The web grew from the ceiling of the Shawnee County Police Department’s Crimes Against Persons squad room. Picking her way along the strands already laid, the spider added more filaments, filling in the gossamer pattern stretching from the ceiling to the big vid screen on the wall above the coffee cart. Since its appearance one night watch years ago the screen had become such a familiar part of the background that the detectives usually ignored the quadrants broadcasting local, national, and international news, and a gossip channel. The spider’s work had not escaped notice, however.
Detective “Call me Mama” Maxwell said, “Isn’t it exquisite?”
Staring from her partner to the web, Janna Brill hissed in exasperation. “This is why you’ve been standing here for ten minutes while I worked on reports alone?”
To think she had become concerned on realizing the length of his absence from the desk facing hers, and looked around from her computer to see him standing like a statue — a Dutch chocolate figure even leaner than her sinewy six-one — holding an unbroken blister of coffee gel over the insulated paper cup in his other hand.
She ran a hand back over her buzz cut. Lately he had become uncharacteristically subdued. What was wrong? In her former partner Wim Kiest, that generally signaled domestic trouble. Had things gone wrong between Mama and his current cohab Lia, the physical therapist he met in the hospital while recovering from vehicular assault by a murder suspect? Entirely possible, given his domestic track record . . . one five-year marriage contract cancelled by his wife after two years and a one year contract with a second fem not renewed.
Not that subdued equaled sartorial restraint, unfortunately. With the advent of 2092’s arctic weather — predicted to last well into March, according to the groundhog last week — he had given up his summer cyberskein suits and the program buttons that turned them into blinding patterns. But where she wore suitably professional turtlenecks — today’s a burgundy red — he had gone to Christmas-sweaters-from-hell. Today’s not merely red with a flurry of blue, yellow, and green snowflakes, but all the colors screaming bright. Where in the cosmos did they even make yarn those colors?
“Mama?” She pitched her voice to carry above the voices of detectives talking on cells, slates, and computers . . . and to citizens in varying stages of irritation or anxiety.
He did not appear to hear. The light reflection never changed on his egg-bald scalp.
Janna had pushed away from the computer leg of her L desk to cross the room and punch his shoulder. “Mama!”
He finally roused . . . only to remark on the esthetic value of the spider’s creation.
That killed her concern. Exquisite? He would look exquisite . . . on the floor with the soles of her knee boots in his face.
How did she ever forget that her partner of seven months — which sometimes felt like a lifetime — was brainbent, wickers, totally over the brainbow? Always marching to his own drummer. Exemplified by his excruciating fashion sense.
She punched him again. “Mahlon Sumner Maxwell . . . being partners means we share all the work of this job, including reports! Not just the thrill of the chase!”
His eyes rolled. “You’ve certainly turned bitchy since Sid married the man of his dreams and moved out.”
A spasm of guilt momentarily cooled her irritation. Had she? Well, maybe, but damn it, she and Assistant Medical Examiner Sid Chesney had cohabed for nearly six years. Had been like sisters. The apartment felt desolate without his warmth and humor. Without someone who cared whether she came home or not.
Then anger hissed back through her. “I’ll be even bitchier if I have to keep writing up reports alone. While we’ve got this weather. . .” She waved toward windows frosted nearly opaque. “. . . keeping Topeka’s criminal element off the street and saving us from the usual Friday night carnage, let’s make the most of it. You can admire nature on your own time!” She reached up to brush away the web.
He caught her wrist. “Hey, Bibi, she’s not doing any harm, just looking for a place out of the cold, like everyone else.”
“Except them.” Janna pointed at the national news quadrant of the vid screen, where Pennsylvania’s Governor John Granville Hershey wore a presidential hopeful’s smile amid the drifts of Iowa.
“Everyone with sense.”
Janna had to grin.
The challenge of the new administration will be dealing with Africa, ran the crawl line under Hershey’s image. Recognizing that the warring tribes of yore have become educated, self-sufficient nations of distinct character. One size does not fit all. At the same time, the Union of African Nations reflects their shared interests and must be taken seriously or it could become to the export of African resources what OPEC was to Mideast oil in the last century.
Mama finally popped the coffee gel cube through the back of the blister into the cup of hot water and as it dissolved, twisted the tops of the creamer and sweetener dispensers to add gel tabs of those. “Much as I hate to agree with any politician — or rather, the insightful staffer who researched and wrote his speech — he’s right. More than that, according to the Wall Street Journal the UAN is almost synonymous with the African mega-corporation Uwezo — that means ‘power’ in Swahili — whose officers are high officials in over a dozen African governments.”
Surprise wiped away Janna’s irritation. When did Mama find time for the Wall Street Journal. He must watch its vid channel while he ate breakfast and prepared for bed.
“Enjoying some slack time?” came a voice behind Janna.
She swore silently and turned to face Pass-the-Word Morello, their Knows-All-Tells-All unit clerk. Was he looking for an idle detective to hand a new assignment? Why had she ever left her computer? “I’m just getting coffee. We’re still finishing up reports on the Molina assault and Corrigan murder.”
Morello’s foxy face twisted in a smirk. “While other leos still have to work the street — Crimes Against Property, for example — because not all felons are huddled inside around heaters.”
Now Janna understood the smirk. He had a story bursting to be told. Sometimes she wondered about Morello’s home life. Popular chop said he and his wife shared a house with his mother and two sisters, one of whom worked in the courthouse. Since he passed on items he must have heard from the rest of them, were their evenings one endless, ecstatic gossip session, with a chance to repeat and embellish all the stories from here for his circle of listeners?
“What’s CAPP involved in then?” she asked.
“A hearse hijacking.”
Mama wheeled away from the spider and the half-frozen smiles of the candidates on the screen. “What!”
The foxy grin broadened. “Driven by Ms. Beta Nafsinger from the Nafsinger Family Funeral Home. You’ve probably seen their TV ads.”
Janna had. The compassionately solemn Samuel Nafsinger and wife sitting in a peaceful garden amid their three blonde, apple-cheeked daughters with Greek alphabet names.
“Yesterday morning while she waited for a light on south Topeka Avenue, two gangers pulled her out, then sailed off with the hearse.”
In this weather?
“Which gang?” Mama asked.
“They wore red, yellow, and blue stars around their eyes.”
That sounded like Orions . . . though south Topeka was well out of their Oakland turf. Which concerned Janna less than the sudden gleam of Mama’s eyes. A gleam she hated to see . . . always preceding one of his wild leaps over the brainbow. Thank god the hijacked hearse belonged to CAPP. Though why did it? Jacking counted as assault. Not that she cared to challenge CAPP for the case. “Interesting. You let us know how it turns out.”
Morello wiggled his brows. “You tell me. The lieutenant wants to see the two of you.”
Janna hissed as she headed for Hari Vradel’s office. So much for the case being left with CAPP.
The burly unit commander had company. Lieutenant Dominic Applegate, the lanky commander of Crimes Against Property, sat in one of the visitor chairs with two of his detectives leaning against the wall behind him: Galen Quist and “Teddybear” Roos. Her nickname earned by her blue-eyed, freckled, cuddly look. Misleading, because the chop on her said in a fight she became more grizzly bear.
Applegate and the detectives stared as she and Mama came in.
A familiar reaction to the two of them. Both six feet plus and wiry lean, but reverse images of each other — her blonde, him dark . . . with his bald scalp lacking only smeary paint or tattoos to differentiate him from the trippers down in Narco.
Then Quist grinned. “Isn’t there a statute of limitations on how long after Christmas you have to wear the sweater?”
Annoyance sparked in Janna. Not for the remark, so similar to those she herself made, but because as Mama’s partner, only she had the right to make them, not Quist with his heavy brows and perpetual five o’clock shadow making him look like he ought to be wearing restraints rather than a badge.
“You know Detectives Brill and Maxwell,” Vradel said.
“Yes.” Applegate’s flinty glance toward Mama hinted at knowledge more personal than the official record of reasons for shuttling Mama through in every division in the department before promotion to Investigations and Vradel taking him on here.
“Brill’s had experience with the Oakland area gangs,” Vradel said. “Brill, Maxwell . . . you’re teaming with Quist and Roos to help locate the Orions who jacked a hearse yesterday. I’m assuming you’re familiar with the details.” Passed on by Morello went unsaid, being assumed.
“Out of curiosity,” Janna said, “how did CAPP catch the case?”
“Because the initial complaint just reported a stolen hearse,” Quist said. “We didn’t learn more of the circumstances until we interviewed the victim.”
“And she denied being injured, refused to press assault charges, and only cared about getting back the hearse,” Roos said. “So we were treating it as a property crime.”
“Which a Traffic cam actually recorded.” Vradel swiveled his computer screen toward Janna and Mama, then picked up a pencil and began his famous doodling . . . sketching a face on his blotter.
Janna studied the screen with Mama breathing down her neck. Thousands of the city’s million eyes monitored streets and intersections. The time/location ID of this vid placed it at Twenty-ninth and Kansas, looking south, at eight-eleven am.
Roos said, “Between the weather, the jackers facing away from us, and the hearse being the third vehicle in line, we have a shit view of the jackers, but—”
“The victim provided a good description of them,” Applegate said. “Two males with stars around their eyes . . . points going up, down, and sideways, in bands of red, yellow, and blue.”
Orion colors all right.
The Traffic vid showed the action clear enough. The jackers appeared as two dark, bundled figures dashing from the crosswalk down the traffic line to the driver’s side of the hearse — not a black vehicle but grey . . . making it almost invisible in the swirling snow.
“The time between red lights at the intersection tells us they hit the Walk button to make sure the hearse stopped.”
On the vid, one jacker tapped on the window. After a moment the door slid back and the driver leaned out. When she did, the figure jerked her into the street.
“What did he say that made her open the door?” Mama asked.
Roos said, “That an access cover on a fan was loose. She looked out to check.”
Nafsinger had barely hit the pavement when the pair climbed over her into the hearse.
