“Looks like we’re looking for a mid-sized, air-handled vehicle, probably a car,” I paused to glance at Trish. I needed to make sure she was listening. “No jets. Probably a darker color.”
“How do you know?” She walked over, trampling the trail I’d just been through.
“Well, based on the size of this blowback on the mill and the center of the flattened area, we can pretty easily say this was mid-sized. It wasn’t a skidder and it wasn’t a freighter.”
“Narrows it down.”
“Vehicles that are air-handled use cold air blowers to fine-tune balance and speed. No burned grasses or glassed sand means there probably weren’t any hot jets. This pattern of blown sand here shows where the vehicle maneuvered around the mill, chasing after the victim.”
“So, why do you think it’s a dark color?”
I walked slowly around the mill. My eyes fell on Sam again and I suppressed a shudder. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. The headache was coming back. I should have seen it coming. It was my fault that another innocent life was gone.
“Killers love dark colors,” I said. “Black. Dark blue. Or red. It could be red.”
She sighed and went back to scanning the bullet.
“Probably black,” I said.
Somebody had completely ruined Sam. I figured Trish could probably spend a week sorting through all the bullet holes in Sam and the surrounding landscape. There’d been nowhere left for him to run. The tracks showed that he’d turned around, putting his left palm on the windmill. It was hot, so he’d immediately taken it off. The distraction had been enough, though, and the murderer had drifted around the corner on his flying metal steed.
The first shot had probably taken Sam in the torso. It had thrown him back, away from the mill—sprawled him out. The rest of the shots came while he was lying on the ground. His face was a pulp. His torso and arms were misshapen and clothed in the tattered remnants of his leathers. His bulletproof skin was torn to shreds. It takes a fast bullet or a heavy bullet to get through tweaked skin.
Yet Trish’s scan showed there weren’t any bullets in or around the body.
“I’ll be damned,” Trish said from around the side of the mill.
“What?” I said after a long enough pause.
“Black metal slivers.”
“What?”
“Black metal. You’re familiar?” She walked around the corner, holding a tiny sliver of metal between her fingers. “Military-grade, dark-matter-forged steel. In bullet form, sort of.”
I squinted at the sliver of metal. It was black metal all right. Same dull shine as my left arm.
“This explains why Sam’s skin didn’t help him against the bullets.” Trish bagged the sliver of metal. “These things are sharp and extremely hard. They’d pass right through most steel armor. Skin is nothing. In fact, the resistance created by armored skin actually significantly increased the damage done as this little needle passes through the body. I’d say he was probably only shot seven or eight times.”
“Seven or eight?” I looked at the ruined corpse and had to wonder how so few bullets could’ve done that sort of damage.
“Yeah. Maybe nine.” Trish eyed the corpse for another moment. “Black needles have an ugly effect on armored skin. The resistance upon impact creates enormous amounts of heat, leading to a sort of super-heated mini explosion. Messy, but very effective.”
“Puts us in a whole new league.”
“No kidding.”
“Bullets this expensive have to be a professional’s work.”
Trish fell silent for a moment. “Could be someone from the city. Or military.”
“Yet, there’s some hate here.” I nodded to the body. “You don’t pump a body full of gold bullets just for fun. It’s gotta mean something on a personal level.”
“It’s not like they left the bullets. The killer must have had some way to pick them all up quickly. That’s why there aren’t any bullets near the body.”
“That the only one you found?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess that’s a break then. He must have had trouble finding that one.”
Johnson’s team would pick up the body. There was nothing left for us there. Trish and I headed over to her cruiser, where Ben was chained to a metal ring set into the passenger seat. Trish had protested, but I didn’t want the kid contaminating the place before we got a decent take on it.
The kid was not happy about that.
“‘Bout fucking time.”
“Son, your friend’s dead. Show some goddamn respect.”
“Yeah, Sam’s dead. What the hell did you do to stop that? You gonna protect me too? Big strong sheriff. What the hell?”
The kid went on like that for a while. He bothered me. It rankled me the way he was going on, disrespectful of the dead body not fifty meters from that spot. I was careful not to let it show, though. I’d never let the kid see that it bothered me.
I clicked open his cuffs so he could move around more easily. He hopped out of the cruiser and brushed past me. His little eleven-year-old feet stomped right around the windmill and then stopped.
Trish was still over there, so she moved next to him, crouched down, and put an arm around his shoulder. I didn’t know what she said to him. I didn’t know what I would have said. Right there was a kid whose world was falling apart. His pa was dead. The world of bravado and mutual bullying and posturing had been his crutch when his dad had died, and we’d just kicked it out from under him. Ben shifted and I could see the sheen of tears on his cheeks.
The truth was, kids scared the hell out of me. They were unpredictable and selfish. They didn’t make any sense most of the time, except for when they did. Sometimes they made sense in a way that reminded you what’s really important. That was worse, really.
The kid’s world was crashing down around him. For just a moment, all of his posturing was stripped away and I could see the little boy behind it.
Then it was all back again.
