Spider Play

by Lee Killough

  He sniffed. “That still isn’t a reason for finding this Viper. You know how good we are at being shadows.”

  Crap. Okay, okay. Try this. “If we give the Feds whoever wanted the hearse, we can make the case that they’re who disguised themselves as Orions. Then slighs, Wraiths, and Viper don’t need to be mentioned.” Minnows never mattered when you wanted to hook sharks.

  Mama grinned and held up his thumb.

  Quicksilver went silent. Only his breathing reassured her he remained connected.

  “Will you do it? Please.”

  She heard him sigh. “I’ll . . . consider it, and call you.”

  The cell went dead.

  She put it away. “Now we better go update Vradel.”

  * * *

  He invited them to sit, then listened in silence, doodling circles on a notepad while Janna reported. She omitted mention of the Wraiths and did not name Viper . . . just said Pluto and the Orions had been threatened with retaliation by a jon they assaulted for attentions to Maris Kriegh. “Which may or may not have been just gas.” Reports could be amended and material added more easily than it could be deleted.

  At the end, Vradel laid down his pencil. “So Kolb thinks that groove in the corpse’s implant supports your smuggling theory?”

  “Yes,” Janna said, “and when I ran the probabilities on my slate during the drive in, the computer gave me nine-seven percent.”

  Vradel nodded. “Good enough. I’ll contact the Feds and we’ll hand the case over. Have all your reports ready for them.” His eyes narrowed as she shifted in her chair. “I realize that might still be a sore point with you. Don’t fight it. All communication from the station will be on record and they’ll have a warrant for it faster than we can. It’ll give them who smuggled out the data and where it went.”

  “Will they care that Paul Chenoweth was probably murdered to smuggle it down?” Janna said.

  Vradel leveled a laser stare at him. “Include your suspicions about murder in your reports but let them deal with it.”

  Mama said, “Tomorrow’s Sunday and don’t Feds go home for the weekend? They won’t take any action until at least Monday. Contact them then, by which time we might have identified whoever collected the data stick.”

  Vradel picked up his pencil and twiddled it, frowning. Then he sighed. “All right. Work it until Monday. Then it’s the Fed’s case. Understood, both of you?”

  She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  He sat back in clear dismissal of them.

  Out in the squad room, Janna eyed the urn under the wall screen, debating whether to make coffee from a gel cube or take a trip down to the Aztec stand on the ground floor for real coffee. Gel cube, she finally decided . . . a faster option that let her finish reports and leave sooner.

  With the coffee made and the cup sitting on the narrow leg of her desk in front of the crime board, she fired up her computer and began typing on the virtual keyboard projected below the screen.

  Through the crime board she saw Mama toy with his visor . . . then lay it aside to begin typing. Shortly, thumbnail images appeared along the bottom of the crime board. He drew several up with a finger and pulled at diagonal corners to enlarge them. She identified images reaped to Data from a bovi, the angles telling her they came from Mama’s: the void in the snow behind E-World, the hearse in the cemetery, Chenoweth’s body on the stretcher.

  Was it worth setting up the crime board for one day, she wondered bitterly. Maybe . . . if they identified who collected the data stick and were able to hand over the case saying, “Here. We’ve done all your work for you.”

  Mama enlarged another thumbnail, but not one from his or her bovi. Filling nearly a quarter of the board, it showed the inside of a van.

  “Is that from Quist or Roos at the Heartland Annex?”

  “Yes. There’s a cam here.” He pointed to a tiny shape in the left upper front corner.

  “Assuming Markakis uses the van to transport his race cars between tracks, he’d want the driver watching the cargo.”

  He continued enlarging the image until that corner of the van filled the board. Invisible now behind the image, he said, “I think this is wireless.”

  “Makes sense for monitoring the van from a café and other stops en route.”

  He made a non-committal hum. A moment later that image blipped out, followed by the others. He hunched over his keyboard, typing furiously. “I’m writing up our interview with the Toros.”

  That brought a surge of anxiety.

  Until Mama said, “But I’m saving it as a draft until we decide whether to include the Wraiths.” Shortly he muttered at the computer, pushed away from the desk, and grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair. “See you tomorrow.”

  Janna checked the time on her screen. Still fifteen minutes to go in the watch. “Do you and Lia have plans tonight?”

  He froze for a moment, then finished zipping the jacket and pulled on his cap. “No.”

  Oh yeah, she reflected. It appeared domestic relations at chez Maxwell had chilled . . . possibly to the temp outside.

  When she finally ordered the computer to file her reports . . . and found herself thinking Choke on them, Feds, the time read almost seven-thirty. The night commander Lieutenant Susan Drexel sat in Vradel’s office and looking around Janna found only one of the four night watch teams at their desks.

  Disposing of her coffee cup and picking up her jacket, she almost wished she had reason to work longer. Nothing waited at home but an empty apartment. She could call her father, but at best that conversation might last half an hour while he filled her in on his latest project at Kyzer Aerospace. Watch a vid? None she could think of appealed to her. Go out somewhere, then, and with irritation scratching inside her — Quicksilver had still not called her back, damn him — make that somewhere with alcohol and violence.