“She reported that the jacker pulling her out said, ‘Pluto, it’s a fem,’ like he was surprised, and the second jacker said to shut up, shoved jacker number one over, and climbed into the driver’s seat. Stars plus Pluto definitely makes them Orions.”
With the door still open, the hearse rose off its parking rollers . . . revving fans adding to the swirl of snow around it and over the victim . . . and slewed sideways across the outside lanes into the parking lot of the Zinzer Drugs on that corner. Carrying a Kansu Bonsai runabout with it in the process and spinning a Stratford cycle ninety degrees by side-swiping its front wheel. Then it gunned past the Bonsai through the lot and onto Twenty-ninth, heading east.
Janna said, “Are we being brought in now because Nafsinger changed her mind about prosecuting for assault?”
Mama said, “I’m thinking it’s additional information. Maybe that she was transporting a body?”
Oh, shit.
Quist grunted. “Yeah. A detail Nafsinger left out when finally telling us how the hearse got stolen.”
“Then when we learned about it,” Roos said, “and called to ask why she didn’t mention it, she claimed she’d forgotten in her zeal to describe her assailants. Turns out she’d been to Forbes to collect the corpse of one Paul Stanley Chenoweth, who died Tuesday in a construction accident on the Lanour-Tenning space station.”
Applegate said, “Bodies from stations come back to the aerospace port closest to next of kin. His body was to be held at Nafsinger’s until his family in Emporia made arrangements.”
Quist’s lip curled. “‘Forgot’, I’m thinking, because she didn’t want it on public record that Nafsinger’s lost a dear departed.”
“How and when did you learn about it, then?” Janna asked.
Applegate grimaced. “A call from our Director Paget about five am this morning. He’d been woken fifteen minutes earlier by a call from the station director — a Leonard Fontana, who’d apparently been informed of the situation by Nafsinger even as that intel was withheld from us — asking what we’re doing to recover his late employee.”
Mama murmured in Janna’s ear, “I didn’t know the Lanour Corporation carried such clout down here in Kansas.”
Applegate eyed Mama. “I don’t really expect to accomplish any more than Quist and Roos can alone, but with a corpse, involving CAPR will look like due diligence to the brass, and Lanour-Tenning.”
The sketched face on the blotter developed a scowl, but Vradel said only, “Oh, I think we can do better than that, Dom. Four pairs of legs always cover more ground than two.” A mild tone Janna recognized as the one Vradel used with fellow lieutenants in front of subordinate officers.
She said, “Isn’t it likely the Orions will dump the hearse as soon as they’ve had their fun, and Nafsinger will have it and the body back.”
Quist eyed her sourly. “They hadn’t dumped it by evening. Who knows if they’ve stripped it and tossed the body in a snowbank where it won’t be found until spring.”
Vradel laid down his pencil to send laser stares at her and Mama. “We need to prevent that.”
In other words: Get the hell out of here and find that body and wrap those Orions!
Janna headed out the door with Mama and the CAPP detectives.
In the squad room, the national news quarter of the vid screen still covered presidential candidates but someone had turned on the sound. Senator Scott Early’s deep voice rolled across the room. “Part of this nation’s metal shortage must be attributed to the colonial movement’s ships. A moratorium on colonization should be a sacred goal of the next President, applying not only to this country but world-wide, until such time as asteroid mining supplies the needs of people who remain loyal to Earth instead of abandoning her.”
Quist nodded. “I’d support that.”
Mama said nothing but Janna read disgust in his turn away from Quist as they picked coats off the back of their desk chairs. Though he never proselytized, she knew he sympathized with the Diasporists, who saw in colonization the ultimate survival of the human race . . . in case this planet proved poisoned beyond reclamation.
Janna lowered her voice. “What kind of trouble did you have with Applegate?”
Mama frowned. “Not me. He just blamed me. As a uniformed sergeant in the Sherwood division he had a Solari for his personal vehicle and someone covered the solar receptors with black plastic. He spent ten or fifteen minutes cursing and the kicking the car before he discovered the fact.”
“Why did he blame you?”
“When he had all the lockers searched, they found a roll of that plastic in mine.”
She eyed him. “But it wasn’t yours. Someone framed you.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t keep incriminating evidence.”
They joined Quist and Roos at the squad room door. Together, they headed for the escalator at the far end, pulling on their coats as they followed the hallway around the building atrium — the light in it gray today under the snow-covered skylights.
“Where did our jackers elude Traffic surveillance?” Mama asked.
Quist scowled . . . apparently interpreting that as: How did you lose them? “We tracked them out Twenty-ninth to California, then as far north as Twenty-first. Then they ducked in behind a tronics store, E-World. It’s out of business and doesn’t have active surveillance, but we know that’s where they went because checking the surveillance of area businesses, we caught the hearse on the edge of California Dreamin’s cam range at eight thirty-one. That’s a salon and day spa south of E-World. We lost them then because the spa’s rear surveillance focuses just on their rear entrance and loading area.”
Roos said, “Architectural Salvage had a van behind E-World, but no crew inside working, so . . . zero witnesses there, either.”
Janna said, “I remember several of those parking lots opening onto Swygart behind them.” Which had a traffic cam only at its intersection with Twenty-first.
“Yeah.” Roos nodded. “We figure they left that way, then crossed to Market through the parking area of the apartments on the other side of the street.”
Quist said, “That time of the morning most area residents would have been leaving for work or school, so we canvassed in the evening, but no one home remembered a hearse.”
“If they’d even notice a vehicle that color in the snow,” Roos said. “We ran the tag through Traffic but it hasn’t been recorded anywhere on the street in the past twenty-four hours.”
“The hearse doesn’t have Sat-care?” Mama asked.
Which could have located the vehicle and let a satellite signal lock it and shut down the drive.
“It does, but . . .” Quist snorted. “. . . by the time the Nafsingers thought of implementing it, the jackers had apparently disabled the GPS.”
Mama frowned. “This jacking feels . . . off. A street gang joy riding in this weather? And if they were, I’d expect them to go after something like a Vulcan or Cheetah rather than a hearse.”
“Maybe they did it for a frisk,” Roos said. “Or initiation for a new gang member.”
“Not off their turf,” Janna said.
Quist said, “More likely they have a job planned and a hearse is somehow the right vehicle for it.”
Mama shook his head. “Except they have a funeral home in the neighborhood, Ridder-Yoneshi. Or it was there when I worked the Oakland Division.”
“It still is,” Janna said.
“And they made no effort to hide their faces.”
Quist blew his breath out. “Who the hell cares why they did it. They’re gangers. We just have to find them and get that body back.”
At the escalator, he swung between the hand rails to take the stairs three at a time in impatience, with Roos scrambling behind.
“I care why they did it,” Mama said as he stepped on. “This is wrong. The whole thing smells . . . clear up to the Lanour station orbit. We have to find out why.”
Janna agreed the Orions had acted uncharacteristically . . . but the orbit worrying her was the one Mama seemed about to go into . . . and drag her with him.
* * *
At the garage level they put on their bovi visors. Quist and Roos rolled their eyes in disbelief at Mama’s.
“What the hell’s that?” Quist said.
While the rest of them wore the department-issue body video . . . narrow, frameless lenses with broad, flat temple pieces . . . Mama had large lenses enclosed in black frames, so much like eyeglasses from the twentieth century she had trouble thinking of them as anything but glasses.
He replied as he had to a similar challenge by her the day they teamed up. “The regs don’t prohibit customized equipment for officers not in uniform as long as its functionality conforms to department specifications. These are fully compliant.”
The temple pieces snugged to Janna’s head as the biometrics ID’d her. Com’s auto response came with it: “Brill, Detective Janna, on-line.” The rest of them were receiving a similar message, she knew.
They pulled on hats — Janna’s a fleece-lined hunter’s cap with ear flaps, Mama’s a stocking cap in stripes matching his sweater colors — and stepped into the garage.
It gave Quist’s voice a hollow boom. “God, I hate going out in this shit again. Sometimes I wonder why I ever became a leo.”
“You wanted a legal way to race an Electro-Harley down city streets.” Roos lifted her brows at Janna and Mama. “How shall we divide Oakland?”
“What did you cover yesterday?” Janna asked.
“All the places we thought Kiel Jarrett might be while we waited to do the evening canvass of the area behind E-World.”
Janna nodded. Jerrett being the Orion leader’s legal name.
“We checked his fem’s apartment, and his mother’s. We checked Orion hangouts . . . where we located several Orions. They all had verifiable alibis, unfortunately, and of course denied any knowledge of Pluto’s whereabouts. So, suggestions anyone?”
“Maybe check the salvage yards,” Quist said. “Jerrett might be at one of them stripping the hearse.”
Mama pursed his lips. “Not in this weather. Let’s hit the obvious places again. He may figure you won’t be back. I’d go for the fem first.” He grinned. “Weather like this, if I weren’t working, I’d be warding off the cold with shared bodily warmth.”
Roos glanced inquiringly at her partner.
He frowned. “I don’t know about all of us going to one place. We’ll have a better chance if we spread out and hit all his holes at once.”
“The trouble with Jerrett isn’t finding him. It’s keeping hold of the slippery rag,” Janna said.
Quist considered, then nodded. “The fem’s Maris Kriegh. Lives on South Garimond.”
They headed for their cars, both Kansas-manufactured Smiths, which the SCPD used exclusively for their fleet. Though instead of a Konza like the CAPP team, Mama had somehow managed to gain assignment of a new vehicle, a ‘92 copper-colored Monitor. Quist and Roos eyed it with envy as Mama disconnected from its charge socket.
Janna stepped across the airfoil skirt that gave the vehicle a shape some department wit had dubbed bullet on the half shell. “See you in Oakland.”
The dash screen lighted with the message: SCPD 5501 in service . . . sensors in the door frame ID’ing them as authorized users of the vehicle by scanning their badges and the scibs — social care/identification/bankcard chips — implanted in their left wrists.
