by Brian Parker
All it took was one call to the police with my name attached to it and Cantrell’s computer programs would pick it up. He’d have people here within an hour.
“Fine,” I relented. “Here’s my pistol.”
I pulled the Sig Sauer from its shoulder holster, careful to keep my fingers away from the grip. Once it cleared the leather, I grasped the barrel with my opposite hand and passed it over to Avery.
“The laser pistol too,” she directed.
I lifted my suit jacket to expose my belt line and spun slowly, showing her that the paddle holster wasn’t on my hip.
“It’s out of juice, so I left it in the car.”
“Lift up your pant legs too, Zach.”
I complied. “I don’t use an ankle holster, you know that.”
“I also didn’t think you made a habit of getting yourself in this much shit.” She looked over at the women. “You two have anything?”
“Nope, I don’t have a weapon,” Sadie replied.
“Nothing,” Teagan affirmed.
“Alright, you three. Come inside, sit on the couch and don’t make any sudden movements.”
We followed her directions and filed dutifully into the townhouse. Once we were all lined up on the couch, Avery sat across from us.
“Okay,” she said. “Tell me what’s really going on.”
I brushed my teeth with my finger. Avery had graciously allowed us to stay the night once we told her the entire story. She even let me have my gun back.
A soft knock on the bathroom door made me turn slightly. “Come in,” I said, expecting it to be Teagan.
I was surprised when my host slipped through the door.
“I… Uh, I didn’t expect to see you again tonight,” I stammered.
“It’s okay. You’re safe,” she assuaged my doubt. “I’m not coming in here to try to seduce you or whatever stupid fantasy you have going on in your head right now.”
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
“Mmm hmm…” she demurred, sitting on the toilet lid as I rinsed my mouth out. “What’s with you and the girl?”
“Teagan?”
“Yeah. The way she’s guarding you is cute.”
“Guarding me? I don’t know what you mean.”
“That girl has got you marked as hers and isn’t afraid to let anyone know it. And a few of the glances I saw you give her makes me think that you two are a thing—much more than you led me to believe when we were seeing each other. How long have you two been together?”
“You mean, were Teagan and I together when you and I were… Well, when we were doing whatever we were doing?”
“Casual sex,” she clarified.
“I thought it was a lot more than that.”
“You thought wrong.”
“No. Teagan and I were just friends until a couple of days ago.”
“Alright,” she said, straightening her back and cupping her breasts. “I thought maybe the girls had lost some of their power over the years.”
“Haha, funny,” I replied, without laughing.
“We had a good time together, Zach, but we both know that it wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t handle your constant bullshit. Take this case for instance. You’re a fugitive from the law one day, exonerated the next, but now you have a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar price on your head. That’s way too much for me to handle.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Teagan seems like a nice kid. But at the end of the day, she’s still a kid. You can’t treat her the way you treat everyone in your life. If you do, you’ll ruin her.”
“I—”
“Zach, it’s me. We know each other, intimately. I know it’s only a matter of time before you fuck up, whether it’s with alcohol or with pissing off the wrong ganger. Hell, her apartment’s already been destroyed and you’ve only been dating for a couple of days.”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“It never is,” Avery sighed. “I know you don’t mean for things to happen, but they do. Trouble seems to follow you around. Think about that before this girl becomes head over heels for you and you break her heart—or she gets killed because of you.”
She didn’t wait for me to rebuff her statement. Instead, she stood and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “Good night, Zach. I need you out of my life after tomorrow.”
I watched her back in the mirror as she slipped though the crack in the bathroom door.
“What was that about?” I asked my reflection.
I knew what she meant, though. I was bad news. It was only a matter of time before Teagan got hurt—or worse. Why did I let our relationship move past friendship?
Because I’m a stupid motherfucker. That’s why.
TWENTY-FOUR: MONDAY
I crept along the wall of the Biologiqué International headquarters building. I didn’t see any cameras, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t being watched. The advances in site security were phenomenal these days; I could be staring directly at a camera and not even know it. Most of the visible cameras were for show anyways; professionals used nanofiber cameras that were about the size of fishing line.
Avery’s strange late-night visit in the bathroom last night had really messed with my head. I tried to determine her purpose all day, but I’d come up with a goose egg. The best I could figure out, she wanted to remind me that I was an asshole and that being around me was dangerous. Thanks, Captain Obvious.
Even though she’d told us to leave her home, she did us a favor by renting a hotel room for the week under her name. It saved any of us the problem of trying to book a room and getting recognized by someone at the hotel.
She’d also given me four more magazines for my pistol and a box of bullets, bringing my total load to eighty-four rounds in seven magazines, plus one in the chamber and an extra bullet jangling loosely in my pocket. I hoped I wouldn’t need them, but my gut told me I’d need every round.
My hand trailed lightly along the wall. I wanted to keep as close to the structure as I could without exposing myself too much in the alley. It was a fool’s hope to think I hadn’t been spotted yet.
“Good evening, Detective,” a hushed voice came from the darkness a few feet in front of me.
