EMPIRE: Imperial Police

by Stephanie Osborn

  “Good man,” Mott said, impressed. “I want you to show me those moves, sometime. I may be younger, but you’ve had more time to learn and get good.”

  “Be happy to.”

  “So he grabbed you around the neck…” Demetrius said. “How do you know he was gonna stab you?”

  “This was in his other hand.” And Carter pulled the bagged knife out of his jacket pocket.

  “Shit,” Mott said, as Demetrius took the weapon as evidence. “So…what? He grabbed you, knife at your back, and you stomped, elbowed, and bit?”

  “Yeah. Pretty much all at the same time. I was going for, ‘inflict enough pain that he’s not thinking,’ you know. I guess it worked, ‘cause that kinda made him arch away, so I was safer from the knife. Then I twisted around until I faced him, holding the wrist that had been around my neck, popped him a couple times in the face but good, hitting hard at an angle – I was trying to break his nose – and sure enough, he dropped the knife to grab his nose when it busted. I kicked the knife outta his reach, then spun him around and threw him over my shoulder into the dumpster.” Carter grinned at their disbelieving looks. “I fastened him in, grabbed the knife as evidence, then cleared out.”

  “You bashed hell out of him, in other words,” Mott decided.

  “Best I could, yeah,” Carter confirmed.

  “Sounds like a pretty damn good ‘best,’ if you ask me,” Mott concluded.

  “I’m thinking he’s going to be needing medical attention for that arm, at the least,” Demetrius said. “Probably the nose, too.”

  “And he’ll need to get the ribs strapped up,” Mott added.

  “Does he know you saw him?” Demetrius wondered. Carter shrugged.

  “He knows I saw him well enough to nearly punch his lights out,” he said. “I expect so.”

  “All right, that’s all I got for now,” Demetrius said. “Maia said you’d have a list of items to get out of your apartment?”

  “Yeah. It came completely furnished, so the list is all just some personal shit,” Carter said. “There’s nothing real big to worry about; couple framed photos and certificates are the biggest things, I think. Hang on and I’ll transfer it to you.” He blanked out for a few moments, then came back. “There. You should both have it now. It’s not a whole lot, but there’s some stuff there I’d hate like hell to lose.”

  “Mm, doesn’t look like anything we can’t readily bring back, just the two of us,” Mott decided, splitting his attention between the two men and the VR list.

  “I agree,” Demetrius said. “Let’s go and get the stuff and get back before they pull a stunt like they did on Ashton’s old apartment.”

  “Right,” Mott said. “Back soon, Lee. Stay put.”

  “Trust me. I’m not goin’ anywhere,” Carter averred.

  They headed out.

  “…Great,” Kershaw grumbled, when told what had happened. “Just bloody damn great. Bumbling fool! And you know Carter saw him?”

  “Considering the busted nose, I’d say so,” Stash Gorecki said with a shrug. “You pretty much gotta look at a guy to smash his nose all over his face.”

  “All right. What’s Switch’s attitude right now?”

  “I dunno that he’s got much,” Gorecki said. “He’s been too busy gettin’ patched up to care about anything else. Carter took a plug out of his arm, in addition to the nose.”

  “What? How?”

  “Teeth, I understood,” Gorecki told him, and Kershaw winced.

  “Shit. Well, if Carter sent Ashton over to ICPD, we can’t risk it. Has anybody seen Carter since?”

  “Nope. Not a hair of ‘im.”

  “Damn. All right, we’ll do this the hard way, then. Contact Bronze. Tell him to clean up the failure.”

  “You sure you wanna do that, boss? Switch has done good work for us.”

  “It can’t be helped, Stash. He screwed up this time. Bad. He didn’t perform surveillance first, and as a result, he grossly underestimated his target. He’s a liability now. Better him than us. And find Carter and Ashton!”

  “Okay, boss.”

  Dwight Sykes, also known as “Switch,” had reported to the nearest IPD beat cop, then gotten said cop to use an electric cart to carry him to the closest hospital emergency room. He was in considerable pain, and had barely been able to breathe, let alone walk.