One thing about airfoil cars, Janna reflected as the Monitor lifted off its parking rollers and sailed up the garage ramp to Third Street, they need not wait for snow plows to clear the streets after a winter storm. The air cushions created by the fans carried them over all but high drifts. To her relief, the snowfall had stopped.
They had just wind to contend with — the disadvantage of a floating vehicle — and at the intersection Mama fought it in turning south on Topeka Boulevard.
She called Com on her bovi. “Link Oakland traffic to my bovi, dispatch only.” A call might prove useful, but for right now she preferred to skip the audio of patrol unit responses.
“Copy that.”
Calls to all divisions — each distinguished by a separate color — rolled up their dash screen. None in Oakland’s tan . . . not until Mama turned the car east onto Sixth and passed through the downtown area.
Crossing over I-70 into Oakland, text at fifty per cent density to let her see through it, appeared to float in front of her right visor lens. Beta Oakland Twelve, welfare check needed on Galaxy Lane, the brown house. Then after a pause, responding to a question from Twelve, Com said, “Brown house is only ID given. Check the area. RP said she would wait on the street.”
Brave, or determined reporting person, to stand outside in this weather.
Along Oakland’s streets twentieth century buildings of age-darkened brick and old-fashioned rectangular windows stood between newer structures with thermal siding and thermal windows in the arrow-slit style. But even the oldest buildings now had roofs shingled with solar tiles.
Mama said, “You miss Sid, don’t you?”
Janna sighed. For all the times he seemed totally oblivious to everyone beyond himself, other times he read her very well indeed. She felt disinclined to bare her soul, however. “What about you? You’ve been unusually subdued lately . . . except for your clothes, of course.”
“I’ll have you know my Aunt Dido knitted this sweater and cap of wool from their own sheep that she personally spun into yarn and custom-dyed.”
Dodging her question. Obviously he preferred not to talk, either. So Janna wisecracked, “She spun the sheep into yarn? Amazing.”
Turning onto Garimond, the Monitor bucked over drifts. The street looked untouched since the last snowfall. Few residents in this neighborhood owned cars and of those vehicles, only two sat visible above their airfoil skirts. Snow buried others to the roof. Their fans possibly frozen or, if solar powered, batteries dead in the bitter cold, they waited for a thaw and good sunlight before their owners cleared them off. If even warm weather helped. Houses in tanglewood yards bore testimony to oppressive poverty . . . roofs sagging, plastic siding warped and cracked. The buried vehicles probably sagged and rusted, too.
Several decades ago, an effort to fight the decline in these poorer neighborhoods resulted in several blocks of modular townhouses. At the time, the staggered rows with their slit windows and panels of Simon cells on the steep roofs — forerunners of solar tiles — must have looked stylish. Now, however, Janna saw cracked Simon panels. Seams between the modules gaped and many of the window slits had been boarded up, using slats stolen from the second floor balcony railings. Siding laminate hung in long, faded strips, rustling in the wind like dead leaves. Not even the alpine charm of snow and icicles hid the sad ugliness.
Since Smiths screamed leo, they passed the condos and parked around the corner at the south end of the block, well away from the windows of number 1172. Climbing out, the four of them huddled on the lee side of the CAPP vehicle, deciding who should knock on the door.
Quist said, “It ought to be Maxwell. They won’t make him.”
Janna agreed. She peered over the car at the row of balconies stretching up the length of the building. “So . . . rock, paper, scissors for who takes the back door and ends?”
Roos nodded. “Low takes the north side. Go.”
“Damn!” Janna said. Both of them threw rocks to her scissors.
Alpha Oakland Twenty, ran the text on Janna’s visor, contact management, Drug World, Belmont Mall, reference individual attempting to obtain pharma with an expired addict card.
Oh, to be back on patrol today, she reflected . . . snug in the warmth of a watchcar . . . or anywhere but here with cold seeping through the soles of her boots.
On a second throw to decided who got the south end, out of the wind, Roos pumped a fist when her paper won over Quist’s repeated rock.
They linked their visors to Mama’s, Janna cancelling the Oakland traffic on hers. Then she waded north, huddling deep in her ski jacket. Not only was the street unplowed, the residents felt no hurry to clear their walks. Past the condos, she crossed the lawn area to the end of the building . . . picking her way to avoid drifts looking more than knee deep, and circling wide to keep her tracks from being immediately obvious to someone on the end balcony.
There she put her back to the wind and unzipped the jacket enough to reach the Starke holstered under her arm. Because the biometrics needed contact with her skin to ID her as the authorized user, she peeled off her right glove. After checking to make sure she had the ammo selector set for the Thor needles, she shoved weapon and hand in her jacket pocket before frostbite set in.
In front of her right lens, Mama strolled up the sidewalk area, glancing from condos to his gloved hand, as though checking addresses.
While her cargos and jacket supported Cerberus’s claims for its Thermatex fabric’s warmth — palpably thickening in the cold as the thread’s hollow core expanded to provide dead-air insulation — she stamped feet going numb, swearing silently. Come on, Maxwell, come on! Why are you taking so frigging long?
Finally he waded up to 1172 and pushed the bell. After pushing it a second time the sound of footsteps clumping down stairs carried through the door.
It opened on a sullen fem with a long horse tail of silver hair on top of her head, a canary yellow skin suit leaving little of her anatomy to the imagination, and boots with four-inch soles. “Yeah?”
Janna took special note of the eyes. Orion star tattoos surrounded them.
“My name’s Francis Sumner,” Mama said in a light, effeminate voice. “Of the Godiva Day Spa? Are you Ms. Maris Kriegh?”
She stared at him. “No.” And started to close the door.
“But this is Ms. Kriegh’s apartment.”
“She ain’t here.”
“May I come in and leave her a message, then? She’s won a beauty day at our spa.”
For a moment Kriegh’s eyes lighted and Janna thought the fem might buy it. Until Mama took a step forward, when a male voice up the stairs yelled, “Close the fucking door, bitch! You’re letting in the cold!”
Out back, Quist whooped, “That’s him!”
Kriegh slammed the door.
Seconds later bare or stocking feet thudded on a balcony floor and Mama shouted, “Police! Stop!”
As if they ever did, but recording the announcement would establish in court that Jerrett knew he was running from the police.
Peering around the corner Janna saw Mama plowing toward her through the drifts in front of the building, Starke in hand, aimed upward.
She jerked back out of sight. The thud of feet and plop of snow and icicles knocked from railings marked the fugitive’s progress from balcony to balcony in a race against Mama in the snow. Was he just running, however, or armed?
Forgetting the cold in a fiery wash of adrenalin, she pulled the Starke from her pocket and ordered her bovi to record.
Snow fell just around the corner, followed by the drop of something heavier. Then a male hurtled past her . . . stocking-footed, stars around his eyes, black hair pulled back in a long braided horse tail. A bare chest with astronomical tattoos showed under the half-opened jacket.
“Police! Freeze, Pluto.”
He swung around, hand darting under his coat.
Janna aimed at him. “Don’t! Drop it!”
Instead, out came a knife, opening with a sharp snick.
She fired.
The bright orange needle hit Jerrett just above his naval. Its nanobattery discharge felt like a lightning strike, she knew from being zapped in the Academy. Jerrett dropped to the snow with a howl and lay twitching. The knife flew from a nerveless hand.
She hurriedly retrieved it and held it up for her bovi to record the six-inch blade before folding it and dropping it in her pocket. As she holstered the Starke and pulled back on her glove, Mama arrived, closely followed by Quist from the rear of the building.
Quist eyed Jerrett, shaking his head. “That’s a piss-poor snow angel you’re making.”
Janna grinned.
Mama said, “Let’s get him up before he catches pneumonia.”
“And search him.” Janna fished out the switch blade. “He pulled this on me.”
They hauled him to his feet. With Quist supporting Jerrett, Mama removed the needle, holding it cautiously by the butt end while he pulled off his other glove with his teeth and groped in a cargo pocket for an Instagluv to wrap up the needle. None of the charge remained, but no one took chances with the biologicals now on the point and shaft. As further insurance, Janna handed him an evidence bag. Like the gloves, an item they always carried.
With the needle stowed in a pocket, Mama began searching Jerrett.
Jerrett glared at Janna. “My lawyer’s gonna get the recording of zapping me and I’m gonna have your badge, pussy!” A threat spoiled by drooling and chattering teeth. “You have to use rubber bullets . . . minimal force! I’ve read all about it!”
Oh, yes, the Deadly Force Standards . . . otherwise known as Deadly Fucking Stupid. Forced on them by bleeding heart civilian be-kind-to-felons groups. Except no officer she knew carried rubber bullets except in crowd control situations. Like her, they loaded Thor needles on one side of the Starke’s Siamese magazine and paired them with Winchester seg ammo for when they needed real stopping power.
She gave him a razor smile. “Read all about it, have you, choomba? Maybe you missed where it says: ‘minimal force commensurate with public and officer safety.’ Coming at me with a knife constitutes a danger to officer safety.”
The recording of that action shortly to be on file at the Office of Professional Standards, attached to the report she had to submit for firing ammo stronger than said rubber bullets. Fortunately, as much of a pain in the ass as the opies could be, they rarely bothered to follow up these incidents with an office interview. Unless Jerrett did file a complaint.
“This constitutes a danger, too.” Mama’s hand came out of a jacket pocket with a reel of fine wire.
Anger flared in Janna. Microfiliment! A weapon every leo feared and hated. Strung across an opening for someone to hit, say during a chase, the wire could cut legs, or a throat, to the bone before its victim realized what was happening.
She saw her feeling reflected in Quist’s face. “I think it’s time for this, then.” He pulled out a wrap strap and jerked Jerrett’s arms behind his back. A practiced flip sent the strap snapping around Jerrett’s wrists, where it adhered to itself. “You’re under arrest for assaulting an officer.”
Roos arrived, panting. “Shit! I missed the fun. Alpha jacket, Pluto. One of the new no-weight, super-insulated models from Klondike, isn’t it. I wish I were indigent so Social Care would give me coupons for clothes like that. Or did you buy it with digidough from stripping cars?”
