
My knees creaked as I climbed the gangway. At the top, I could hear the drone of a thousand buzzing flies. I turned on the penlight. Hoshi's body was crawling with lizards, all of the
m chattering and clicking. Some fled when I passed, others hissed, and the rest just kept feeding.
I found Yuri where I'd left him. He looked relieved to see me. Two hours was plenty of time for him to start thinking I wasn't coming back for him.
I sat down on the floor. I caught a whiff of urine, and saw the stains running down the wall a short ways down. “Couldn't you hold it?” I said.
“Not for two hours,” he said petulantly.
He was already ticking me off with his big-baby routine. I told myself to let it go. At least he wasn't crying anymore. “Do you know who I am?”
“No. But Ian told me to look out for a guy with his hand in a cast.”
“What did he say about me?”
“Nothing. He just said to call him if I saw you.”
He had no idea who I was. As I'd hoped, I could be anybody I wanted. Ian's little need-to-know policy was about to bite Yuri in the ass. I kept my face straight. “I'm a cop, Yuri.”
“I figured that.”
“I'm a captain. I'm Ian's boss's boss. Consider yourself caught. We have you on so many counts, I haven't had time to add them all up.”
He nodded, his jowls puffing in and out under his chin. I could tell he was ready to talk. The guy was caught so red-handed that he could pass for somebody who sliced beets for a living. When you caught a guy dead to rights like that, he'd usually just come out with it, no lies, no arguments. Could be a guilty conscience that would make them confess, or maybe it was just the fact that they'd spent so much time looking over their shoulders that it was a relief to finally look straight ahead. Either way, Yuri was ready, and I made it a little easier on him by telling him the code to his cuffs so he could free his wrists.
“I think we can help each other,” I said.
He perked up a little. “How's that?”
“Why don't you tell me what you know first, and we'll see.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know how you got into the business of selling executions. Start with Horst Jeffers. Tell me how you met him.”
Yuri didn't look me in the eye as he talked. Instead, he picked at a fold in his pants. “He hired me for a job. He had a tour group going on a tiger hunt, and he wanted somebody to film it so he could sell the vids to them.”
“I thought tiger hunts were just a cover.”
“They were, but sometimes people would sign up anyway. Horst doesn't like to turn money away.”
I nodded. “Go on.”
“Well, like I said, he hired me. He saw one of my ads on a lamppost. I used to freelance a lot, you know, weddings, parties, that kind of thing. The tiger hunt was a three-day job, so I took some sick days to do it.”
“The pay was good?”
“The pay was great. I told Horst that whenever he needed me, I'd be available.”
“Is that when he told you about the fuck flicks he wanted to make?”
“That wasn't until later, but yeah, he approached me about the movies. He knew I worked for Lagarto Libre, and he thought I might be able to let him in late at night so we could use the studio space.”
“And you approached your boss about it?”
“No. I thought I'd get fired if Hector found out what we were doing. I was really careful, but he found out anyway. I think one of the cleaning crew tipped him off.”
“Was he angry?”
“He acted angry, but he wasn't really. He just wanted a cut of the profits.”
“I heard he liked to be there during the shoots.”
“Yeah,” he said. “He'd say he had to be there to make sure nothing went wrong. He had the reputation of the Libre as a news organization to think about. But that was all a bunch of bull. He really just liked to watch Liz. He drove me crazy. He was always in the way. I don't know if he had bad eyes or what, but he was always trying to get way too close. I'd be looking through my viewfinder and all the sudden, there's Hector's shoulder in my shot, or there's his head, coming in from the side. What really sent me over the edge was that whenever I'd move in for a close-up, he'd follow me in so I'd end up bumping into him when I tried to pull back out. But what could I do? He was my boss.”
“What did Liz think of him?”
“He creeped Liz out. He'd have his hands in his pockets all the time. Confront him on it, and he'd actually say his hands were cold, like that was going to fool anybody. I mean you could see his hands moving around in there. He was a damn nuisance, and I told Horst that, but Horst said we had to humor him. One time, Hector even asked Horst how much it would cost to be with Liz himself. Horst gave him a flat no. Liz wasn't into him at all. Like I said, he creeped her out.”
“Why did Ian kill him and his wife?”
Yuri gave me a puzzled face, trying to figure out how I knew so much. “Hector paid him to do it.”
“Hector wanted to die?”
“No. He paid Ian to kill his wife. She wanted a divorce. She was going to take him for all he was worth. He used to complain about it all the time. He'd tell anybody who would listen that she was a whore. He'd go on and on about how she cheated on him, and how now she thought she was entitled to his money. The guy was bitter.”