  “No wonder,” the ER physician said, when he was done with being poked, prodded, and x-rayed. “Your nose is broken, you have three broken asternal ribs in your side, as well as two broken cuneiform bones and a broken metatarsal and a torn extensor digitorum longus tendon in your foot. Let alone the chunk torn out of your arm; it’s going to need disinfecting and stitches, and I’ll need to put you on antibiotics. That… mugger…must have done a number on you.”

  The doctor gave him a mildly skeptical glance, and Sykes realized she suspected that matters had been the other way around, but apparently chose not to challenge him…for the moment, at least.

  “Can you patch me up, doc?” he wondered. “And…well, frankly, I’m hurtin’ pretty bad, here…”

  “Yes, I can do that, but the patching is going to be rather unpleasant.”

  “Can’t ya give me something for pain, and then fix things?”

  “Only to a point. You have several broken bones here, and while the tendon isn’t completely detached, and should heal on its own if we stabilize that foot and you keep it that way, the pain medication is only going to suppress the ongoing, more chronic pain. Setting bones tends to result in brief acute pain while the bone ends are being positioned, and the only thing that will stop that is general anesthesia…which we don’t want to do here, because it tends to slow healing.”

  “Shit.”

  “Something like, yes. I’d strongly recommend avoiding that neighborhood from now on. Never mind whatever you were doing that took you there.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I figured,” he grumbled. “Hit me with some pain shit, and let’s get this over with. I wanna go home and go to bed.”

  “I can imagine,” the physician said, rolling her eyes.

  It took over an hour, and even with the maximum dosage of pain medication, Sykes was forced to agree – it hurt like hell. The nose was the worst, he decided; when it had abruptly snapped back into place, he had all but screamed like a little girl, and the nosebleed – that had finally stopped after Carter broke it to begin with – resumed in full force. Then the doctor packed it, and it hurt even worse. By the time the physician was done, his entire head throbbed like it would explode.

  Strapping his ribs was the easiest; it wasn’t comfortable, but it supported the ribs so that they would stay in place, and hurt less when he tried to breathe. Not that he was breathing through that nose, but mouth breathing worked, provided he didn’t feel like he was being stabbed by one of his own knives every time he inhaled. Which, he realized, the strapping helped prevent. It didn’t stop it entirely, but he could breathe.

  Stitching up the arm wasn’t too bad, either; the doctor used a local anesthetic in addition to the pain medication, and made quick work of it once she’d cleaned and disinfected it. Then she gave him a shot of antibiotic, and a prescription for oral antibiotics into the bargain. She did a neat job, but it was still going to be a hell of a scar, he decided as she bandaged it.

  The foot, however, proved almost as bad as the nose. He was glad when things were finally in place and she put a boot cast on it.

  Finally it was all over. The hospital sent him the bill in VR, and he paid it – which proved to be a pain of its own, at least to his bank account. It took every bit of the advance payment Stash Gorecki had given him for the botched hit, and then some, and he grumbled mentally as he paid it.

  I owe that damn retired cop big time for this, he thought vengefully. And this time, I’m gonna make it nice and slow. Stick the knife in deep and twist. Then rip. That oughta slice the bastard to hell and back. I wanna hear him scream like a girl, next time. Then watch him die. Slow.
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  He hobbled out of the hospital’s arcade level on one good foot, a crutch, and a boot cast, and made it one scant block down before he was panting, his broken ribs throbbing despite pain medications and strapping. The foot, not being elevated, was trying to swell inside the boot, and didn’t feel much better than the ribs. In addition, the stitches in his arm pulled painfully every time he swung his arm.

  “Dammit. This ain’t gonna work,” he fussed, stopping to catch his breath. “I’ll never get home like this.”

  He turned and headed for the people-movers.

  This particular people-mover only had small cars, holding a couple of people at most; it was never intended for high volume, but it would take Sykes where he wanted to go without much fuss or onlooker stares. Which, he decided, would be good about now.

  Sykes waited in line for one of the people-mover cars, but several people, including at least one delivery man, saw his condition and let him move to the front of the line.