His lip curled. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“You know . . . like that hearse you jacked yesterday.”
“What hearse?” A violent shiver wracked his body. “You ain’t making any sense. It must be the temperature. You know . . . like lizards and snakes slow down in the cold? You better go someplace warmer so your brains can start working again.”
Mama beamed at him, smile bright in the darkness of his face. “Why thank you for inviting us in.”
They marched him down to the door.
Upstairs, Kreigh glared at them in a livingroom furnished in Orion red, yellow, and blue colors . . . with tip-overs that converted from tables to chairs as needed and a suite of easy chairs and sofa in plush-covered molded foam. Better quality furnishings, Janna judged, than might be expected from the building’s exterior. And better than might be expected living on Social Care. Jerrett had other income or Kriegh a job.
Kriegh dropped onto the red sofa and sat with arms crossed. “Thanks so much, Pluto. Now I’m gonna have to fumigate.”
Quist pushed Jerrett down on the couch beside her after depolarizing the wrap strap to free his wrists. “Tell us what you’ve done with the hearse.”
Jerrett’s lip curled. “Your brain still frostbitten? I don’t know nothin’ about any hearse.”
“Let us refresh your memory.” Roos pulled her slate spindle from the scabbard pocket of her cargos, pulled out the screen and snapped it rigid. After tapping on the screen, she held it in front of him. “Yesterday morning, Friday, eight-eleven, Twenty-ninth and Topeka, you and one of your boz jacked a hearse belonging to the Nafsinger Funeral Home, license number RSN 405. One called you by name, and see. . . ” She tapped some more. “. . .this. this is how the driver described her assailants. That’s you. You’re lion meat, choomba.”
“Wasn’t me, puss. I don’t go to south Topeka. And get up that early?” Jerrett snorted. “That’s my bedtime! No way in hell I’d be out in this weather when I can be skin to skin with my star fem heating the sheets. I like my fun in the sun. But if me and my boz did a jack, we’d wear masks and wouldn’t ever call each other by name. And . . . do a hearse? Fuck that. I got whole lot better taste. I’d go top dink . . . like for Leland cats, not down street.”
“Right,” Mama murmured to Janna.
“So it wasn’t us . . . and besides, I was here all day, wasn’t I, star? Mostly in bed.”
“All day.” Kriegh smirked. “Skin to skin, like he says. Heating the sheets.”
“You weren’t here when we came looking.”
He shrugged. “Man’s got to take a break . . . step outside and cool off before the bed catches fire. You must’a just missed me.”
“So you want to explain the witness description?”
“Someone’s trying a skin to fit me for it.”
“You’re being framed. Why?” Roos demanded. “Who?”
Jerrett shrugged. “Anyone. Everyone envies the Orions.”
“It can’t be the Panzers,” Quist said. “They couldn’t paint their faces enough to hide the steel-plate tattoos.”
“Not Simbas or Samurais, either,” Janna said. “The jackers weren’t Afam or Asian.”
“Check the Toros,” Kriegh said. “Wearing paint, the taco squad could almost pass for human.”
Jerrett smirked. “That’s good, star. I’ll have to remember that. Did you ever think it might be the Corsairs? South Topeka runs through their turf. But you’re the great detectives. It’s your job to track down criminals and find who’s trying to frame innocent citizens.”
“Innocent.” Quist snorted. “We’ll see how innocent you are. Put on a shirt and let’s go downtown where some people can look at you.”
Jerrett frowned. “I want a lawyer.”
“Sure,” Janna said, “though I don’t know why. We aren’t arresting you. Aren’t you just being a good citizen and proving your innocence by assisting us with our inquiries?”
His mouth twisted. “Yeah of course, puss . . . but I still want my lawyer.”
* * *
For all Jerrett’s talk about “his” lawyer, a public defender met them in the Crimes Against Persons squad room. Livy Preston . . . new enough to still have that savior-of-the-wrongfully-accused gleam in her eyes. Amber-complected, dark copper hair twisted in elaborate braids, and filling out the tunic of a blue and lilac striped pant suit that probably debited her account a month’s salary so she could look like a lawyer someone paid for.
After conferring with Jerrett in one of the interview rooms — where he remained to prevent Beta Nafsinger from seeing him when she arrived — she crowded in behind Quist at the computer peninsula of his desk . . . peering over his shoulder while he and a tech up in Cyber chose images of males in winter clothing for the show-up, and added Orion stars to the faces of those lacking them. During Preston’s conference with Jerrett, the four of them decided to include two other Orions in the eight individuals shown to Beta Nafsinger, Snake and AK . . . a pair most likely to abet Jerrett.
Preston frowned. “You’re making my client look like a thug.”
“We’re making everyone look like the victim described the jackers.”
His mild tone surprised Janna, but watching through the transparent crime board rising between Roos’ and his desks, she realized irritation had to be difficult with those generous breasts almost cradling his head.
“It’s a waste of time.” Mama stacked three insulated paper cups on the narrow leg of Roos’ desk and with a flick of his wrist, arced them over the neighboring desk into the recycle basket by CAPP’s coffee cart. “Nafsinger won’t be able to put the nod on Jerrett.”
Roos frowned. “You mean you believe his deni— Don’t touch those!” she snapped as Mama began rearranging teddy bear figurines on the end of the desk . . . ceramic, plastic, clear glass, a blue wire sculpture clearly done with a 3D pen, and one crocheted. Each with a miniature SCPD badge on its chest.
Mama pulled back. “The crime, location, and time don’t fit Jerrett.”
She snorted. “Oh, come on. Do you see anyone jacking the hearse to slag the Orions? What could be the point? Someone who wants to take over leadership from Jerrett? I think we’d have seen some suspicion of that in him. Besides, an auto theft conviction is just a holiday for him. Hutch is practically his second home. And you know damn well he’d go on running the Orions from prison.”
“Valid points.”
Roos smiled . . . no doubt thinking she had convinced him.
Janna doubted that. Once Mama heard his drummer, nothing stopped him marching to its beat but a dead end or shock grenade. To which she normally reacted by letting him go, waiting to pick up the pieces when he crashed and burned.
Except he did not always crash. That might be the case today. Roos had valid points, but so did Mama. It brought an itch of disquiet. Because if Jerrett were not involved in the jacking, who could gain by framing the Orions for it, and what could they gain?
Questions that might mean nothing if Nafsinger ID’d Jerret.
And here she came through the squad room door, accompanied by her father. Surprising Janna. Yes, the conservative grey and silver lily-patterned fabric of the body suit visible under her open jacket fitted their business, but it clothed a strapping twenty-something fem who looked like she should be on a farm tossing hay bales instead of hauling corpses around.
Cornflower blue eyes widened for a moment, eyeing Mama. Then, as she shrugged out of her jacket, working the sleeve off over the guide cuff issued downstairs to make sure she found her way up here without straying, she grinned at Quist and Roos. “So you caught the sons of bitches. Good work. Where are they?”
Janna liked her. Mama, Quist, and other detectives around the Crimes Against Persons squad room eyed her appreciatively.
“Beta, please. Your language.” But a crinkle of Samuel Nafsinger’s eyes and twitch at the corner of his mouth belied his protest. The inner laughter vanished as he turned to Roos. “Have you found Mr. Chenoweth? Leonard Fontana called me again before we left to come here.”
Roos gave both Nafsingers a bland smile. “We’re still looking.”
“Mr. Fontana is of course anxious. He takes his responsibility for all his employees, living and dead, very seriously. We also take our responsibility for Mr. Chenoweth’s remains seriously.”
“Of course you do. We understand.”
“But the jons you’ve got will tell you where he and the hearse are . . . right?” Beta said.
Roos took a breath. “We don’t know if these individuals are involved or not. That’s why we need you to look at them.”
Beta frowned a moment, then nodded. “So let’s see them. According to the vids they’re in another room where I can see them but they can’t see me?”
“They definitely can’t see you.” Roos glanced toward Quist. “Are we ready?”
He nodded. “All set.”
“Then follow me.” She led the way toward the unit’s Scene Review Chamber, with everyone else, following . . . including Preston. “We’re going to a walk-in holo tank we’ve set up with eight individuals for you to see. The individuals who stole your hearse may or may not be among them. Don’t feel compelled to identify someone. They’re all holos, so you may approach and study them close up. Take your time.”
“And it’s all right if you don’t recognize anyone,” Preston said.
“You don’t talk, Counselor,” Quist muttered to her.
Roos slid open the tank’s door and waved Beta through.
Beta stopped short in the doorway. “They’re holos?”
With enough height to see over the fem’s shoulder, Janna understood the hesitation. The eight figures on the far side of the tank looked menacing in their bulky jackets and winter caps.
“Just holos.”
Beta took a breath, then marched across the tank and reached tentatively toward one figure. Snake, Janna saw. When her hand passed through him, Beta let her breath out. “Ace.”
The rest of them filed in and lined up on both sides of the doorway.
To aid verisimilitude, the walls had been programmed as a snowy Topeka Avenue, but with the image motionless to avoid being distracting.
Beta walked slowly down the line of figures, peering closely at each, and even walking through a few to view others from the side and rear.
Preston said, “There should be blowing sn— Ow!”
“Did I step on your foot?” Roos murmured. “Sorry.”
After several minutes, Beta turned around and shrugged. “I don’t know. They all look alike.”
Her father smiled. “That’s the point, I think . . . so no one can say the suspects were made obvious. Just relax and take your time. There are bound to be differences between them. Remember your trick of reading a deck of cards by minute differences on the backs?”
Beta sent him a grateful smile.
Watching the affection between father and daughter, Janna felt a sudden sharp pang of homesickness for her own father. She ought to call him tonight. It might make the apartment bearable.
Beta turned back to the group and moved along them again. But after several minutes she turned around, forehead furrowed. “Well . . . the one who pulled me out isn’t here.”
“You’re sure?” Quist said.
“Yes. He had total cheekbones and killer blue eyes. None of these jons do.”
