Slab City Blues - The Collected Stories: All Five Stories in One Volume (28 page)

Chapter 10

I left Janet
with Riviera. They’d been talking for nearly three hours without pause and the interview showed no signs of ending soon. I couldn’t remember him speaking so much at one time, but it seemed once she’d tapped the vein of his experience he couldn’t shut up. I took the pipe to Yang Six, spending the time putting together a Pol-net alert about the two potentially linked homicides and warning of possible copy-cats. I knew it would probably earn a sharp rebuke from Sherry once it flashed on her terminal, I was stepping pretty heavily on the toes of CAOS Defence after all, but my Demon instinct told me this case was far from over. Amongst many flaws, an inability to tolerate unfinished business had always been my biggest.

Leyla and Timor were holed up in the upstairs store room of a defunct Immersion arcade. The recently launched MEC Immersion headband had, after some unfortunate initial publicity, finally made affordable, wearable immersion gear a reality, meaning all the hardcore gamers and porn-addicts could now safely waste their lives in the privacy of their own homes. A growing number of boarded up arcades was the most visible consequence, along with increased rates of obesity and sedentary lifestyle-related illnesses.

“All quiet, Boss,” Timor said as I peered at his camera screen, the lens trained on the laundry opposite. It was titled the Santa Isabella Cleaning Emporium, Vintage Clothing a Speciality. Modern fabrics don’t need a great deal of cleaning, but a lot of the splice groups tended to favour more archaic garments. Vampirism in particular had seen an upsurge in the lace and leather trade.

“Word went out just over four hours ago,” Timor went on.

“How many informants?” I asked.

“Just one. My best, and most discreet.”

“Wonder who he’ll send,” Leyla said, sitting with her back to the wall as she checked her carbine.

Would’ve been Nina Laredo in the old days,
I knew.
If he really wanted to make sure.
But Nina was dead thanks to me, and if she was still around I doubted even Janet could have gotten anything out of her. I just had to hope her replacement was of a more flexible mindset.

“Got anything to eat?” I asked.

I sat in the corner eating boil-in-the-box noodles and going through the responses to my Pol-net alert, which consisted of the usual ads from private security firms and a lengthy message from a sheriff’s deputy in Idaho Territory insisting the two attacks were the work of ‘The International Jew-Nazi Cabal.’ Nice to know some things don’t change. Phaedra Diallo had also sent through the preliminary forensic report on the massacre along with a list of victims. The perp had been named as one Randall Schiffler, age twenty-two. No registered employment but initial checks showed a healthy balance in his financial accounts. He’d arrived on Salacia Hab only three days before, let out a mid-range apartment at what I would have considered an exorbitant rent and purchased a top of the range Nike speargun from a sporting goods store. The speargun had an innovative magnetically driven firing mechanism and a magazine capacity of twenty darts. Schiffler had managed to kill thirteen people before Phaedra put a bullet through his forehead from fifty yards. For a first kill made under extreme pressure it was an impressive shot. Preliminary research showed no link between Schiffler and any of the victims and he had no criminal record. The only tangible link to Rybak’s murder was the phrase.

Lacking other leads I mentally reviewed Janet’s story and began a search for ex-employees of Haunai Genetics, coming up empty which was weird. Also, the company’s registration details appeared to have been purged of personnel data. A quick open source check was similarly fruitless, which was even weirder. I thought for a moment before uttering a soft curse, pulling Vargold’s smart from my pocket and calling the only number in the ID file. He answered within ten seconds.

“Inspector. Good to hear from you.”

“Your offer still good?”

“Of course.”

“Haunai Genetics, registered in Korea over three decades ago. I need to find any former employees, particularly the research staff. All my checks are negative. I thought, given your links to the Downside corporate sector…”

“Leave it with me. You’ll have details on every employee within twenty-four hours.”

“Thank you.”

“I suppose asking how this links to Craig is pointless.”

“To be honest, I’m not sure it does, yet anyway. There was something else, a mass shooting on Salacia Hab this morning. Maybe you saw it on the feeds.”

“I did. You think there may be a connection?”

“I think what happened to your friend could be part of something way bigger. Or we’re looking at the mother of all coincidences.”

I noticed Timor shift, eyes snapping to the camera screen and head cocked as he listened to something in his ear-piece.

“Gotta go, Mr Vargold,” I said. “Thanks for the help.”

I shut down the smart and moved to Timor’s side. “Surveillance team has someone approaching the premises,” he said, then grunted a disappointed sigh. “Pizza guy, again.”