  “Hey, lemme help, here,” the delivery man offered. “I’m used to carrying loads of shit; I can handle this one package and still help steady you.”

  “That’d be appreciated,” Sykes said, grateful. “I got mugged this morning and the guy made a mess of me.”

  “Somebody sure made a mess, all right,” the delivery man agreed, and helped steady Sykes with a gloved hand as they stepped into the car together. The door closed, and the car moved off, headed for a narrow tunnel to the next arcade section. Rather than try to sit and have his ribs complain at the move, then have to stand up again while they complained worse, Sykes simply leaned his good shoulder against the wall of the car and stared ahead, down the tunnel, unseeing. He sighed, deeply tired, and he blinked slowly as the pain medication finally had a chance to do its job.

  Behind him, the delivery man pulled an airgun out of his package and put two shots into the back of Sykes’ head. Switch Sykes collapsed to the floor of the car like a rag doll.

  The gloved delivery man caught the crutch by the pad and eased it to the floor, hit the emergency stop button, opened the door and stepped onto the maintenance walkway, before slipping away in the darkness.

  After several moments, the doors of the people-mover car closed, and it continued on, diverting to the emergency path upon exiting the tunnel.

  Callista Ames sat at home alone, staring at her solitary plate of food. Rather than trying to cook anything fresh, she had simply heated a prepared meal tray of mass-market frozen food she’d bought from the grocer’s, for times when she was too busy to cook. It wasn’t half as good as what she’d have cooked for Nick if he’d come over, and it wasn’t as good as the take-out she would have gotten, had she gone to his place. But it was food, with nutrients, and it would do for now.

  It just wasn’t what she had hoped for the evening.

  Nick Ashton sat at his dining table at home, having slapped together a cold cut sandwich with plenty of condiments. But the lettuce in his fridge was wilted and the tomatoes old and half-dried-out, and both had gone into the kitchen waste chute, which was collected, composted, and used for fertilizer on the various green spaces within the city. So there were no veggies on the sandwich, and it left the texture and flavor somewhat bland. He sighed, thinking of the nice hibachi restaurant he had planned for the evening.

  He picked up his bottle of beer and slugged it, wondering what sort of entertainment might be available that night in VR, and if he could possibly manage to find something he hadn’t already seen.

  This is gonna get old fast, he decided.

  It took about two hours for Mott and Demetrius to slip over to Carter’s apartment, find all the items on Carter’s list, and stuff them into the special, oversized, ship’s duffels Mott had brought, carefully folded into the hidden pockets of his jacket.

  Then they slung them over their shoulders and snuck back out, taking maintenance corridors and tunnels.

  Twenty minutes later, they were back in Peterson’s apartment, and Carter was unpacking the items and stowing them, Maia having pinged him in VR to tell him where he could put various things.

  “And while you’re doing that,” Demetrius said, “I’m going to put out an all-points for one Dwight ‘Switch’ Sykes.”

  “Works for me,” Carter said, glancing up from folding undershorts and stuffing them into the dresser drawer.

  “Oh, and by the way, congratulations,” Demetrius added. “Maia is a great catch, and you’re a good man.”

  “What he said,” Mott agreed.

  Carter flushed, then grinned.

  “We’ve known each other for years – met on a case, way, way back when, and clicked – but because of who and what she is, I kind of kept that friendship secret from my, er, colleagues,” he admitted. “It’s been smoldering the whole time. When I finally got sick of the shit and took early retirement, it kind of…ignited.”

  “Good,” Demetrius said. “About damn time. She’s been waiting for you long enough. Now lemme go see about Switch.”

  With Mott’s help, Carter had finished putting the appropriate hygiene items in the bath, and was nearly finished stashing clothing in the closet and dresser, when Demetrius came up for air, out of VR.

  “Got ‘im yet, Gene?” Mott wondered.

  “Somebody did, Adrian,” a solemn Demetrius said in a grave, mildly perturbed tone, and the other two men stopped what they were doing to pay attention.

  “Whatcha mean, Gene?” Carter asked.