  Chapter Four

  Saturday evening

  The Lion’s Den supplied both . . . though halfway to ex-Vice officer Vernon Tuckwiller’s bar she wondered at the wisdom of going. The two and a half blocks felt like a trudge across the arctic. She staggered frozen through the two sets of doors.

  The weather appeared to have cut the usual crowd of leos in half, letting her reach the bar with minor elbowing. Not that it diminished the noise level. Carrying on a meaningful conversation still required powerful lungs, lip reading, sign language, or texting. She welcomed the distraction from sullen thoughts. Even more, she welcomed the heat generated by human bodies packed in close proximity.

  Behind the bar, Tuckwiller raised his brows. “What’ll you have?”

  She never failed to marvel at his ability to make himself heard without visible effort. That voice and bulldozer build must have struck fear into the hearts of countless rags in his Vice Squad days, crashing into their illegal drug kitchens or gambling rooms.

  “Something hot!” she shouted back. “And ten dd’s of tokens.”

  “One Defroster coming up.”

  He turned away, miraculously leaving the shelves of liquor and industrial-tough drinkware unscathed, and busied himself with pouring — a couple of jiggers coming from a container sitting on a hotplate — and presently set a transparent tankard of amber liquid in front of her along with a stack of vending tokens.

  The tankard felt warm in her hand, but on taking an exploratory swallow, she found the drink — mildly sweet with coffee and cinnamon flavors — just tepid.

  Then the top of her head blew off. At the same time, fire hit her stomach and sizzled through her arms and legs.

  She gasped for air. “Holy shit! This needs a radiation hazard warning!”

  Grinning, Tuckwiller held his cordless scanner toward her wrist. “But tell me you don’t feel the ice melting away.”

  “My bones, too!”

  His grin only widened.

  With her scib and retinal pattern scanned and verified, Janna held the tankard high and shouldered her way toward the arcade games in the back. Passing leos bitchin
g, telling war stories, or making acid comments on the presidential candidates. Others debated the suggested colonization moratorium. Opinion, as best she judged, ran against it — let those so sure they knew how to set up the perfect society do it on some other world. Of course the crowd included limpets, too . . . citizens infatuated with leos, a number wearing sweatshirts proclaiming their sentiments. Be safe tonight; sleep with a leo. Take me to TaSq. I welcome assaults with friendly weapons.

  Cold had reduced the crowd enough that several tables — all Hardboard, cheap to replace, non-lethal when used for a bludgeon — had been moved to create a scrap of dance floor. Not that “dance” described what the space allowed. Just room for couples to cling tight — only clothing and the amount of light preventing more carnal activity — and sway to the Heylan’s Comet song she barely heard playing on the Muziki.

  Beyond them two rows of virtual reality arcade games faced each other. Five stood idle, with her favorite, Road Rage, among them. Perfect!

  Taking the precaution of sitting down at the machine first, she took several more swallows of the Defroster. Once her breath returned, she set the tankard in the drinks holder, pulled on the VR goggles, and fed tokens into the slot.

  A town spread out before her . . . streets, houses, people working at everyday tasks. Never quite the same town. The features and target opportunities changed. And the defenses.

  Choose your vehicle, a voice commanded, presenting her with a list that included everything from motorcycles to an armored personnel carrier.

  From which she picked her usual — for its speed and agility — a blood-red Leland Leopard two-seater.

  Stepping on the accelerator, she sailed into town and started her body count by running down a pair of joggers and a man walking his dog, followed by a woman with a baby stroller. A second child with the woman saved itself by dropping flat on the ground and an old woman on a motorized wheelchair escaped through a narrow space between two buildings, but Janna made up for the lost points by quick steering that netted her all the contestants in a bicycle race. Next she ploughed through a street fair, wiping out vendor booths, contestants in a dance contest, and the band playing for them.

  Now the village came on alert. As an emergency siren wailed, a riot tank rolled out of the police station looking for her . . . machine gunner on top peering around him. She whipped the Leopard down an alley, however, then through a footpath underpass in a park. Let the tank try negotiating that. It netted her points for not only three more joggers but eluded a vigilante civilian with a shoulder rocket launcher long enough to circle and flatten him, too. Grinning, she spun the Leopard in a one-eighty turn to zero two leos chasing her on Electro-Harleys.

  A schoolyard loomed before her.

  As she ran the Leopard into it, teachers swept up children and dashed for the safety of a doorway.

  Another teacher erupted from the building, leaping over children and fellow teachers to aim another shoulder rocket launcher at her.

  “Shit!” Janna hauled desperately at her steering wheel.

  Too late. The teacher fired. The car exploded in a giant ball of flame.

  The scene dissolved in hollow laughter and swirling colors spelling: Rest in pieces.

  Janna ripped off the goggles and slammed her fist down on the steering wheel.

  With his unerring instinct for trouble, Tuckwiller bellowed, “You know the rules, leo! You break it, you pay for the damages before leaving!”

  “You still lasted longer than I usually do,” a familiar male voice said behind her.

  She stiffened, then relaxed and turned to look up, smiling. “Dale Talavera.”