“What the hell?” Trish shouted. She forcibly pulled Ben’s hand off of her ass with one hand and then grabbed a handful of his leather jacket in the other. She lifted him up off the ground with one hand, keeping him at arm’s length. “Listen, you little fuck. You try anything again, I will ship you to the flood plains for a decade of hard labor.”
Trish stomped over to the cruiser, locking gazes with the kid the whole way.
“J.D?”
“Yup.”
“So sexy,” said the kid. “I just want to get on top of that. You might be the love of my life, babe. You know you wanna go home with me.” His impish grin said that he was entirely unaware of how close he was to getting hit.
“You still want this?” Trish said.
I looked at the kid for a long moment. My plan had been to have Trish keep an eye on him while I scoped the old junction.
The kid was staring at her chest now, not even being subtle about it. “Mm, this is it, babe. You know you wanna be with me.”
“Yup,” I said.
“Then here you go.” She dropped Ben on the ground, glared at me, and hopped into her cruiser. “You need anything else here, boss?”
“I don’t suppose I do.”
Without another word, she launched into the air and sped off. I imagined she was headed for the station. As independent as she was, I was fairly certain she would come up with some decent leads for the latest murder. After all, if anybody around here had a chance of tracking down a professional killer from the city, it would be her.
“What the hell is wrong with you, boy?”
Ben pulled himself to his feet and brushed the dust off of his leathers. “I’m precocious.”
“Shut the hell up.” I looked him over. “Look, you can come with me, but only if you help.”
“Where we going?”
“You’re Cinco Armas, right?”
The kid didn’t say anything. I started walking to the skidder, which was parked a dozen meters away.
> Finally, he said, “Yeah.” The kid followed me. “Pa didn’t like it.”
“I bet.”
“That ain’t what got him killed, though.”
“What makes you so sure? You didn’t see anything, did you?”
He paused. “Not really. But it wasn’t them.”
“Were you at the Goat when your pa showed up?” I rifled through the saddlebags that were strapped to the skidder. When I found some cigarettes, I pulled two of them out of the pack and lit one. I handed the other to Ben.
“Yeah.” He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and somehow lit it by snapping. “I mean, no. Not really. He was there when we got there. He was with some woman, so he didn’t see me. I ducked out right away.”
“So, you didn’t know that Sam was going there just to find your pa?”
He sucked in the smoke like someone trying to prove that he was good at it. Good at smoking. Like that’s a thing.
“No, I didn’t.” He looked down at his feet. “I guess there might’ve been a lot that went on that I didn’t know.”
“Suppose there probably was.” I half sat on the bike and watched waves of heat ripple the air, making the windmills in the distance dance. The heat just seemed to cling to everything. Mills all around were buzzing fast. The wind had definitely picked up since the morning. “Who would you say I need to talk to for some answers?”
“Nobody, old man.”
I scowled at the kid. “Who else?”
He ignored me and watched the mills spin for a while. Then, “Court.”
“Court’s gang all work for Sharpe?”
“Not all of them. It’s just some extra on the side.”
“You ever do anything for him?”
Ben bit his lip.
“You think Court will be at the Old Junction this time of day?”
He met my gaze but didn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell if he was afraid to rat out his friends or just shocked that I knew so much. Either way, I was a little surprised that the dentist’s tip was going to pay off.
“I’m going to the Junction now. Should get there around dusk.”
The kid dropped his cigarette.
“I’m not asking,” I said. “I’m going whether you help or not.”
“You’re a fucking dead man.”
“You think you can call them off enough so I can talk to this Court?” I stepped on his cigarette to put it out and leaned right down into his face. I spoke in a low voice. “I don’t give a shit about what they got going on that’s illegal,” This was a lie, but I was willing to set things aside for a while, “All I want is a better timeline for last night. I got a feeling someone other than your little playmates followed your pa home.”
“What makes you think it was someone else? Psychic powers?”
“Sam was convinced it was someone else. You seem convinced, or you wouldn’t be so eager to please them still. That counts for about as much as a pair of twos in my book, but that and a bluff might be all I got to win this hand.”
“Sounds to me like you’re not too good at your job.”
“I’m pretty decent at tossing mouthy kids into lockup.”
“Not from what I’ve seen.”
“You got a choice, kid.”
The kid shifted back and forth a few times. He looked at Sam’s skidder. Then he nervously glanced back to the mill where Sam’s body lay mangled. “I’ll get you a meeting with Court, but we gotta do it my way.”
Like I said: unpredictable.
Or maybe I should’ve been able to predict that. Like I said before, I was no good with kids.
Chapter 12
The Old Junction was a relic of the past. It was a broken-down tower designed and built for a time when power was wired between the good people of Texas. Conduits ran into this junction point from the surrounding power sources. Back before the new junction was built, every windmill for a couple hundred kilometers shipped volts here. In turn, lines ran from here to the surrounding communities. The small towns and the ranches all got a share. As long as somebody was still sucking power out of the sky, everyone had a piece. The system was designed for sharing and stability and an open marketplace.
War changed all that. The New Junction across town had lines running from the ranches, just like this one. The difference was that the only lines running out of that junction lead straight to the city. If there’s one thing those city-dwelling metalheads like, it’s their volts. In return, they let us scrape out an existence out here in the waste.