Did any of the Orions other than those represented here have “killer blue eyes”? Janna made a mental note to check Data for descriptions.
“How about the second jacker?” Quist asked.
Beta frowned. “I don’t know. I can’t tell. There was something . . . different about him I can’t remember, and nothing here helps me remember.”
Preston smiled.
Mama said. “Try this. Close your eyes and picture him. When you have him clearly in mind, look at the holos again.”
She closed her eyes. After a few moments of deep breathing, she opened them again and walked back down to the holos. Then turned, expression triumphant. “Got it. The point coming down from the second jacker’s left eye kind of . . . twisted.”
Roos blinked. “Twisted?”
Beta nodded. “Like . . . like . . .” Her face screwed up in thought . . . then smoothed into a satisfied grin. “Like when you put on a clingskin decal and it doesn’t lie straight?”
Nafsinger beamed at his daughter. “That’s my girl.”
The rest of them stared at each other. A star decal? No Orion wore a decal.
Mama lifted his brows in I-told-you-so. Preston smirked.
“None of these jons have a star like that. And there’s something else I remember now,” Beta said. “These jons look neater.”
Quist scowled. “Neater?”
“The clothes of the jons yesterday looked older. The one who pulled me out had the snap gone from the strap that closes the two halves of the collar and a patch on his left elbow, and the jacket of the second jon had grease spots.”
Grease spots? Janna watched Mama and the CAPP detectives go poker-faced and felt her expression copy them. The second jacker was supposedly Jerrett. Yes, he might have worn a different jacket than he had on today, but never one with grease spots. Not if he wanted to keep the respect of his and other gangs. He had to look the alpha, someone capable of taking what he wanted. And he certainly wore tattoos, not decals.
Preston said, “Since neither of the jackers are here, Detectives . . . I think we’re done.”
“I’m sorry I can’t identify anyone,” Beta said.
Nafsinger patted her shoulder. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. They told you those might not be here. So we’ll leave and let them get back to finding Mr. Chenoweth.”
And start asking who might profit from masquerading as Orions.
Back in the squad room, pulling on her jacket, Beta said, “I wonder why they picked me. Maybe they thought it was a limo and were inside before they realized their mistake?”
Mistook it for a limo? Janna doubted it with all that length behind the rear doors betraying its function. Still . . . if they needed a vehicle to pass only briefly as a limo, maybe that explained the choice. And someone taking it for a purpose like robbery, perhaps, might well disguise themselves to send law enforcement hunting the wrong quarry.
“There’s another possibility to consider,” Mama said. “Could it be a strike at you? Can either of you think of anyone with a grudge against members of your family personally or professionally?”
Beta snorted. “That’s ridiculous.”
Her father shook his head. “Not ridiculous, but unlikely. We work hard to insure client satisfaction. When we fall short, our clientele are the kind of people who complain to the Better Business Bureau, or sue.”
“What about competitors?” Quist asked.
Beta started to laugh . . . then bit her lip when her father sent her a reproachful glance. “A funeral home war? Rivals stealing each other’s equipment, sabotaging arrangements? Come now, Detective. Besides, I can’t imagine any of my competitors masquerading as a street gang. I’m sorry we couldn’t help, but, please, let us know the moment you locate Mr. Chenoweth, won’t you?”
With the Nafsingers gone, Preston said, “Since my client is innocent, we’ll be leaving, too.”
“Only for booking,” Janna said. “For the assault charge.”
Preston sniffed. “That’s ridiculous. It was self-defense. He saw someone pointing a weapon at him and naturally reacted to defend himself.”
“I identified myself as police. You can review the recording.”
“He was frightened and didn’t hear you.”
“Let him tell it to the judge.”
Jerrett smirked when Preston informed him of the show-up results. “See . . . I told you I didn’t do it. You’re lucky we don’t sue your asses off for false arrest and mental anguish. You know how hard those chairs in there are? Then maybe you’ll learn not to harass innocent citizens.”
“You’re under arrest for assault,” Quist said.
Jerrett shrugged, the grin never wavering. “What’s another couple a hours wasted. At least it’s warm here, and my hot tamale will have a nice dinner and hot sheets waiting for me at home.”
* * *
With Jerrett booked, Janna came back to find the others staring at the crime board . . . Roos from her side, Mama and Quist from Quist’s. Joining Roos, Janna saw they had transferred frames of the hijack vid to the board as thumbnails along the bottom and pulled several up the board to enlarge.
Quist used his index fingers on diagonal corners to further enlarge one of the jackers at the hearse door. IT magic made sure that no matter which partner added the image, the image appeared the same on both sides of the board.
Eyeing it, Mama shook his head. “That doesn’t help. I doubt even Cyber can give us a better image.”
Quist huffed. “We need something. Without Jerrett, we’re back at square one.”
“Less than square one, and Applegate isn’t happy about it,” Roos said. “These rags can be anyone, and anywhere in the city.”
Mama shook his head again. “I think we should still concentrate on Oakland. They took the hearse there.”
“As part of pretending to be Orions,” Roos said.
“I think they’re from Oakland. They knew E-World has no lot surveillance, and they know Jerrett leads the Orions.”
Quist pursed his lips. “So we’re looking for someone wanting to slag the Orions. Though, why? In terms of being a gang, the Orions are hardly more than a social club.”
“Maybe they annoyed someone enough to make them worth causing temporary discomfort,” Janna said. “The hearse disappeared on Toro turf.”
Roos sucked in a breath. “That’s right.”
“So,” Mama said, “. . . if they needed a hearse and wanted us looking the wrong direction for the jackers, the Orion colors are a good choice. Easy to copy and distinctive enough for witnesses to remember.”
Janna eyed him. “We tried before thinking why someone would want the hearse. If we’re thinking Toros, do you have suggestions now?”
To her surprise, he shook his head. “No. And I’m wondering why they would go to Topeka Avenue to jack one when, again, Ridder-Yoneshi’s facility is much handier.”
“Maybe it’s protected because there’s a family connection between them and a Toro,” Quist said. “Topeka’s a good hunting ground for limos or something limo-like . . . catch one coming from Forbes.”
“In any case, they must have planned to make it disappear until time to use it.”
Once upon a time, a felon could just change the tags. Now transponders in the vehicles and tags sent signals as Traffic recorded the tags, and mismatches generated an alert for the vehicle.
“So it’s off the street for now,” Roos said. “I’d say somewhere close. We can check area rentals with garages — the Echo Ridge houses off Market have them — and cross-check them with Toro names.”
Mama said, “But while you’re doing that, someone should be locating and chatting with Toros themselves. Why don’t Brill and I go.”
What? Freeze their butts off some more? She shot him a withering glare. “I’m thinking do rock, paper, scissors again for it.”
“No.” Roos grinned. “I like his idea better.” She elbowed Janna away from her computer peninsula and sat down at it. “Call when you find them.”
“Will do.” Mama scooped his jacket off the visitor chair. “Come on, Bibi.”
Outside the squad room Janna bared her teeth. “Thank you very frigging much! What the hell did you go and do that for? Do you enjoy hypothermia?”
“I need to see something.” Once out of the garage and driving south, he asked, “Who’s the current Toro leader? I remember a bulletin a couple of years ago that someone ventilated Cesar.”
“In a manner speaking. His fem cored him to death.”
Mama blinked. “Excuse me? Cored?”
Janna grinned. “He punched her and knocked out a tooth. They were in the kitchen and Ms. Arenas happened to be holding an apple corer . . . which she drove into his neck up to the handle. Then as he bled out, she jammed the apple in her other hand into his mouth.”
Mama chuckled. “Let me guess. She’d have accepted the punch but not losing a tooth.”
“If she said that, it was only to her lawyer . . . who managed to plead her down to involuntary manslaughter and a year’s probation.”
“I’d have bronzed the corer and given it to her on a plaque for public service. Did you and Kiest catch the case?”
Wim . . . her partner of so many good years. Now six months out from Earth, sleeping his way to a colony world. The thought opened a hole in her. God, she missed him.
“Bibi?”
She shook herself. “No, it wasn’t ours. You asked who’s leading the Toros now. It’s Cesar’s former number two, Alejandro Becarra, who goes by Che.” She fished her slate spindle out of the scabbard pocket in her cargos and opened the screen to search for his address. “He lives at . . . 1901 Whitetail Circle.” She called up a satellite view. “Nice. It’s one of the new condos off Colorado. With garages. They’re not far from where the hearse disappeared, either. Unfortunately it’s on the opposite side of California. Though they might avoid surveillance by going through the yards between intersections.”
“Except . . . if the Orions are supposed to be the jackers, the Toros wouldn’t risk hiding the hearse in their own chief’s garage.”
“Not to mention that witnesses oblivious to a vehicle on the street would notice one going off-road. So what is it you—”
Looking up from her slate interrupted her, and answered her question, as Mama steered the car into E-World’s parking area.
“You think we’ll see something Quist and Roos missed yesterday?”
“I’m testing a theory.”
He pulled around back and set the car down. And smiled.
“Theory proven?” she asked.
“Maybe. What do you see?”
Not what he did, apparently. “The rear of the store. Toro graffiti on the walls.” As she had also seen on the windows out front. To the knowing, some of the tags provided codes for contacting unlicensed drug dealers and prostitutes. Now, what else was she supposed to notice? Oh . . . a void in the snow. “The Ar-Sal van Roos mentioned is gone.” She eyed him, seeing wheels turn in his head, but unable to read them. “Does that mean more than the company drove it away after they finished loading it?”
“Roos said they didn’t find a crew working.” Mama swung out of the car and waded to the void, where he touched one temple piece of his visor. Once recording, he called back, “Check this out.”
Pulling her cap down tight, Janna joined him.
“There’s not much snow here . . . just what’s drifted in. The snow stopped around ten last night, so the van left after that. What company moves equipment that time of night?” His head snapped up. “Listen!” He strode for the building’s rear door, pulling a code reader and flashlight from his jacket.
