They were seated out on the patio, under a blackening sky, and Angel was having a tough time figuring out what else could go wrong.
“Did you notice anything missing?” Anaka asked.
“I told the first cops. It wasn’t my condo.” Angel refused to sit down or even look at the Asian cop. Anaka was just the latest in a series of uniforms, detectives, and lab guys who were busy tearing the wreckage apart. She’d given a statement to one of the uniforms, and she didn’t want to go over it again. “Same damn questions, again? Why not zip off and leave me alone—”
She heard Anaka inhale as if he was about to retort. Instead, he hit her with another question. “When was the last time you were in this apartment?”
“Week ago Wednesday. Answer to that hasn’t changed in the last half hour.”
“It is possible that the humans we’re holding—”
Angel whipped around. “The hell I’m supposed to know if a trio of hairless geeks could’ve managed a little party time here?”
Anaka was rubbing his temples. “Miss Lopez, I wish you’d be more cooperative.”
“Why you bothering? You have your suspects. They’re going down. Your job’s over.” Angel walked up to Anaka. With him sitting and her standing, they were eye to eye. Under the smell of the lightning, the cop was shedding stress and tension like old fur.
“Sure,” she said with an insincere smile. “The fuckheads did this too, make life easy for yourself.”
“I’m trying to do my job here. There’s more to this—” Anaka looked around and stood up.
“Yeah, like I make a shitload of difference?”
Anaka didn’t look like he was paying attention. He was looking back into the apartment, where the police were still sifting through debris. The forensics people were dusting the place and sweeping an UV laser around in their search for biological material and prints—paw and/or finger.
Anaka stepped over to the door and slid it shut. Suddenly Angel was reminded of Dr. Ellis. She remembered the rather tense byplay between the two pink cops. White didn’t want to deal with Anaka’s “conspiracies.” Anaka had suspected—
“Something funny about the autopsy,” Angel said.
Anaka whipped around. “What do you know about that?” Suddenly she could see all of Ellis’ paranoia mirrored in Anaka.
“Ever find out why Ellis the not-a-vulpine-expert was assigned to cut up the corpse?”
“No.” Anaka warily backed away from the doors. “I’ve been trying to contact Ellis on the substance of the autopsy.”
“Did she mention a morey did him?”
“What? How do you know that?”
“Ellis told me when I cornered her yesterday. About to crap her pants, too.” She was glad to see somebody else look confused. Even though the expression on Anaka’s face only lasted a second.
Anaka nodded as if something just made sense to him. “Falsified the autopsy, then she panicked. That’s why she’s disappeared . . .” Angel was about to ask him about what happened to Ellis, but he went on, changing the subject. There was an edge of fear, or paranoia, in Anaka’s voice. “This is bigger than you know.”
He said it with such conviction that Angel backed up to the railing. Chain-reaction lightning shot across the sky, and for the first time she noticed how fatigued he looked. The rumpled suit he wore was the same one he’d been wearing in the morgue. Might have been the same suit he’d worn to Ralph’s. “What are you talking about?”
Anaka walked up next to her as the peal of thunder reached them. The wind began to pick up, and the few last remaining shards of sunlight raced south, across the bay.
“The first big quake, it was the fires that almost killed this town.” Anaka stared out at the water, toward the dome. His voice became harder and more distant. “In ’34, it was money. The quake, martial law, the recession, the civic restructuring . . . This town was bought and sold like it was a public auction. Cops rented out as hired thugs, firemen paid protection money—”
“What’s your point?”
Anaka turned toward her. “I’m not an enemy.”
“You’re part of that machine.”
“No.” Anaka shook his head. “For twenty years— A quarter century since the quake, and things haven’t changed.”
Another bolt of lightning tore open the sky, and a minute long roar of thunder followed close on its heels, vibrating the railing Angel leaned against. A drop of moisture struck her square on the nose.
Anaka was going on now, like Angel wasn’t even there. “The DA’s office is rushing a conviction on the shoddiest evidence I’ve seen since the National Guard stopped shooting looters.”
Rain began to gently patter the balcony, and the rumblings were closing the gap on the flashes.