I reacted by kicking outward into the darkest part of the shadows and was rewarded with my foot impacting into something slightly softer than the brick wall.
“Oof!” the synthesized voice responded.
I pressed forward quickly, wrapping my arms around the attacker’s neck, positioning myself behind him for a chokehold.
“Hey! What the fuck!” the man screeched in a harsh whisper. “It’s me, Paladin!”
I realized that my “attacker” wore a type of flexible black armor and a helmet with a visor that covered his face. My grip relaxed, allowing the oxygen to flow, but I didn’t completely relinquish the hold so if he didn’t prove to be the Paladin, I could reestablish control.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed.
“I knew you were planning to come here, remember?”
“Didn’t I tell you yesterday that we were through?”
“Yeah, you did. This isn’t about me and you, Detective. This is about shutting down the illegal activity in the cloning facility.”
I released him completely. I didn’t have to like his methods, but having someone here to assist in the search would be helpful.
“Fine,” I relented. “We need to get in there and figure out what’s going on before we kill anyone. The first priority is to get information about the mayor’s involvement and how many people have been replaced by clones in the government.”
“You got it. No killing—unless we have to.”
I couldn’t ask for anything else from him, so I beckoned over my shoulder, leading the way to the back of the building. We traveled for at least four hundred feet before we came to a door. The building was huge. There were four floors above ground; no telling how many they sunk into the swampy ground below.
>
“Hey, why aren’t we going in this door?” Paladin asked as we passed by it.
“Too obvious. We’re gonna find a window.”
“What if we don’t?”
I sighed. Shit like this is why I liked to work alone or with Drake, who thought the same way that I did.
“If we can’t find a suitable window, then we’ll come back to the door.”
He nodded and continued to follow me. I began leading the way once more until I saw what I wanted. Four large dumpsters and a biohazard container sat close together underneath a large window.
“This is where we’re going in,” I said, bringing the Paladin to a halt.
I reached for the window and my partner grabbed my hand. I looked at him questioningly.
“Let me check it first.”
“You didn’t do that good of a job disabling the last alarm,” I reminded him. “What makes you think you’d be any better here?”
“Let me just try,” he groaned.
I stepped back and he clamored on top of the trash can. Some type of rod extended automatically from the end of his arm, close to where the blades had emerged when he murdered the guard in Slidell.
Paladin waved the rod slowly over the entire window, paying special attention along the seams where the window would open. When he was finished, he nodded and put the probe away. Then, he dug in the pouch on his belt for a moment until he came out with a small suction cup and a glass cutter.
Within a minute, he’d cut out two small holes in the glass, about where you’d expect the latches to be. Then he climbed down and leaned close to me.
“I can’t fit my arm through the holes because my suit is too bulky. You’re gonna have to unlatch the window.”
“Sure,” I answered, pulling my upper body over the lip of the garbage can and then pressing down until I could get a leg up onto the container. The Paladin’s plan was already better than mine; I’d planned to break out the glass and deal with the consequences that the noise made.
I squatted and reached through the first hole, then angled my arm up to search the top of the window for the latch. I patted around for a moment and didn’t find anything.
I was starting to get frustrated when I noticed the latch at the bottom of the window, along the sill, in the center. I tried to reach it through the same hole my arm was stuck through, but I couldn’t. I pulled out and hopped down.
“The latch is at the bottom in the center,” I told Paladin.
He chuckled and climbed back up, cut the hole and hopped back down. When he hit the ground, I saw his ankle twist and he flailed backward, threatening to fall into the side of the metal biohazard garbage bin.
I grabbed his suit’s breastplate in time to avoid what would certainly have been a loud crash if the bin overturned.
“Thanks,” he breathed out heavily.
“Be careful. You could have alerted everyone in the facility.”
For the hundredth time, I wished for the police drone backup. It could have scanned the building and told me exactly how many people were inside, where they were and whether they had any type of blaster—they couldn’t detect standard, mechanical firearms, but blasters lit up like a Roman candle.
“Sorry,” he replied.
I didn’t answer and went back up onto the garbage can. The window swung open from a hinge at the top. I peeked over the ledge, the floor was a good six feet below, but there didn’t seem to be anything underneath that would trip me up if I went through the window here.
I went through feet first and then turned over to my stomach, sliding down slowly. When I hit the floor, I pulled out my pistol, turning rapidly to scan the room.
Above me, the sounds of Paladin squeezing his way past between the glass of the window and the metal on the windowsill echoed across the room we’d broken into. I moved out of his way and he fell heavily onto the spot I’d vacated.
We were in a storage room. Boxes of medical equipment covered metal shelves along the walls, reminding me of the room with supplies at the warehouse where I’d found Sadie. Beyond the standard stuff, there were spare parts and containers that I had no clue what they were—likely medical supplies used in the production of clones.
“I can disable the security system at the access panel over there,” Paladin said, pointing at a large plastic lockbox near four circuit breaker boxes.