Janna scrambled after him. Crap! Remembering he had his bovi recording she said, “Listen to what?” rather than scream No! You can’t break in!
“I think someone’s inside.”
A familiar skin . . . one she herself had used for non-warrant entries. But she wanted to know more before using it this time.
The years of working with Wim had given them so many code signals their communication became almost telepathic. She and Mama might as well be using tin cans on a string. They did have a few signals worked out, however . . . an important one to her being “scissors” for: stop recording, or just plain stop!
“In there?” Making the gesture casual, she pointed at the building with her first two fingers in a vee. “I don’t hear anything.”
He ignored her and aimed his reader at the lock. “I’ve got exceptional hearing.”
Short of grabbing his arm to stop him, which she had no desire to have on record, she could only watch . . . hoping he tripped no alarms still active inside to discourage looters.
“Easy code.” He slid open the door and called, “SCPD! If anyone is in there, show yourself.” She held her breath fearing he might enter, but to her relief, Mama merely switched on the flashlight and swept the beam around the space. “I don’t see anyone . . . or hear anything now. I guess I was mistaken.” He touched his visor. “We’re off the record now, so come look at this.”
She peered past his arm into what had been a stockroom . . . the rows of shelving empty now, while dust and pieces of cartons littered the floor.
“I don’t see any signs of stripping the interior. I didn’t think we would.” He slid the door closed and recoded the lock.
“Why not?”
“The amount of snow that’s drifted in where the van sat tells me it left late last night. Since Traffic hasn’t recorded the hearse’s tag since California Dreamin’s surveillance caught it coming back here, what if that’s because it was inside the van.”
Inside the van?
“It’s perfect.” His eyes gleamed behind the lenses of his visor. “Who would question a salvage company van at a closed business. The hearse drives here and into the van, where they disable the GPS, and later the van hauls it away.”
“Much later. Your theory has it sitting here over twelve hours, including while Quist and Roos prowled around. What if they had decided to take a look inside? Would the jackers risk that?”
He cocked a brow. “Q and R didn’t, though. In their place, would you?”
Probably not, she had to admit. Still. . . “That’s a theory.”
“Which we can test it by asking the neighbors when they’ve seen the van, or an Ar-Sal work crew.”
He led the way around the building and across to California Dreamin’.
They walked through outer and inner doors swishing open for them . . . into a sauna. Janna gave thanks for the anti-fog treatment on the lenses of her visor.
Pulling off her cap and gloves, she found the reception area decor matched its temperature. Amid floral-scented air, palm trees rose from a beach-patterned floor to frame more doors left and right, while a seascape filled the far wall. Brightly-cushioned bamboo chairs — all empty at the moment — and small tables scattered with brochures and e-zine readers provided seating and entertainment for clients waiting to be led off to the salon or spa.
In a gold-card facility the seascape might have been a holo with surf rolling toward the beach, coordinated with an in-floor vid providing the illusion of each wave washing ashore. But this decor still looked an elegant world away from the graffiti outside. And the heat felt wonderful!
She unzipped her jacket. “Let’s spend the rest of the day here.”
“What?” Mama’s mouth quirked. “Flash bulletin. By-the-book Brill turns timeslider.”
“Smart-mouthed partner turns up dead.”
“Welcome to California Dreamin’.” Behind the reception desk — upright ends of surf boards topped by a horizontal one — a bronzed fem with violet eyes and matching corkscrew curls smiled at them. A name patch on her mango-orange skin suit read: Tish. “Do you have an appointment?”
“Just questions.” Janna opened her jacket to show the badge hanging around her neck. “Detectives Brill and Maxwell, SCPD.” A touch on the eagle topping the badge activated the surface laminate that displayed her name, rank, and picture.
Tish’s brows rose. “Do you want Maire, too?”
“Maire?”
The brows relaxed. “Our manager. The leos yesterday did.”
Mama said, “We may not need her today. What can you tell us about activity in the E-World building?”
The brows rose again. “There hasn’t been any . . . well, except for the hearse Maire said was on the cams driving through their lot yesterday. They closed right after Christmas.”
“What about a crew stripping fixtures in the building?” Janna asked.
She frowned. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“You haven’t seen vehicles parked around it, or passenger vans delivering a crew?” Mama asked.
“You better talk to Maire.” She touched the desktop. “We’ve got more leos.”
Moments later an invisible door in the seascape opened for a petite fem in silver and purple pinstripes, elaborate dangling earrings, and a casual topknot of black hair shot through with purple and silver filaments. Brilliantly green eyes flicked over them. “I’m Maire Olinger. How can I help the forces of law and order today?”
“Detectives Maxwell and Brill,” Mama said. “Do you know if Architectural Salvage is clearing the E-World building?”
“Not that I’m aware.”
“You haven’t seen any activity around the building?”
“Not that I’ve noticed.”
Mama cocked an eyebrow at Janna.
Shit. “What about a van out back?”
Olinger shook her head.
“You haven’t been outside recently, to the recycle bin or taking deliveries?”
“We took some deliveries Thursday and yesterday, but the truck drivers brought those in. We don’t go out to the recycle bin, because we have a feed to it inside.”
Janna asked, “Do you have any employees who live east of here . . . who might cross Swygart coming to work?”
Olinger frowned in thought.
Behind the reception desk, Tish said, “I think Zusi, Manda, and Tafoya do.”
Olinger touched an earring. It brought three fems in hibiscus-patterned smocks to her office behind the seascape . . . a one-way window from her side, looking into the reception area. Manda, stylist from the salon, hair an elaborate rainbow braid down her back. Zusi and Tafoya from the day spa. Zusi, middle-aged, stocky, café au lait complexion. Tafoya, a Nordic amazon. They said they lived close and, yes, all walked to work . . . crossing Swygart and swiping themselves in through a rear door. Tafoya never saw the van because she kept the hood of her jacket tight enough to block everything but the view straight ahead. Manda and Zusi — who came together because they happened to be neighbors and Manda felt safer being with Zusi in case they encountered Toros — noticed the van only yesterday.
“Can you describe it?”
“Blue,” Zusi said, “with a logo on the side that had an A and S in it.”
Neither, however, could remember whether they saw it before yesterday.
Which appeared to be everything to be learned here.
Janna handed out cards. “Thank you very much. If you think of anything else, let us know.”
Wrapping up again and steeling themselves, they left the warmth of the building.
“So it’s confirmed there’s no salvage operation,” Mama said.
Maybe. “Let’s double-check with Lazaro Wu.” She waved toward the Celestial Bistro on the other side of E-World. “It’s time for lunch anyway.”
* * *
No graffiti marred the café. Partially because the rough, vertically-grooved concrete surface of the walls frustrated it. But even the glass brick of its windows remained paint and acid-etching free.
Protected by The Legend.
Every neighborhood resident and leo working Oakland knew the supposed story. Back in the mists of time when Wu first opened the Celestial Bistro, gangers — not Toros then — tagged the windows and demanded protection payments in the form of unlimited free meals. Wu purportedly agreed and started by offering a banquet with the café closed to everyone but the gang . . . who were never seen again. Investigation found no evidence of a massacre, despite a customer claiming to discover a gold tooth in a hamburger that tasted “different”. When a new gang moving in tried the same extortion, however, and a smiling Wu said, “Of course. Let me prepare a special banquet for you.” all harassment ceased. Never to resume, no matter whose turf the area became.
While not tropical inside, she happily accepted the Bistro’s substitute: air laden with the scents of hamburgers, Wu’s celebrated deep-fried onion threads, and the garlic-sesame-ginger combination of his secret sauce that accompanied the noodle dishes. Best of all, she smelled coffee — real coffee brewed from beans instead of gel cubes.
It must be three or four years since she last ate here, but the place had not changed a bit. Nor, for that matter, had it changed since she first came in working Patrol. It had the same red walls, red-painted wooden cable spools for tables, and straight-backed red-and-gold hardboard chairs — comfortable for meals but not enough to encourage lingering afterward. Nor had Wu changed . . . a smiling, ageless Buddha presiding at his counter inside the door. Albeit a Buddha with bright copper hair swept up the sides of his head into little wings and a matching Fu Manchu mustache drooping around the smile. Presiding so immovably — Janna did not remember ever seeing him stand and walk around — that despite the gleaming scimitar hanging in arm’s reach on the wall beside him, she wondered about The Legend. She and Wim had jokingly speculated he might be grafted to his throne-like chair.
Wu looked up from a slate playing stock market news.
The name Lanour-Tenning caught Janna’s ear, and a commentator’s remark: “We can expect the proxy vote to drive their stock price even lower.” Which made it appear the company had more problems than the missing corpse of an employee.
“Welcome, leos,” Wu said. Recognizing Mama as one, too . . . or merely guilt by association? “You may sit where you like.”
About half the tables had customers.
“Gladly.” She unzipped her jacket. “First we have a couple of questions about E-World, if you don’t mind.”
He folded his hands on the slate, waiting.
“Is Architectural Salvage stripping the interior?”
He thought for a moment, pursing his lips. “Starting, perhaps.” He raised his voice. “Juli!”
Across the room, a plump waitress with a puffball of wiry orange hair turned around.
“Didn’t you mention seeing a van next door when you left Thursday night?” Wu called.
She nodded.
Since they closed at six — Wu’s advertised claim: “Serving lunch early and all afternoon” meant just that, no evenings — and probably took another hour or so to clean up, the van arrived sometime before seven.
“Is that the first time you’ve seen it?” Mama asked.
The waitress nodded again.
He sent Janna a satisfied smile. “When did you last see it?”
“Last night when I left—”
A loud clatter in the kitchen interrupted her.
The customers turned to stare at the door.
Wu winced. “Esme! See what that’s about.”
The other waitress, older and dark-haired, nodded.
Something else crashed, followed by a shrill stream of curses.
Reflex sent Janna that direction. “We’ll go.”