“They say they want to shut down the Knights—” Anaka was raising his voice now. All she heard of the rest of his sentence was: “VanDyne Industrial?”
“The ones who rebuilt the Pyramid?” she shouted over the storm.
“And the cable cars, and half of downtown between Market and Telegraph Hill. They own this building, and most of the condos overlooking the bay.” The rain finally cascaded upon them in full force, sheeting across the balcony in rhythmic waves. “Byron Dorset worked for them, and if there’s a central cog in the San Francisco ‘machine,’ it’s VanDyne.”
“Does that have anything to do—”
Anaka shook his head. “I’m working on it. Help me.”
He slid the door open and rushed inside, Angel on his heels. In the apartment, the only thing Angel could smell was her own wet fur. “What about Detective White?”
“He’s a good cop.” There could have been an edge of sarcasm in his voice.
“White doesn’t like you, does he?”
Anaka shrugged. “Few people in the department do, I’m used to it.”
She looked at the cops and the forensics guys who were packing things up. Apparently their job was completed. A balding black human walked up to them and addressed her. “The place’s all yours now, though I’d suggest you take pictures for the insurance companies before you clean up.”
“You’re done?” There was a slight hint of disbelief in Anaka’s voice. “That was damn quick, Beirce.”
The man turned to Anaka as if he’d just now bothered to notice him. He ran a hand through what was left of his hair. “And what’re you doing here? No meat lying around—you did make Homicide, didn’t you? Paint’s still wet on that suit.”
“Since when does it take less than an hour to dust up a crime scene?”
“Fuck you. Just because you wear civvies now don’t mean you tell me my business.”
“Listen—”
“No, you listen. I do what I have to do and get out of the lady rabbit’s hair—”
“Fur,” Angel said.
“Whatever. So, Detective Anaka, I suggest you pack your paranoia and do likewise. And if you need a report, you know where you can file it.”
Beirce turned around and left the apartment, leading a platoon of men carrying equipment. The uniforms followed, leaving Anaka and Angel alone in the living room.
“What did you do to that guy?”
“Me?” Anaka shook his head. “Nothing.” Anaka sighed. “I’m going to go before my partner starts missing me, but we’ll need to talk later.”
“Sure,” Angel said, “for all the good it’ll do.”
“One thing though.” Anaka pulled something out of his pocket. “Would you stop poking around on your own?”
“Huh?” She tried to look innocent.
He handed her a folded up paper that she instantly recognized. It was Byron’s letter, wrapped around the Earthquake’s season tickets.
“Where?” Angel asked as she reflexively stuck her hand in the pocket of her jeans. She began to remember feeling something drop while she was watching Earl’s corpse.
“You dropped them outside the door to the morgue.”
She took the tickets and the letter and replaced them in her pocket. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I—”
“Just don’t anymore.”
She shook her head and felt stupid. She was way out of her depth and felt like things had flown totally beyond her grasp. She didn’t say anything as Anaka let himself out.
• • •
The BMW kicked up a sheet of water over the sidewalk as Angel pulled up to her house.
“The van’s gone,” Lei said.
Angel looked at the spot where the gray Dodge van had been watching their apartment. Nothing. “They probably saw what’s-his-name get shit for footage and gave up.” It would be comforting to think they’d just been reporters.
“I suppose.”
They both got out of the car and ran for the door, splashing across a sidewalk that was becoming a shallow river. The storm was still gaining in intensity. The rapid-fire lightning flashes were now simultaneous with the thunder.
The door was open.
“Shit.” Angel pulled the Beretta out of her pants.
“You didn’t ditch that thing?” Lei asked.
“Why?”
“There were a dozen cops—”
“I was an innocent victim, why search— Damn it, did you leave the door open?”
Lei looked at the door which had swung inward with a slight touch from Angel. “I don’t know. I could’ve in all that confusion when we left.”
A blast of wind slammed the door into the interior hall. Angel covered the hall and the stairs with the gun.
“Who’re you going to shoot? Balthazar could’ve—”
“Almost forty, barely leaves his apartment during weather like this?” Angel stepped into the hall and started edging up the stairs, leading with the gun.
