Killer Genius 2: Attack of the Gym Rats

“Let’s see if I understand this,” she started after Max was done recounting the incident. “You and Smitty were guarding the girl on your own time. And you were chased up here by these Russian assholes who presumably killed Ullah and Goggens?

“Yes,” he looked over at Smitty as she sat a few feet away being looked over by a paramedic. Further away and behind him, his buddy Pedro was examining what would turn out to be The Scythe’s remains, and not so subtly eavesdropping.

“And you’re telling me The Good Grades Killer-- who as it turns out is a live woman instead of a dead man -- warned you that these people were coming?”

His eyes shifted downward. “I guess she’s been surveilling me. Probably keeping track of me for the sake of our baby.”

“The baby that the Good Grades Killer herself gave birth to after harvesting your sperm?” Lopez rolled her eyes. “The one that the Feds forced you to be quiet about?”

“It should all be in Hopper’s files. Which you’ve, no doubt already seen.”

“Yes, I probably know more than you would like. There was a bunch of stuff left in his office. And while I haven’t finished it, I am looking forward to reading all about you and your psycho ‘baby mama’ who, among other things, saved you and your partner from these Russian killers with a high-tech drone strike.” A skeptical grimace crossed Lopez’s face.

Max did his best to ignore her snarky tone, but his face might have betrayed him.

“Oh, my God! That wasn’t a drone strike! It was a massacre!” Smitty cried from her seated position.

“I can see that, Detective Smith,” Lopez cast a casual look over at Max’s groggy partner, shook her head and turned back to Max. “What I don’t see is Janice Thursby. Any idea where she might be, Detective Baxter?”

“At this point I can only assume Kendra took her.”

“Jesus Christ! How many serial killers are after this one girl?”

“I don’t know if Kendra would harm her. Janice Thursby is a young black woman on an academic scholarship. The Good Grades Killer would admire her.”

Lopez looked back at Smitty one last time, before declaring, “When you guys are feeling better, I want you out of here. If either of you think you’re working this case anymore, you’re delusional.”

Smitty struggled to her feet, all but pushing the paramedic away. “Lieutenant, no one knows the Good Grades Killer better than we do! You can’t take us off the case.”

Lopez turned to Smitty and pointed at Max. “By his own admission, your partner has a baby with the suspect! I can’t just turn a blind eye to that! You’re off the case and that is final!”

As Lopez stormed off, quickly disappearing in the throng of law enforcement and forensics specialists that crowded the roof, Smitty turned to Max. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Max looked at his long-time partner and sighed. “If you’re thinking that Kendra took Janice to put a baby in her using my sperm, then yes.”

“That poor kid. We have to find her,” Smitty rocked back and forth, wishing the cobwebs in her head to clear.

With Lopez gone, Pedro walked over. “Hey guys, I checked the logs. Everything in this area was blacked out during the attack, just like I figured. Only I can’t find a device.”

“Goddamn it!” Smitty said. “She took the device? As if she doesn’t have enough of a technology edge on us. How the fuck are we supposed to find her?”

Max caught her by the shoulders and smiled. “Prepare to be proud of me.”

It took a minute for her to put together that she was tied up in a locked wheelchair. The room was dark, but through the slivers of light, she could see that there were the earmarks of some sort of laboratory. To her left on a plain wooden table stood three drones that resembled the ones she’d seen during the rooftop battle. The middle one looked fine, but the other two looked seriously damaged.

“There she is. There’s my pretty girl.”

As her head rose, Janice saw a woman in a black leotard, with a white lab coat over it. Over her face, the mystery lady wore a red masquerade ball mask with gold glitter edges and a 6-inch nose. Above them, the subway rumbled.

“Not too groggy I hope? Would you like some water?”

Janice barely nodded, but it was enough for the strangely attired woman to produce an unlabeled bottle of water and hold it to her lips.

After four big gulps, the bottle was pulled away. “Better?” the woman asked.

“Are you the Good Grades Killer?” Janice tried to make eye contact.

“As a matter of fact, I am. And I already know who you are.” The voice behind the mask held no menace. It was warm and friendly. Yet, Janice was terrified. “But you can call me Kendra. You knew that too, I believe.”

“Why have you brought me here?”

“That’s a good question. The answer is one you may not initially like.”

“You might as well tell me. Whatever you have planned, I am clearly in no position to stop you.”

“It’s so funny. Ever since my time with Max, he’s been a little gun shy. I mean, he was never a big risk taker to begin with, but he really calmed down after I kidnapped him. This is the first dangerous case he purposely allowed himself to be a part of in two years. Naturally, I eavesdropped. That’s the thing about smartphones. I can pretty much listen to anyone’s conversation anywhere in the world. And even if the person knows they’re being spied on, there’s literally nothing they can do, because everyone needs a cellphone.”