In the kitchen a thin, aproned fem with a tiara of yellow and fire-red braids stood with her back to a stainless steel table — feet surrounded by a spilled pot of noodles — swinging a heavy ladle at two jons in front of her. The pair, one blonde and one dark-haired, wore black jackets with a white bull head on the back and their hair braided in a pigtail at the nape of their necks. Toros. A few moments of shuffling through her mental file gave Janna their names: Scorpion and Baja.
A third pigtailed jon she did not recognize wore an apron, pretending to ignore the scene behind him as he fried hamburgers on the grill. Not so a fourth, non-pigtailed jon back by exit conveyor of the dishwasher, but going by his pallor, Janna judged him too frightened to intervene.
Out of the ladle’s reach, Baja clucked his tongue. “Ju should be nice to real people, chichita.”
Janna rolled her eyes at the fake accent. Toros usually had Hispanic ancestry. Except most of those ancestors immigrated several generations ago, and she doubted even the grandparents spoke Spanish at home any longer. The Toros she dealt with before, in fact, knew only a handful of real Spanish words. The rest they made up.
“Real people?” the fem spat at them. “You’re cockroaches!”
Blonde Scorpion sniffed. “That’s not nice, puta. What if we tell old Chopsticks ju been threatening customers? Ju’ll lose your job. Or maybe we’ll just report him for saving paperwork and digidough by using slighs in the kitchen he can pay off in food. Ju want us to do that to him and joor dishrag friend?”
Janna toed aside the pot. “What do you know, Mama. Toros. Just who we wanted to talk to. Did you let your boz in the rear door, choomba?” she asked the cook. “You know a certain standard of hygiene is required in the kitchen of a restaurant. Does Mr. Wu know how you’re dirtying his?”
Baja sneered. “It was clean ‘til ju come in, puss.”
At Janna’s shoulder Mama said, “A word to the wise. Detective Brill already hammered an Orion today and I bet she wouldn’t mind making it a hat trick with you two. Or would you like to sit down out front and have a chat with me?”
The two in jackets tensed and the cook’s hand twitched, as though to reach for the knife on the near-by chopping block. Janna balanced on her toes and let her hand drift to the opening of her jacket, adrenalin rushing hot and cold through her.
Then Scorpion laughed. “Hammered an Orion? Acemundo! I guess we got some time to spare, eh, Baja? Ju buyin’, leo?”
“Coffee.” Mama ushered them out.
Breathing again, Janna eyed the cook and asked the fem, “Are you all right?” She would never have taken the fem for a sligh, with hair that bright and exhibiting such defiance.
Like the sligh by the dishwasher they tended to avoid confrontations and attention . . . since the government they considered insufferably snoopy and controlling took a suspicious view of this group who refused to give Brother G any personal information about themselves, including their real names. Even when refusing to being idented denied them the comforts of a legal education, standard medical care, bank accounts, and social care. Forcing them into marginal lives and living by barter. They called it freedom, Janna knew. She called it brainbent. But refusing identation not being illegal — yet — unless they became involved in an actual crime, she, unlike some of her fellow leos, had no quarrel with them.
The fem’s eyes smoldered. “I am, will be, and would have been! I didn’t need you interfering. If they didn’t rack back, I’d have made them lose interest.”
That smolder worried Janna. In her experience it went with getting even. “Be careful how you do that. Don’t give ammunition to the politicians claiming unidenteds are dangerous for society.”
The fem snorted. “We know what the jackasses are trying to do and aren’t about to let any high muckie toad number and file us.”
The threat tone bothered Janna, too. Act on it and slighs could ruin their cause by themselves. Totally wickers, all of them.
Sighing, she left the kitchen.
Mama and the Toros sat at a table in a corner, with the waitress Juli setting four mugs of coffee on the table. Baja laughed as she made her way their direction. “A hearse? Who jacks a hearse?” He had dropped the accent.
Scorpion grinned. “I know . . . some zero who said, ‘I’m freezing to death.’ and grabbed a ride to stone city while he could still move.” He spoke normally, too. “Why tell us about it?”
Janna sat down across the table from the pair and wrapped both hands around a mug, enjoying the warmth before sipping the coffee. “They were tracked as far as E-World next door.”
The Toros stiffened, but only for a moment, then sat back in deliberate nonchalance. Baja snorted. “An ju thin’ we did it?”
“It’s your turf and whoever did it knew E-World has no surveillance.”
“Everyone who knows the store’s closed can guess that,” Scorpion said. “And if you lost the hearse here, the jackers didn’t stay on our turf. You got any more than circumstantial evidence? Any witnesses that can ID us as them?”
Oh, yes . . . Scorpion was one of their jailhouse-trained lawyers.
“The jackers were described as having stars around their eyes,” Mama said.
Janna watched the Toros for their reaction. She read surprise in their blink, which quickly gave way to wide, delighted grins at each other.
“Orions. Zeros. Lucky we didn’t catch them here.” Scorpion spread his hands. “Case closed.”
“That depends,” she said. “Do you know their colors?”
Scorpion answered without hesitation. “From inside out, red yellow blue. Do we win a prize?”
“Yeah. Another question. We don’t think it was Orions but someone using their colors. You could do that. Would Che like to make trouble for the Orions?”
Both Toros snorted.
Baja said, “That Pluto struts, but the jefe just goes. . .” He waved a hand past his face as though shooing a fly. “Ask him.”
“We will.”
“Maybe Pluto cranked someone.” Mama said.
Baja shrugged. “Quien sabe . . . who knows.”
“Wait.” Scorpion elbowed him. “What about the Wraiths?”
Baja flicked him a stare. “Serioso? We don’t even know they’re real.”
Janna frowned. “Who are the Wraiths?”
“Ask thorny Rose.” Scorpion waved toward the kitchen.
Baja snorted. “She’s not gonna say . . . and she won’t let Dishrag, if he even knows anything.”
“Then I think you better tell us before we decide to move this discussion downtown.”
The two exchanged raised brows. Scorpion shrugged. “They’re supposed to be slighs.”
Janna clamped control on her expression while a chill ran through her. Slighs had a gang now?
Did Mama feel the same alarm? Neither his face nor voice betrayed any. Instead, he looked mildly amused. “Have the Orions cranked them?”
“Could be there ain’t any Wraiths. But out back of the Zanzibar couple of weeks ago Pluto gave this sligh named Viper a black and blue for buying his bounce Maris a drink when he went off to a privacy booth with some castlerow fem who wanted to see what joyriding a ganger was like.” Scorpion snorted. “With Pluto? Big omega. She shoulda come to—”
“You were saying about this Viper?” Mama said.
“Oh, yeah. After that this Viper went around saying his gang the Wraiths was gonna zero the Orions.”
The chill deepened in Janna. A sligh bought a ganger’s fem a drink? Paying how? Calling himself Viper, of all names? And he claimed to have a gang? Were slighs trying to sound as threatening as the politicians characterized them?
“Only. . .” Baja smirked. “. . . he never said it where Orions hang or any Orions were around. If ju got no more questions, we got things to do.”
Janna had plenty more, all about slighs forming gangs and threatening other gangs, but she needed someone more knowledgeable for those answers. A glance at Mama found a suspiciously bright gleam in his eyes but he leaned back in his chair. Signaling no more questions from him.
She gave them a thin smile. “Thank you for your time.” Giving the statement the sarcasm it deserved.
Baja smirked. “Absomente.”
Pushing away from the table in a loud scrape of chairs, they swaggered out of the café.
Mama waved Juli over again to let them ask for coffee refills and order hamburgers. As much as Janna liked Wu’s noodles, a vision of the angry fem scraping them from the floor prevented her from ordering that.
Janna slouched in her chair. “If Toros pulled that masquerade, those two don’t know about it. We’d see some gloating.”
“Yes.” He paused. “I’m wondering if any of the gangs we know did it.”
The gangs they knew. Son of a bitch. Now she understood the gleam in his eyes. She straightened in the chair. “You’re thinking Wraiths? The Toros aren’t sure they exist.”
“If they do, they’ll want retribution for this Viper’s beating.”
“We’ve already determined the jacking doesn’t really damage the Orions. And for slighs, setting it up, like getting the van, would be difficult.”
“Maybe they didn’t. They might be just hired help who used the disguise to put their fingers up Orion noses.”
She considered that. “Someone else set it up.”
“Nafsinger might have been right about using the hearse for a crime. Consider the planning involved. Not just the van. Those jackers wouldn’t be out in the snow and arctic temps on the chance of the right vehicle coming along.”
Janna shifted mental gears to crime. “So they knew to look for the hearse? How? And the big question, why? What crime would someone use it for? Didn’t we already scratch our heads over that?”
“Finding who’s behind it may tell us.”
Across the room, the tiara braids of the sligh fem appeared in the service window. “Order!”
“But you don’t think that’s these possible Wraiths.”
“I think they just abetted.”
Unlike the slighs she knew, who would never knowingly commit an illegal act . . . aside from setting up schools and practicing medicine without a license for the benefit of other slighs. Certainly not become involved in something with the potential violence of a jacking.
“If they’re the jackers, they’re—” He broke off while Juli set platter in front of them.
“Hey, I ordered before they did!” protested a burly customer two tables away.
“Special order here,” the waitress said.
Maybe Toro the cook filled it fast in the hope of sending them on their way sooner. Thought of him handling their food prompted Janna to peel back the bun to check the burger for suspicious additives. Even seeing none, she made her first bite a cautious one.
She noticed Mama did the same, then piled half the onion threads on his burger before replacing the top bun and starting in on it. “They’re a new kind of sligh,” he said around a mouthful. “We need to see if they’re real, and if so, who hired them. As soon as possible, too, since we don’t know the perpetrator’s timetable.”
“We’d better update Quist and Roos.”
She called Roos on her cell, propping it against the coffee mug so she could eat while she talked.
As Roos came on the screen, the other detective’s eyes narrowed accusingly. “You’re having lunch. A real lunch. That looks like a burger.”
“A very good one . . . pure beef, with a side of onion threads. Delicious, even though a Toro made it.”
“So you found one.”