Lei followed, keeping a respectful distance behind her. “Are you going to shoot some overeager reporter?”
“At least make him crap his pants. Close the door.”
Lei pushed the door shut with her foot. Angel asked, quietly, “Do you smell anything?”
“Besides us?”
Angel nodded. Lei shook her head no.
Maybe she was wrong and all she could smell was her own wet fur, but Angel could swear she could smell something else. Something else that was alien to this house. Neither canine, lepine, or Balthazar’s leonine scent. Not an animal smell at all.
Fake pine?
The door to their apartment was closed. There seemed no sign of any forced entry. Angel backed up and leveled the gun at the doorway. She waved Lei over. “Open it. Then stand back.”
“Is this smart?”
“Do it.”
Lei stood next to the door and punched in the combination. Then she stepped back and cowered as if she expected some sort of explosion. The door swung open a few centimeters, and Angel stood for nearly ten seconds, waiting.
She could feel her own pulse in her neck, and there was the copper taste of excitement in her mouth. Her breath tried to burn her nose.
She took a deep breath and dove through the door.
Through the door, she swept the gun to cover the living room from the kitchenette, past the bay windows, and then to the hall to the bedrooms. She rolled into the hall between the bedrooms and covered, in turn, her room, the bathroom, and Lei’s room. It took all of three seconds to see the apartment was empty.
Angel slumped against the doorframe to the bathroom, hyperventilating, pointing her gun at the floor. Lei took a few tentative steps into the living room. “Safe?”
Angel nodded, panting.
“Would you please put the gun away?”
She nodded again, unable to get the breath to talk, and clicked the safety on the Beretta. She went and tucked it back in the underwear drawer. There was a nearby lightning strike that shook the house. The lights flickered.
She stood, leaning against the dresser in her room, catching her breath. The shower started, and she realized how wet and miserable she was. She walked back to the bathroom and sat on the john. “Leave some hot water,” Angel told Lei through the fogged-glass partition.
As she waited for the shower, Angel kept telling herself that it wasn’t paranoia. There really was something rotten going on here. It was perfectly reasonable, what she just did. Someone—she wished she knew who—could have been waiting for them.
She put her head in her hands. Yeah, but jumping that pink Knight on the street today, that wasn’t reasonable. A fine line she was treading here, and at the moment she didn’t know exactly what side of it she was on. It didn’t help matters that city employees were feeding into her paranoia.
Detective Anaka just about flat out said that all the corrupt forces in the city government were conspiring to pin Byron’s murders on the two punks. Dr. Ellis said Byron got clawed by a moreau, covered the fact up, and disappeared.
And Byron worked for VanDyne Industrial.
What the hell did that mean?
What could a Brit fox named Byron Dorset be doing for one of the major stockholders in the San Francisco civic machine?
And what was he doing on Eddy Street? Was he really going to meet a bunch of bald schizo pinks in their own apartment? If so, why’d he get whacked by a morey?
Anaka was right, this was all his job. She wasn’t equipped to do any half-assed investigating. She was just a piece of street trash from Cleveland who barely had enough smarts to keep her hide intact. Just thinking about all of this made her head hurt.
The only person she knew who was equipped to unravel something like this was down in Los Angeles behind a blockade of moreaus and National Guard. Even then, she’d be lucky if Nohar remembered her.
So, was she going to sit on her ass and wait until she talked to Anaka again?
“Yeah, right,” Angel said with all the sarcasm she could muster. Okay, skulking into other people’s buildings was a bad idea. But she’d be damned if she stopped trying to figure things out. Even if she was a half-assed investigator, she was the only one she could trust.
Besides, she had to straighten out Byron’s affairs. If certain questions came up in the process, no one could blame her for asking—right?
The dryer came on for a few minutes and then Lei came out of the shower. “It’s all yours.”
Angel grunted a monosyllable.
Lei leaned forward and rubbed noses. “I understand, but you could try and relax a little bit.”
“I’ll try,” Angel said as she shrugged out of her wet clothes.