  He grinned. “After you called I kept thinking about you and wondered if you still hung out here off-duty.”

  Standing, Janna wondered how she had forgotten what a nice set of shoulders he had, and laughing dark eyes she had to look up into. “Would you like to make a contest of it? My tokens.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve played with you before. You have this habit of luring your opponent into a position where the defensive forces wipe him out while you escape. How about something less tempting to your killer instincts?” He pointed to the dancers.

  Why not. She nodded, and after a last swallow of her drink, followed Talavera to the dance floor.

  The space left no room for anything except melting together and swaying in place . . . but between the Defroster evaporating her brain and the music reverberating in her — some old Elric Corbin ballad rewritten into jivaqueme rhythm — that felt just fine.

  This was what she really needed, Janna reflected, as his body heat soaked into her through her turtleneck and cargos. It chased the echo of the apartment and annoyance with Feds much better than a dozen Defrosters or high score at Road Rage. He felt lean and hard and smelled pleasantly of a subtle spicy cologne. His breath tickled her ear as he sang along with the music.

  Presently his hands slipped down to cup her butt. “Remember flat dancing on the creeper in my sibs’ Annex shed?”

  She laughed. “Oh, yeah. And the lesson learned . . . that the wheels need to be chocked for stability when you’re pounding like a drop hammer. We’re lucky we didn’t break our necks hitting that wall.” Sexual heat ignited in her at the memory. “What are you planning to do the rest of the night?”

  “Sleep somewhere warm.” His hands tightened.

  She dug her nails into his butt in return and pulled his hips hard against her. Hard indeed, she noted with satisfaction. “I still live this side of the Washburn campus.”

  “I’m parked just half a block away.”

  They grabbed their jackets and left without waiting for the song to end.

  * * *

  A roof and enclosed sides like those of a bus stop shelter protected the house’s entry from snow and wind, but not the cold. Between that and the heat from Talavera nibbling the back of her neck, Janna fumbled with her key fob, entering the code three times before realizing the lock was already disengaged. The upstairs couple had left it open again.

  A complaint she shoved aside in the night-lighted hallway as urgency exploding in her with Talavera’s lips coming down on hers and his body pressing her against her apartment door. His own urgency palpable through both of their jackets. She thumbed the fob by instinct and they stumbled backward into the apartment.

  Not bothering with lights, Janna tore off her jacket while he shed his and kicked the door shut. She began peeling him out of his unisuit in a rip of press close seams. Breaking the kiss, he pulled off her shoulder harness, turtleneck, and support tank in one single, amazing move, then found her mouth again and began unfastening her cargos.

  Despite the driving hurry, hurry!, in her, she mumbled, “Wait! I’ve got to get my damn boots—”

  And broke off with the hair lifting on her neck. Beyond the thunder of her heart and their panting, came other breathing. Someone else in the room! Behind her.

  Janna dropped, diving off to her right, snatching at her discarded turtleneck to grope for the harness tangled in it. Her ears told her Talavera had gone the other direction through the kitchen archway, a greater dark in the darkness. Silently cursing, she finally found the harness and drew the Starke as she came up behind the end of the couch.

  A shadow filled the easy chair beyond. She aimed for the middle. “Don’t move, choomba. I’m set on segs, so don’t even breathe unless you’re interested in a cardiac and lung transplant.”

  “It’s just me, Bibi.”

  Relief flooded her, followed by cold fury. “Turn on the light!” When he touched on the table lamp beside him, she glared at him along the Starke’s barrel. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Never mind asking how, with code readers standard equipment in their field kits.

  “On second thought, I don’t care,” she snapped before he answered. “You have to the count of five to get the hell out.” She made a show of thumbing the selector to segs for real. “One.”

  Mama frowned. “I have to t
alk to you.”

  “I said sail! Two.”

  “It’s important.”

  “Three!”

  In the kitchen doorway, Talavera pulled back up his unisuit and pressed the front closed. “Maybe you ought to listen to him.”

  “Not tonight. Four!”

  “I’ve just talked to Leonard Fontana on the Lanour station.”

  Shock choked her. “What! Why?”

  “He might well be a party to the smuggling, and the murder. It could explain his anxiety about locating Chenoweth’s corpse. Making sure the pickup went as scheduled. He needed to be interviewed.”

  Setting down the Starke, she hauled her turtleneck back on, gritting her teeth. She refused to deal with this half naked. “When he’s someone who feels free to express his concerns in direct calls to our director? Calling him should have been discussed with Vradel first.”

  Talavera eyed both of them. “Do you want me to leave?”

  She answered without shifting her glare from Mama. “No. Stay, so I don’t kill him.”

  Talavera ran a hand back through his hair, and sighed. “I’m thinking this is something I’m better off not witnessing.” He picked up his jacket. “Maybe we can get together another time.”

  The door closed behind him.

  Janna bared her teeth. “If I kill you, I’ll plead justifiable homicide. You spoiled what would have been a night of great sex.”

  Mama shook his head. “Hit-and-run sex is empty.”

  “So what you’ve got is almega?”

  That hit. He winced . . . and for a moment she regretted the cheap shot.