“Actually, several.”
Roos grimaced. “That’s better than we’ve done. Except for jefe Che’s place, there aren’t any area rentals with garages that we can tie to Toros.”
“You can stop trying to. The way we read the Toros, they’re not involved in the jacking.”
Roos scowled. “Who then?”
Should she mention the Wraiths? No. Not without something to substantiate their existence. “We don’t know . . . except they might be just hired help. There’s also good reason to believe the hearse didn’t end up in a garage but left the area in that Ar-Sal van you saw behind E-World.”
“What!”
Janna pictured detectives in the squad room whipping around at Roos’s screech. It brought Quist in a nano to peer over his partner’s shoulder.
As Janna explained the reasoning, and why that might mean the hearse had been targeted for use in a crime, their jaws dropped, followed by lips clamping into grim lines around muttered curses.
“We need to check Traffic for that van around ten or later Thursday night.”
Quist disappeared . . . presumably for his computer.
Roos fairly breathed fire. “It sat there all fucking day . . . with us just yards from it? And we hardly glanced at the fucking thing! Why the fuck didn’t we check it out? Why? Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Janna said nothing, knowing the hundred kinds of fool Roos felt, and the futility of offering any words of comfort.
Across the table, Mama had opened his slate — tapping and swiping with one hand while using the other for the burger and onion threads — and gave her a wry smile.
Eventually Roos exhausted invective and blew out her breath. “So . . . not only do we not know who the jackers are, they’re just tools. We have no idea who wanted the hearse, if it was targeted, or why.” She raised her voice. “Quist! What about Traffic?”
His voice reached Janna from a distance. “Jesus, Bear! Give me a minute or two since we don’t have a tag.”
“Zipwits!” Roos banged her forehead with the heel of her hand. “We didn’t even record the fucking tag!”
“I’m checking Swygart and Twenty-first, but there’s no Ar-Sal van from twenty-one forty-five up to twenty-four hundred.”
Mama said, “Tell them the tag is: SXH 752.”
Janna relayed that, then eyed him. “That was fast. Where did you catch it? Can you tell where they’re headed?”
“Where they came from. I’m backtracking from E-world, starting at Twenty-first and Swygart on Thursday.” He tapped some more . . . frowned . . . whistled through his teeth.
“What?”
“It came out of the New Heartland Park Annex. Running the registration now.”
“Heartland?” Janna frowned. “There’s no racing this time of year.”
“But the Annex—”
“He’s got the tag wrong,” came Quist’s voice. “I’ve got it at Twenty-first and Swygart at two fifteen this morning, but . . . the vehicle is a white van! Two individuals in it. Damn. Wearing ski masks!”
“Tell him it’s the right tag,” Mama said. “Keep tracking it. They just altered its appearance. Probably skinned the sides with static film, then peeled that off before leaving E-World.”
“The film won’t stick in these temperatures,” Janna said.
“It will if applied where it’s warm . . . and the Annex has sheds—”
Janna cut in. “That can be heated so racing teams that want to work on their cars off-season can do so and test run them on the track when the weather is good.” Sheds larger and more substantial than the term suggested, plenty big enough to garage a van.
Which she should have remembered after that the summer three years ago when she spent almost every weekend at Heartland with Vice detective Dale Talavera, guests of his siblings’ racing team, watching vehicles that like motorcycles, still ran on wheels and fuel distilled from hydrocarbon plants.
“Here’s the registration,” Mama said. “Markakis Racing.”
“I’m cutting you off to make another call,” Janna told Roos, and disconnected to look up Talavera’s number and call him.
As the wait for him to answer lengthened, she wondered of if he were was still on the undercover assignment that ended their summer together.
Then just when she expected to be sent to v-mail, his face came on the screen . . . more rugged than handsome but with the warmest of smiles. “Brill. Been a while.” Warm voice, too.
“Yes.” And almost asked, How long have you been out from under? Why didn’t you call? But it had been a dalliance, not a relationship, and undercovers, she knew, often came out changed from when they went in. “You’re looking good.”
“You, too. Is that the Celestial Bistro I see behind you?”
“It is.” Okay, enough small talk. “I need some racing chop . . . or Ben and Sisi’s contact numbers if you can’t answer my question.”
“Ask away.”
“Are any of the teams working in the Annex this time of year?”
A brow rose. “One or two masochists, maybe.”
“Markakis?”
Talavera snorted, shaking his head. “Not Polo. Teams like my siblings’ need jobs to finance their racing, but his family has mega money. So this time of year, he migrates south to drive for teams in South Africa and Australia. Why?”
“A van that’s turned up in a current case is registered to Markakis Racing.”
“He might have loaned the shed to someone. He’s generous.”
“We’ll check with him. Thanks. Stay sharp out there.”
“You, too.”
She called Roos back.
Whose eyes glittered. “We got ‘em!” She pumped a fist in front of her face. “Quist tracked the van back to Heartland, too. We’re rounding up some uniforms and heading out there. Dust or you’ll miss the fun!”
“We’re on our way.” Janna disconnected and shoved the last of the burger into her mouth.
Mama continued to play with his slate.
“What are you doing? Come on!” She pushed back her chair and stood.
He held up a hand, watching the slate. “No. Wait.”
Wait? She scowled at him. “Why?”
“I asked Traffic for all record of those tags between Thursday and right now and they moved that van much later than I thought. That makes me curious.” He looked up. “I’m also curious why the van went through Twenty-first and California three times.”
Three times? She sat back down. “Okaaay. That is odd. I presume the first time was Thursday?”
“Right . . . turning onto Twenty-first on its way to the Swygart intersection. The second time was at two seventeen this morning, turning north on California from Twenty-first.”
Which fit with the two fifteen sighting at Twenty-first and Swygart that Quist found. But, turning north? “And the third time?”
“Heading south on California at two fifty. Followed by Twenty-second and California, Twenty-third and California, etcetera. Headed for Heartland.”
She frowned. “But first went somewhere north for forty-three minutes.”
“Interesting, yes? So let’s see where that was.” He typed on the screen. “Okay, I’ve got it at Hillcrest and Thirteenth. Then. . .” He swiped the screen and spread his thumb and index finger twice. “Crossed over I-70 . . . passed Eleventh at two twenty-five, then . . . returned through Eleventh at two forty.” He looked up. “What do you suppose they did for fifteen minutes?”
Janna sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance they temporarily lost their sense of direction and that’s when they realized their mistake.”
“It took them that long to turn around?”
No, of course not. “We’d better go see what did delay them.” She pulled on her jacket.
At Wu’s throne she held out her wrist for him to run his scanner across her scib, then aim the retinal reader end at her eye. A new addition to purchase security since an e-genius managed to counterfeit a handful of scibs last summer.
With ID confirmed and her account debited for the cost of the meal, Wu smiled and handed her a fortune cookie. “Thank you for assisting in the kitchen. Please come again.”
While Mama paid, she broke open the fortune cookie. You will touch the sky, the fortune read. She dropped it in her pocket, reflecting that sounded more apt for Mama.
“What’s yours?” she asked him before letting the inner door slide open.
“‘Embrace new horizons.’”
“So travel is in our future.”
“Most immediately, north up California.”
“Well, this is the perfect area for using a hearse,” Janna said when they passed Eleventh.
On the left lay the Topeka Cemetery, stretching from the Interstate behind them to Tenth Avenue ahead. On the right they had the opportunistically-located Boston Floral . . . its store up front, windows displaying grave-ready arrangements, and greenhouses out behind in long plastic tunnels. Then after a side street — without a cam — designated Tenth Street, came the equally appropriate Olympia Monuments and Counter tops. Followed by the Mt. Auburn Cemetery, the Rainbow Bridge Pet Cemetery, and at Tenth Avenue, a large Pulaski’s market.
Mama pulled into Olympia’s parking area. “Since they headed straight back to Heartland after coming up here, they had a reason for the detour. Though this might explain moving the van so late. At that hour it’s . . .” He grinned. “. . . dead up here.”
Janna winced. “True. Not a living soul to see them. The question, as always, remains what reason . . . and now, detour to where?”
Not the monument company. A look around while questioning the staff found nothing suspicious or suggestive.
Ditto talking to employees in Boston Floral’s shop and greenhouses.
Climbing back in the car, Janna said, “Can we be sure they didn’t just cut down Tenth Street and garage the hearse over on Republican to put it closer to drive to the scene of whatever?”
Mama sucked in a breath.
She stared at him. “What?”
Behind his visor, his eyes gleamed. “I wonder if they could drive it. Didn’t Quist and Roos say the Nafsingers activated the Sat-care?”
“Belatedly. After the GPS was deactivated.”
“It’s harder to block the signal disabling the drive.” His eyes brightened still more. “I think whoever planned the jacking expected it . . . and that’s the reason for the van, to move the hearse where they needed it.”
She frowned. “That’s brainbent. What use is a vehicle they can’t— what is it?”
He had stiffened, staring across the street at the cemetery. Now he pointed. “Do you see the building way over there?”
Mostly its roof at this distance. “It’s the shelter chapel.”
“There’s something off to the left of it.”
She squinted at the pale shape. “A pile of snow?”
“Let’s see.”
He switched on the Monitor and revved the fans into life. Lifting off the parking rollers with a jerk, he shot out onto California, just clearing a northbound Kansu semi, and gunned up California ahead of it.
“Mama! What the hell!”
“I’m a zipwit, Bibi!”
No argument there!
He spun the wheel, slewing into the cemetery’s entry drive, then right onto a lane paralleling California. “We’ve been thinking hearse, hearse, hearse. Asking why anyone wants one. All the more inexplicable if the vehicle can’t be driven.”
She braced herself as he whipped left onto another lane, crossing the cemetery. “Yes.”
“And we’ve been wrong. The hearse isn’t—” He broke off to halt the car thirty feet from the shelter. “Not a pile of snow, Bibi.”
No. Not snow sitting across the walk to the shelter’s side. Just almost snow colored and dusted with it. They had found the hearse.