I called up the feed from the surveillance team’s main camera, seeing a skinny figure slouching along the neighbouring street with two pizza boxes. “Same guy as the last time,” Timor said. “Bet it’s the same toppings too. Fuentes really needs to reconsider his life choices.”

“He showed up twice in less than seven hours?” I asked.

“Laundry owner says Fuentes is kind’ve a compulsive eater, ‘specially when he’s nervous.”

“Gold One to Gold Three,” I said, addressing the surveillance team leader. “Intercept. Check those boxes. Extreme caution advised.”

“Acknowledged.”

I watched as the pizza guy came to a startled halt on the smart screen, eyes widening in shock at the sudden appearance of four Demons with weapons drawn. He dropped to his knees in response to a barked command and set the boxes down. One of the surveillance team moved closer and ran a pheromone sensor over the boxes. “No traces,” came the report, quickly supplemented by, “Anchovies and salami. Yum yum.”

“X-ray,” I ordered. “And shit-can the humour.”

The same Demon carefully set both boxes side by side then scanned them with a pen-sized x-ray unit. “Negative. No mechanicals or metals.”

“Let him through,” I said. “All he has to do is make the delivery. Five hundred in green if keeps his nerve. Don’t want Fuentes getting antsy.”

“Roger that.”

There was a short delay before the pizza guy appeared, making for the laundry at a faster pace than I’d have liked, though his slouch was still in place. He rang the buzzer and managed not to fidget during the thirty seconds it took a somewhat agitated older man to answer the door. “That’s the owner,” Leyla told me. “Wanted to bolt, but we threatened to get the commerce board to pull his shop-licence for harbouring a known criminal.”

The door closed and the pizza guy began to slouch away. I was about to return to my corner for more research when I noticed the pizza guy’s step was even faster than it had been on approaching the door. I reached for the camera, zooming in on a pale and sweaty face, eyes wide and plainly terrified.

“Shit!”

I ran for the door, barking orders at Leyla. “Call the laundry! Tell the owner he has to vacate now! And tell Surveillance to grab that pizza fucker!”

I dragged the arcade door open and sprinted outside. I was twenty yards short of the laundry door when the windows blew out. The blast picked me up and threw me against the boards on the arcade windows, glass shredding the sleeve of my raincoat as I instinctively shielded face and eyes. I felt blood coursing down my arm as I sagged onto the pavement, looking up to see the laundry in flames, the roof gone and smoke billowing in the rain as the level’s fire suppressant system came online. One glance at the shambles visible through the laundry’s glassless windows told me it was way too late for Fuentes and the owner.

Promise me he’ll make it to trial,
Janet had said and I’d promised. So I knew I’d shortly have another reason to hate Mr Mac, because when this was done he’d have made me into a liar as well as a murderer.

Chapter 11

“Exploding pizza,” Ricci
said, ample cheeks bulging with delighted fascination on my terminal screen. “This is a new one.”

I swallowed another painkiller and washed it down with lukewarm coffee. The damage to my arm had been easily mended, two hours in the speed-healer and a thick slathering with derma-gel to take care of the scars. The ache of it lingered though, deep and fierce. “Glad my near-death experience made your day,” I said. “How about some evidence?”

“Got plenty. Not sure how much it’ll help.” He tapped a button on his own terminal, calling up a line graph. “Spectrograph analysis of what’s left of Fuentes. Mostly a breakdown of the chemical compounds that make up the human body, except for this group.” The number of lines reduced as Ricci highlighted various points on the graph. “Nitric acid, glycerol and a relatively new synthetic explosive called demetrol. It’s used by the mining corporations to break up bigger asteroids. Favoured because of its safety features; inert, non-toxic to human skin, odourless and tasteless. You can play squash with a ball of this stuff and it won’t go boom, needs an accelerator for that. Hence the nitric acid and glycerol.”

Thanks to the war, I knew enough bathtub chemistry to follow his reasoning. “Put them together and you get nitroglycerin.”

“Yeah. But they weren’t mixed in the pizza until Fuentes bit into it and started chewing, which is why the pheromone scanner missed it. A decent sized mouthful would’ve been enough to set off the demetrol. I’m guessing the accelerant was in the crust and the demetrol was in the base.” He gave an appreciative chuckle. “Whoever came up with this one really deserves a hitter of the year award. I just booked myself a place at the Global Forensic Symposium thanks to this.”

“I assume demetrol is a controlled substance.”

“Sure. But it’s also widely used. Tracking where a relatively small amount like this came from will be a nightmare. There are chemical markers in every batch, though, so at least we’ll have a shot.”

No,
I knew, rubbing my temples.
He’d have thought of it and made sure there’s nothing to trace back to him.
“Send the details through to Joe,” I said, deciding thoroughness cost nothing. “He’ll get one of the analysts on it.”

