When Finn came to, he heard the Sheriff stir. He knew it was the Sheriff because every time she sorted a new piece of paperwork she spat out a single compound-word obscenity. “Fuckweasels.” “Pencildick.” And so forth. Kennedy would get a kick out of her.
He wasn’t sure exactly when he’d dropped off, or whether the dreams he’d had were really dreams or fragments of actual memories.
Heat lightning. Shattered door. Black pooling blood.
It must have been reveille that woke him. He was not aware of having heard the call, but his internal clock told him it was a few minutes after 0600.
Sure enough, another minute later the Sheriff got up from her chair and headed out. Finn knew precisely where she was going, and why. She’d be at the front of the line when Jittery Abe’s opened at 0630.
Trained rats.
He closed his eyes again and thought back to that pointless raid on that empty compound. That much was memory, he was sure, and not dream. They burst in. No one there. And after that?
He touched his fingertips to his temples.
Radio silence.
When the rumor reached them the next morning Finn went out and shook the bushes, talked quietly with every local contact he had, and he had plenty. But his HUMINT network had gone dark. No one was saying a word. Why?
Exactly who were they afraid of?
At 0635 the Sheriff returned, prompt as an alarm clock.
A few minutes later, Finn’s thoughts were interrupted by the Sheriff’s rusty hacksaw. “You got a visitor, buttwipe.”
Finn opened his eyes but didn’t sit up.
Through the door he heard a deep rich voice. “Can you give us a few minutes alone?”
He heard the Sheriff hesitate, a faint throaty grumble like an ancient car engine about to quit. “Five minutes,” she growled. No obscenities, incredibly, but she didn’t sound happy. “We’ll be right outside.”
Finn heard the scrape and shuffle of the Sheriff moving out with her two MAs in tow. He heard the brig’s outer door clank shut, followed by the thunk of the closing lock. The scrape of a chair being pulled up to his cell.
Finn sat up in the semidarkness. Didn’t turn on his cell light.
“Anything I can get you?” said Jackson. “Loaf of pound cake with a nail file inside? Poster of Rita Hayworth?”
Jackson sounded fatigued. Finn’s guess, he’d been up all night. “What brings you to the dungeon, Master Chief?”
“And here I was going to ask you the same thing.”
Finn waited.
“All right, then,” Jackson said amiably. “I’ll go first. I thought I’d drop by and see how that recon’s going.”
“It’s going.”
“Uh-huh,” said Jackson. Finn saw him glance around at the brig’s sparse interior. “I can see that. Got things nicely under control.”
“How’s the incident file search going?” said Finn.
Jackson grunted.
Finn waited. Jackson seemed to be weighing what to say next.
“I’ve got questions for you, Finn X.”
“Okay.”
Another pause.
Finn could guess what some of those questions were. What are you doing getting yourself arrested? Why are they really sending you home? Why are you on this ship at all? What’s your endgame? Why are people dying on my boat, and what do you have to do with it?
“Are you a bad guy, Chief Finn?” said Jackson.
Finn smiled in the dark. “Tell me something,” he said. “Anyone else disappear last night?”
Jackson grunted again. He leaned close to the steel grate and spoke quietly. “Now, why would you be asking a question like that?”
“Because I can count to six.”
Jackson straightened back up and rubbed his eyes.
In the silence Finn parsed the progression of thoughts Jackson would likely be having right now. He’d figure Finn had to know he was under suspicion. Today was August 21, which meant another six days had passed without incident. Which could be confirmation of his guilt: if he was in fact the perpetrator, then it stood to reason there’d be no further homicides as long as he was locked up.
On the other hand.
If Finn was not the perpetrator and the actual guilty party was setting him up for it, then there still wouldn’t be any further homicides as long as he was locked up—because if there were, that would take him off the board as a viable suspect. Which could mean Finn had gotten himself thrown in there intentionally to prevent any more murders from happening.
Either way, as long as he was in the brig the people on the ship were safe.
But were they safe because Finn was outmaneuvering the killer—or because he was the killer?
“The lady or the tiger,” said Finn.
Jackson gave another grunt.
In any case, the ship’s population wouldn’t be safe for long. The captain had no cause to keep the prisoner locked up for more than three calendar days, which meant Chief Finn would be out on the streets again, so to speak, by the end of the following day.
“About that finger,” said Finn.
“Oh yeah,” said Jackson. “About that finger.”
“Not a hate crime. Not a reprisal.”
“How in God’s—?”
Finn could hear the unspoken thought. How in God’s name could you possibly know about Mac’s theories?
After a long beat, the CMC quietly said, “No? What was it, then, Finn X?”
“A start signal.”
More silence. Jackson thinking hard.
“CMC?”
“Still here.”
Finn whispered, “Watch out for Supercop.”
There was the sudden thunk of heavy door bolts being thrown back.
“Time,” crowed the Sheriff.