The history books all say the Texas Civil War was fought to a draw. Some folks have a different opinion.
I crouched in my hiding spot, cursing myself for letting the kid dictate the terms of our agreement. I watched as the sun set behind the black two-story tower that was the Old Junction. Wind whipped across the broken ground, pulling sand and weeds up to dance around the jagged, angular building. Old architecture loved angles, and so did the wind. I knew that all of the real business here was underground. The lines that were above ground had long since been harvested for metal or destroyed by storms.
The heat of the day had started to pass. The structure creaked and groaned as it cooled. The air was still hot, thick, and uncomfortable. My lungs struggled to pull it in. There was a storm coming. A person could taste it in the air. I didn’t know how much time we had, but I knew the business at the junction needed to get finished.
I stuffed my sunglasses into the pocket of my duster, glad that the glare of the day had finally passed.
Hiding had always been part of my work in the army. I had never liked it. That’s where my mind turned as I crouched in the ruins of a small building a hundred meters from the junction tower. Hiding in a hole just isn’t where a proud lawman ought to be, yet I’d been there an hour waiting for Ben to come back with Court.
My legs creaked as I stood, reminding me of the bruises I’d gotten earlier in the day. My whole left leg just about seized up from stiffness, and my head throbbed like I’d been whacked with a lead pipe.
Sam’s skidder was hidden there too. I pulled the cover off of it and kicked away the dried grass I had used to conceal it. Sitting on it felt good, like I belonged in the open sky. There was a reason people rode those things. The sense of freedom was intoxicating.
I kicked the engine on and winced as its boom echoed across the open expanse. So much for hiding. I made sure my hat was secure on my head, and I launched into the air, heading straight for the tower. It was time to revert back to the original plan.
The tower was flat on top and forty meters across on each side. The far side held a row of skidders that were similar to Sam’s, each with its own modifications and eccentricities. Groups of kids were scattered around the roof, engaged in whatever kids do when they’re where they shouldn’t be.
Figuring surprise was my best advantage, I came in hard. I cranked the jets on the skidder, swooped in low, below the edge of the tower. At the last second, I crested the tower and jumped, rolling as I hit the roof.
The nearest punks didn’t see it coming. I ran to the first and grabbed him.
I felt a tug at the tails of my coat and another at my arm. The twang of electric gunfire echoed through the dusk, and I struggled to find its source.
Then I had the kid. Three fingers from my metal hand locked onto him. Two fingers gripped his neck while the other wrapped all the way over the back of his head to grip an eye socket. He was mine. I thrust him in front of me.
“Nobody move!” I shouted.
Just then Sam’s skidder hit the roof and crashed into the row of bikes parked along the far edge. Two of them fell off, crashing to the ground below. A particularly shiny one was teetering on the edge. I wasn’t there to make friends.
The roof became a flurry of activity. The guy I was holding started crying, wailing for help. He was a kid to me, but if I had to guess, I’d have said he was probably twenty. The kids who were close enough to cause me trouble started to circle around. One of them caught a bullet for
his efforts, but not from me. Whoever was shooting didn’t seem to care much. The kid backed off.
I spun my rag doll around so that he was between the shooter and me. Another shot whizzed past my ear.
“I just want to talk to Court, kids,” I said. “Not here for trouble.”
“Fuck that!” Some kid far enough away to be out of danger saw no trouble in egging the rest of us on.
The third skidder—the shiny one—shifted a little, piercing the dusk with the sound of scraping metal.
It was getting darker. These modders probably all had night vision, so they were going to have an advantage. A person could say they already had it.
Another shot flew past, but this time I spotted the shooter.
I drew my gun, flipped off the safety, stared the guy in the eyes, and aimed. I recognized the kid. His chrome teeth sparkled in what was left of the sunset. It was the runner who had escaped earlier that day.
“This is serious business, gentlemen. I do not care if you are trespassing or engaging in illegal activity here.” Again, I was lying, but they didn’t need to know that. “This here is about a murder that I intend to solve. I just need some cooperation, and I need to talk to someone named Court.”
There was hesitation in his eyes. That cocky chrome smile was starting to fade. I waited for understanding to flicker through his eyes before I continued.
“Do you understand what’s happening here, son?” I dropped the guy I was holding. I no longer needed a shield.
He lowered his weapon.
“Court. Now.”
He seemed to be considering something. Maybe the metal half of his brain was weighing the risks of various actions. He could weigh all he wanted. He didn’t have a chance.
There was a flicker of understanding in the kid’s shiny little eyes.
I wasn’t aiming at him.
The best looking bike on the whole roof was in my sights. One shot and it would be over the edge.
I heard something heavy fall deep inside the tower. The floor in the center of the roof started to open. A square several meters wide opened and a rusty cage elevator screeched upward. In it were two people. The first was a woman. She was tall and unbelievably skinny. Her extra pair of arms was so realistic that I had trouble telling which were her real ones. She had long, flowing red hair and eyes that glowed like fireflies on a warm summer night. She wore a cloak of shimmering metal that seemed to move against the wind.
Justice in an Age of Metal and Men Page 10