“And then we’ll need to clear any guards down here,” I replied, hefting the police baton that Avery gave me before I left. It was her attempt to stop the tide of scattered bodies in my wake. There were two problems with the weapon though. First, I had to get within arms’ distance to use it and second, I didn’t like the idea of leaving guys behind me who weren’t dead, but I had thirty heavy-duty zip ties to secure anyone we found. If we were going to make this a legitimate case against the mayor, we needed live witnesses who could testify in court.
Paladin went to work bypassing the security system, taking special care to avoid the same pitfall he’d hit at the theater when the hardwired alarm went off after a delay. It took him a few minutes until he said we were good to go.
“The main bank of offices is on the fourth floor.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked, raising an eyebrow questioningly.
“I’ve been here before.” He didn’t elaborate, so I did.
“You’ve got to come clean with me. Why have you been here before? Who the hell are you?”
He stared at me for a moment as if he was thinking. Then, one of his hands drifted slowly over to the opposite arm. He typed a quick code and I heard a click from his helmet.
“Son of a bitch!” I muttered when he pushed the face shield up. I’d halfway been expecting that rookie cop Hannity to be behind the mask. Thankfully it wasn’t the kid. Staring back at me was the clone who came to my apartment last fall and then gave me Paxton’s memory chip later at the ceremony with the governor.
“Ladeaux’s been playing me this entire time,” I growled.
“I don’t work for Ladeaux anymore,” Kaine stated.
“Bullshit. That’s how you’ve known where to find me. You knew about the theater because Tommy Fucking Voodoo fed it to you.”
“I used to work for him as a tech supervisor in this facility before the mayor took over,” the Paladin admitted. “After that, I began looking into the unauthorized cloning practices. I came back here to see if I could get any answers and got captured by some of the mayor’s goons. When they found out I was a clone, they chopped me up and left me to die.”
“You look fine to me.”
“Emotional scars run deeper than physical ones. They cut off both my arms and my right leg at the knee. Then they slit my throat and left me to bleed out in an alley. I was probably the mayor’s first foray into the torture business. A few weeks after my ordeal was when we first heard about the torture tourism ring.”
“So…you didn’t die and you don’t seem to be missing any body parts.”
“Ladeaux’s people found me and he had a surgeon work with a prosthetist to patch me up.”
“A prosthetist? You mean someone who makes prosthetic arms and legs?” I thought of the girl I’d stopped from making the biggest mistake of her life back on The Lane a few nights ago.
“The same—except I’ve got the athletic enhancements that some professional athletes get.”
“Fuck,” I muttered. “That must have been expensive.”
“It cost me an arm and a leg.” Kaine delivered the line perfectly.
Even though we were moments away from leaving the storeroom to continue the investigation, I had to ask a question. “So, how’d you end up hunting down the denizens of Easytown? Did Ladeaux send you out to eliminate his competition?”
“No. Mr. Ladeaux didn’t know about it at first. I had enough of a supply of the serum to keep me alive for a few months. The doctor who’d operated on me was murdered by a tweaker who came into the hospital trying to get a fix.”
“I think I remember that case,
” I stated. “It wasn’t one of my cases, though. Didn’t it happen at Saint Catherine Memorial in Little Woods?”
“Yeah. I was given a second chance at life and I promised myself that I would make the most of it and try to honor the doctor’s memory. Since the doctor’s murderer was already locked up, I decided to try to clean up the worst places in New Orleans. That’s how I ended up in Easytown. Ladeaux gets me the serum as long as I don’t interfere with any of his people.”
“Hmpf,” I grunted. “I guess it makes sense. I don’t have to like it, but now I understand your motivation for revenge a little more. Once we’ve finished here tonight and I return to the police force, I’ve still got to come after you. You know that, right?”
A look of surprise passed over his face before he hid it behind a stoic mask. “Why would you need to arrest me? I’m cleaning up the streets of New Orleans.”
“It’s the same thing I said the first time I met you, Kaine. You’re murdering people in the streets. It doesn’t matter if they’re the bad guys or not; murder is murder.”
I paused, waiting to see if he would reply. He chose not to say anything else, so I said, “For now, we can put that aside. We’ve got to stop whatever the mayor is doing out here. What else do you know about this place?”
He shrugged. “Basic stuff that you could have gotten off the web if you bothered to do any prep work. The second floor is clone education and storage, the third floor is where they grow the clones—that’s where I got caught.”
“I haven’t exactly had access to the web or my phone, jackass,” I countered, not allowing his little jab to go unremarked upon. “What’s on the first floor? Do you know how many guards there are?”
“The first floor is mainly offices, client meeting rooms and supply storage. There’s a security desk in the lobby, and just a few doors down the hallway is a security room with computer monitors and vid screens. That’s where I used to work, so we’ll have to take control of the security room before we can have a full run of the place.”
We’d talked long enough. “Are you ready?” I asked.
“I’ve been waiting months for an opportunity to come back here,” Kaine said as he secured his face shield and helmet back into place. “I’m ready.”