I closed the connection and looked up to see Leyla loitering at the door. “What?”

“We finished grilling the pizza kid,” she said. “Seems he came home to find a Jed in a mask holding a gun to his mother’s head. There were two pizza boxes on the table. He was told to take them to the laundry when the next order came in.”

“Jed in a mask, huh?”

“Yeah. Flags as a big fat lie on the voice analyser, but he’s sticking with it. Kid’s scared shitless, boss.”

“His mother?”

“SWAT checked out the apartment. They found her tied to a chair with her favourite soaps playing on the holo. Mild shock and dehydration but otherwise she’s fine.”

I could sic Janet on the kid. Her particular form of mesmerism would probably unearth a description of the hostage taker but how much would that tell me? I already knew who it was.
Took care of this himself. Couldn’t resist a personal fuck-you. Probably considers it a practical joke between
friends.

“You OK, boss?”

I realised my hand was white on the coffee cup, the porcelain in danger of cracking under the strain. I opened my hand and reclined in the chair, arm aching from shoulder to wrist. “You ran background on the kid and his mother?”

“Yeah. Some petty offences for the kid, nothing for his ma. You want him charged? I mean, technically he’s guilty of aiding and abetting a homicide.”

I shook my head. “Kick him loose. No charges.”

She nodded, lingering.

“Something else?”

“The Rybak case. I saw your Pol-net alert. Wondering if you needed any help.”

I saw Janet approaching through the squad room, a determined smile on her lips. “I’ve got it,” I told Leyla. “For now. I’ll let you know if that changes.”

“Inspector,” Janet said, offering Leyla a smile as she came through the door, an excited glint in her eye.

“Doctor,” Leyla said, mouth barely twitching as she stood aside.

Janet placed her smart on my desk and called up a holo of the statue from Mr Mac’s office. “Remember Rodin’s
Jean d’Aire Second
Maquette?
”

“I’m fine, by the way,” I said.

Janet waved an impatient hand. “You’re always fine.” She hit some icons and the display switched to a company net-page: Kensington and Naylor, Specialist Fine Arts Couriers. “I ran a check on deliveries to Oksana Lenova’s apartment. Each time her birthday rolls around she gets a package from this company.”

“The Mackintosh watercolours.”

“Right. Kensington and Naylor are
the
company for moving art around. Very expensive, but also very trustworthy. It made me think. I mean we know Mr Mac likes his art, he’s an inveterate collector. Who better to use when he buys something new?”

“He wouldn’t use the same company for his own collection,” I said. “He’s way too careful for that.”

“Maybe not, but what about for someone else? What if there’s someone besides his sister who also appreciates antiques? So I ran a check for all Upside deliveries by Kensington and Naylor in the past three years.” She called up a fresh image, a smiling young woman holding a violin. It was clearly a publicity shot taken at a concert. The violinist’s smile was a little uncertain, conveying a sense of fragility enhanced by delicate beauty.

“Her name’s Li Mei Bao,” Janet said. “Up-and-coming star on the classical music circuit. She lives on New Shen and has received no less than six deliveries in the last twelve months courtesy of Kensington and Naylor. Way more than any other private individual in orbit.”

“Seems tenuous,” I said. “A lady like her is bound to have admirers, and get a lot of corporate gifts.”

“A fair point, sir.” Janet’s voice held a triumphant note as she called up another publicity shot of Li Mei Bao, this time perched on a couch in a long white dress, violin in hand. “Taken at her home during an interview she did for Upside Vogue three months ago. The background is the interesting part. I had to run it through some filters, but it’s pretty clear.” The image shifted, zooming in on the slightly out of focus background before morphing into a figure. A bronze figure sitting on a shelf. It was different to the one I’d seen on Mr Mac’s desk, a floppy haired man in archaic clothing holding what appeared to be a plate.

“Looks like a waiter at a Medieval banquet,” Leyla said.

“He’s a painter,” Janet said. “Holding a palette. It’s a study for the monument to the artist Claude Lorrain, completed by Auguste Rodin in 1889. Formerly part of the Cantor Collection and stolen from the Brooklyn Museum, along with the
Jean d’Aire Second Maquette
, some fifty years ago. I guess Mr Mac’s been tracking these down over the years.”

I looked up from the image, meeting her gaze. “New Shen City is an hour’s shuttle ride away.”

“I believe so.”

“Leyla, tell Joe to run a profile on shuttle traffic between the Slab and New Shen. Cross ref with all known sightings of Mr Mac. Then get everyone back here. Briefing in thirty minutes.”