“I'd imagine so,” I said, finally picturing it in its entirety. I could imagine what it was like for Hector, your typical middle-aged guy with your typical once-a-week humdrum sex life, waking up from his suburban slumber the moment he found out one of his cameramen was shooting late-night porn in his news studios. Instead of being outraged like any respectable businessman, his dick took control and started tickling his brain with these funny feelings. He decided that there would be no harm in doing a little spectating, just to see what it was all about. And then there he was, in a dark studio, watching “Liz Lagarto” go to work on Raj Gupta, watching their bodies writhing and grinding, bumping and bouncing. He was hooked. It was all he could think about. I could see him sitting in his office, trying to get his work done but suddenly finding his hand in his pants, reaching though the holes in his pockets and wishing he was wearing a loincloth. He tried to get with Liz, but when he was rebuffed, he did the next best thing by talking his wife into doing little reenactments with jungle-boy Raj. And that got him off, got him off big time, until it all fell apart when she dumped the schmuck for the jungle boy and decided to take all his money. It was fucking beautiful the way it worked out for him.
“Why didn't Hector do his wife in himself?” I asked
“I don't know. I guess he was a coward. He went to Ian to see if Ian could put him in touch with somebody who did that kind of work.”
“And Ian volunteered to do himself.”
“Right. Hector paid Ian to do it. Ian just about cleaned him out, he charged so much. Hector was so stupid. I mean, what's the point of killing her to keep her from getting your money when you have to break the bank to do it?”
“I guess it wasn't about the money.”
Yuri fingered the fold in his pants with averted eyes.
“You still haven't told me why Ian killed Hector” I said.
Yuri took a deep breath. “It was the family photo that did it.”
“What family photo?”
“Hector gave Ian a copy of the holo-pic he kept on his desk so Ian would know what his wife looked like. Hector was very specific about how he wanted it done. He wanted Ian to do it at the hotel where she'd go to meet her boyfriend. He wanted him to walk in on them together and do them both in. But when Ian saw that picture of the Juarez family, he decided to take Hector out along with his wife.”
“Why?”
“The prices Horst was getting on the executions were dropping. The first five or six paydays were huge, but the auctions were getting smaller and so were the bids. Horst was good at getting first timers hooked into bidding wars, but when the repeat customers started outnumbering the first timers, the price started to fall. The repeat customers were looking for bargains, you see what I mean? They'd bid up to their limit, and if that wasn't enough, it wasn't enough. No
big deal, there'd be another auction coming up soon enough. So when Ian saw Hector's daughter in that picture, he saw an opportunity. You know what she looks like, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you know how gorgeous she is, or was. Ian took one look at her and thought she could bring some excitement back into the bidding. He said her execution could bring in a record price, and he was right. There aren't many women on death row, and none of them look like her. Ian juiced it up by selling her to the press as a spoiled brat who killed her parents because she couldn't get her way. The rags played right into it. Did you see their headlines? They ran that one that said, ‘Kitten Turned Killer.’ And then there was the one that went, ‘Prep School Princess Pares Parents.’ The bidding went crazy. Those offworlders were all dying to be the one to teach the little bitch a lesson.”
“So he decided to kill both parents and let her take the fall.”
“Right. Had he just killed the wife and tried to frame Adela, Hector might've confessed in order to save his daughter. If it was going to work, he had to kill both the parents. Ian ran the idea by Horst, and Horst signed off on it. Hector was a pain in the ass anyway. And besides, by that time, I was doing almost all holo work, so we didn't really need the studios anymore.”
That was some cold shit Ian pulled off—killing Hector and his wife and getting Hector to pay for it. And all that spoiled-brat crap was nothing more than a sales ploy. And I fell for it. I'd made her cry. I closed my eyes and rubbed my face with my good hand in an effort to keep from screaming. I wanted to smash something, like Yuri's face. I wanted to drive my fist into it until it went pulpy. I forced out a calm tone. “Did they frame any of the others?”
“No. Adela Juarez was the first. The others all came from death row. That was the only way Horst could sell it. His slogan was, ‘The thrill of the kill without the pain or the shame.’ They were all going to die anyway. He'd tell his customers they didn't have to worry about feeling guilty. You can't kill what's already dead. Besides, these people all deserved it. These were the worst of the worst. Rapists. Murderers. Horst's customers were just meting out justice. They were performing a public service.”
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