MECHWARRIOR: DARK AGE #24: DRAGON RISING

The nine drunk tanks were standard: three-meter cubes, faced with ferroglass, and three to a side. A single chair and table, bolted to the floor. A bench where the drunk slept it off. A drain in the middle of a concrete floor for hosing down vomit. The air always smelled like day-old puke laced with urine or feces.

A lone uniform was dictating when Loveland and Thereon walked in. He said ‘‘Pause’’ to his computer and faced round. ‘‘You the guys?’’

‘‘Yeah. Bill Reilly, he’s the shorter guy in the middle tank,’’ the uniform said. ‘‘Big guy at the end is Mack Strobel. Dockworkers, couple of priors, pissant stuff. Dust, mainly. Thing is, when I ran ’em, they’d already been tagged. But then I ran the tag.’’

‘‘Naw, it’s legit, except it belongs to a patrol officer who skipped out eight months ago, name of Josh Petrie. Nice wife, cute kid. Girlfriend’s what everyone figures. Thing is, the tag clocks in on twenty-eight February at oh-two-hundred-forty-five hours, but the wife reported him missing sixteen February. And get this.’’ The uniform called up a file. ‘‘Spaceport says he left for Murchison on twenty February, eight days before these guys swear up and down it was a cop tagged them.’’

‘‘Hunh,’’ Loveland said. Taggants were microscopic, chemically inert compounds whose residua could last on skin for several years. Suspects were subjected to a sniffer: an ultra-sensitive device that could pick up as little as two parts per million. The catch was that patrol taggers were fingerprint-activated. Only Petrie could’ve activated the device, but if he was gone . . . ‘‘That doesn’t compute. Did they say where and why?’’

‘‘That’s where things got a little interesting. The way they were talking, I think they ran into that homicide I heard you been working.’’

Loveland and Thereon eyed the two men in their rumpled coveralls. The men stared back, but when Loveland walked to the middle tank, the little guy’s eyes slid away. Loveland aimed a finger. ‘‘That one.’’

They used a small interview room, the kind with a one-way mirror, two chairs, a table and nothing else. Wrists in plasticuffs, Reilly was definitely sober now and reeked of day-old dust—a cloying, burnt-caramel scent. His eyes were red-rimmed; his nose was a roadmap of ruptured capillaries; and he had a duster’s tremor in both hands.

His memory was just about as good. ‘‘Look, we was pretty messed up. I don’t remember. But we ain’t done nothing to that slag. She was all banged up, said a johnny done bashed in her mug.’’

‘‘Yeah?’’ Loveland leaned back against the door while Thereon held up the near wall. ‘‘If she was as messed up as you say, you should’ve offered to help her, right?’’ He looked at Thereon. ‘‘I’d have helped her.’’

‘‘But you didn’t help her,’’ Loveland said to Reilly. ‘‘Plus, you and your friend got tagged. Now the only reason I can think of why a cop does that is because you were doing something to that woman you shouldn’t.’’

This man wasn’t their killer, but Reilly had contact with Petrie and that interested Loveland a lot. Otherwise, Loveland didn’t really give a rat’s ass about Reilly. ‘‘Listen,’’ he said, ‘‘I don’t really give a rat’s ass for either you or your friend in there. I want to know about the cop.’’

Reilly screwed up his face like he’d finally got a whiff of himself. ‘‘And you ain’t gonna try to pin this on me?’’

‘‘Can’t help you there. Not my jurisdiction. You cooperate, I’ll put in a good word. Best I can do.’’

His best was apparently good enough because Reilly thought for another moment, then leaned forward, as if to impress Loveland with his earnestness. ‘‘It happened just like I said. Me and Mack, we was hanging out by them old warehouses down by The Loading Dock.’’

Reilly shook his head. ‘‘No, no, The Loading Dock. It’s a bar west end of town. Pie used to work it. Anyway, we was hanging round, not doing much.’’

‘‘Really?’’ Thereon’s smoky eyes looked sleepy, as if Reilly’s story were of no more interest than a weather report. ‘‘February’s pretty cold here, right? Can’t see why two guys would just hang around.’’

Reilly reddened. ‘‘Mack and me, we’d scored a coupla lines, and we was hanging round, you know. And we was using, not selling.’’

Reilly pushed on. ‘‘Anyway, Pie happens by. She was messed up just like I said. She told us what happened and then . . .’’ He trailed off.

‘‘Rough enough.’’ Reilly clamped down on the end of the sentence. Unsure if it was useful to go after the grisly details, Loveland eyed Thereon who made a minute keep rolling gesture.

‘‘Then . . . well, Mack, he was holding Pie still-like, and I was . . . anyways, all a sudden, this Bob appeared outta nowhere. Only he didn’t feel like no cop.’’

Reilly’s features arranged themselves into an approximation of what he must imagine passed for deep thought but only succeeded in making him look constipated. ‘‘Gets so you know who’s a cop. It’s like this sixth sense, see? This wanker, whatever he was, he wasn’t no Bob.’’

‘‘He was just . . . there. He shouted, and then Mack, he done run off, and I tried getting away, only then he got me round me neck. That’s when I knowed there was something wrong. After he touched me, after he had his hands on me, I was happy to clear out. Only it wasn’t about not getting caught. It was about him. His hands.’’

‘‘When he broke us up, when he hauled back on me neck, his hands,’’ Reilly said, ‘‘they was ice cold.’’

‘‘No, they’s cold,’’ Reilly said, ‘‘and then, they’s dead. This Bob, he were a dead man walking.’’