  “He was in the hospital getting some remedial work done on everything you did to him, Lee – stitches in the arm, the nose set and splinted, the ribs strapped, a boot cast – but somebody was apparently waiting for him when he came out. He was found, alone, on the floor of a car in the nearest low-capacity people-mover to the hospital. Two taps to the back of the head; .25 caliber, probably from an airgun. Dead.”

  “Shit,” Carter said, shocked.

  “It was Bronze, I swear it was Joey Bronze,” Ashton told the rest of the team, as soon as word reached them of what had happened.

  “What makes you think that, Nick?” Stefan Gorski asked.

  “The double-tap to the head by a .25 caliber airgun. I did a case study on Bronze, my last year at the Academy,” Ashton explained. “And I’ve been following him ever since, adding to that case study. I’ve got a whole profile on him, now. There’s at least four, maybe five other hits he’s done in Imp City alone. There was this guy, a lawyer, over in Imperial Park East, who was working with the Empress – boom. Double-tap to the head, airgun, .25 caliber. And a prostitute who was blackmailing one of the assistants of a Council member. Double-tap to the head, airgun, .25 caliber. And two whistleblowers for the previous Empress, one in education, one in the pharmaceutical industry. Both double-taps from a .25 caliber airgun. There’s a couple others in nearby cities I’ve suspected, too.”

  “But can you prove it?” Demetrius asked. “Just on the basis of the double-tap to the back of the head? Because right now, that’s all the clues we have. Yeah, it’s a known M.O. for a regular executioner, but we’ve never been able to tie it to Bronze. Or anybody else, for that matter.”

  “What about the monitor in the people-mover car? In the station? There would be video…”

  “Disabled. Both.” Demetrius shrugged.

  “And Switch never saw Bronze disable it?!”

  “No. It was disabled from outside,” Demetrius explained. “Apparently from the control center.”

  “Shit. That means it was a sanctioned hit.”

  “Almost certainly, yes. The nature of Sykes’ injuries would have meant Carter saw him, and that, in turn, made him a liability.”

  “What about latents?”

  “None found. The crutch Sykes was using was carefully laid beside the body, apparently to prevent breaking any of the windows or causing a lot of noise. We checked it, the car doors, the seats, the railings…nothing. No hairs, no body oils that were recoverable, no fingerprints.”

  “Shit.”

  Wel
l, Nick?” Demetrius pressed. “Do you have anything else to give us?”

  Ashton’s shoulders slumped.

  “No, sir. It’s a distinctive style, but I know we need more, to take it to court.”

  “Hell, we need more to get a warrant to pick him up,” Demetrius pointed out.

  “Exactly. I’m afraid,” Gorski sighed, “that unless we turn up some more clues to point us in the right direction, this one is going to go down as another cold case.”

  “Naw, man,” Kendall Raines said, as he met with Stash Gorecki. “So far, ain’t nobody seen either one of ‘em. Are you sure Ashton is back in town? I mean, absolutely positive? ‘Cause it might have been somebody that just looked like him. It’s been – what? Three, four years now? People can change a lot in that amount o’ time.”

  “Yeah, we’re pretty sure. In fact, we aren’t sure now that he ever left,” Gorecki declared. “The boss thinks Carter pulled a fast one and transferred Ashton over to Imp City, then got out while the gettin’ was good.”

  “Eh,” Raines said, considering. “Could be, I suppose. The Imp City guys are about the most strait-laced dicks I ever saw, so it figures he’d be in with ‘em, from what I hear. But no, none of my boys an’ girls have seen ‘em, either one of ‘em. Sorry, Stash. We’ll keep looking.”

  Matters went on like this for several days, and while Ashton had to duck into a store front once, when he spotted one of Gorecki’s hand-picked gang coming around a corner on his way to work, nothing else happened that anyone could tell.

  Eventually the word from Imp City’s street informers indicated that the search for the two men had been back-burnered, to the considerable relief of Ashton, Carter, Peterson, and Ames.

  But that didn’t mean things were over.

  “You’d think,” Peterson grumbled, “that Gorecki and his goons getting their badges taken for that shit they did to Solisbury would have slowed things down.”

  “No,” Carter said. “It’s only going to have made them worse.”