The drone Kendra was working on suddenly beeped; an indication that it was fixed. She put the soldering iron down and began to look at the loose wiring hanging out of a second damaged drone.

“The funny thing is, in my own way, I love Max. When we were alone and I was harvesting his semen, I had every intention of killing him after I was done. But he won me over. He was so vulnerable and genuine. He was unlike any man I’d ever met and I realized that killing him would go against what I stand for. And not only did I spare him, but I gave him a child. The old-fashioned way. That was the other thing; I had sex with him! He was my first outside of my being raped! My sweet one. My dear Max.”

For reasons she couldn’t articulate, this affectionate talk of Max made her uncomfortable.

Kendra continued. “Naturally, I wasn’t going to let those Russian hooligans kill him. In fact, I let very little happen to Max. If Max only knew how safe he really is.”

Kendra moved onto a third drone, snapped a piece into place, then closed a compartment. It beeped, almost as if to say, ‘Thank you, mama! I am well now!’ and shut itself off. “But Max is not the only reason I came to the rescue tonight.”

“You were looking out for a sister?” Janice said with a wry smirk. “Because I’m a scholarship student?”

“Absolutely. And now that sister is going to have to look out for me. Like I said, I harvested Max’s sperm. And you knew that already, thanks to him always jabbering away about it with that fat white girl Max insists is his best friend.”

“She’s not?”

“Oh, of course she is. I’m not disputing it. What you hear in my voice is sour grapes and I know it. They’ve been through hell together. Talk about a work environment rife with racism, sexism and white boys club mentality. The NYPD invented that long before any corporation could. She gets on my nerves, that’s all. She gets to spend more time with him than Bridgette does. She doesn’t deserve that. I swear, I’d kill her, but that would only upset him. Plus, she always figures out the stuff he doesn’t. So, I let her live.”

“I just met them, but I think they’re just friends.”

“And that’s what I envy. I don’t envy Bridgette marrying him. Hell, once she helped Smitty rescue him from me that night two years ago, I knew she and Max would end up together. But while Bridgette is busy hosting her show, Smitty gets to be his friend. She gets to pick his brain about stuff. They talk about movies they like and hate. She buys him coffee! Do you have any idea how awesome it would be if I could just sit down with an intelligent black man and drink coffee?”

Involuntarily, Janice thought of Tony. Cheating asshole that he was, he had been a great conversationalist. She’d miss conversing with him, but not enough to forgive him.

“The fact that I’ll never experience that again is my fault, I suppose. It was my decision to live my life as an anarchist. The sacrifice I made when I realized that some people simply had to die. Racist politicians and talk show hosts. Asshole rappers. Schoolteachers who were bogging down the system. I had everyone really shaking in their boots for a few weeks, didn’t I?”

“Yes. And then you supposedly died.”

“I always had the ‘fake my death’ plan in place. My original thought was to come out of retirement and go back to terrifying a different city in six months. But, I guess I wasn’t feeling overly appreciated. I mean, I knew white people were going to vilify me, but black folks? They turned on me hard! I mean, considering how they turned on the first black president, with all the ‘where’s the reparations?’ and ‘why isn’t he doing anything about us being unarmed and shot by the police’ and all the other things that no reasonable person would expect of him.”

“The black community thought he would be their champion.” Janice said.

“Then they shouldn’t have elected him president! That’s not what that job is. That job is not about serving just one group of people. Especially when he was the first black person to do it and therefore stuck fighting an entire US Congress by himself. Hell, our so-called community didn’t even show up during either of his midterm elections but still wanted him to fix our broken lives. I should have seen it coming, what with all the black pundits literally shoving racist white people out of the way so they can be a brown person saying something bad about the first black president. Why should I be excluded from the wrath brought on by misinformed, unrealistic, childish, black barbershop logic? Thousands of tweets about who was I to appoint myself judge, jury and executioner? ‘What gave me the right?’ ‘And if I’m such a badass, why didn’t she kill the new, racist president?’ Meanwhile, the powers that be WANT me or someone like me to kill this president, so they can bring someone up ten times as worse! I mean, this president sucks, but at least he’s incompetent, which means he’ll keep tripping over his own feet before he gets to do any real damage. The guy in the wings? The guy whose name you don’t even know yet? That’s the dangerous one. Meanwhile, black twitter doesn’t know any better. They started blaming me for the new president’s policies. Travel bans. Marijuana being demonized again. New terrorism task forces. So many people were happy I was dead that I eventually figured I would stay that way.”

“Until today?”

“My infatuation with Max aside, I still have a mission,” Kendra leaned in close enough for the nose of the masquerade mask to almost touch Janice’s. “And that is where you come in.”

“I don’t understand,” Janice admitted.

“Well, it starts with Max. Unfortunately, he settled for being a cop, but trust me, with the right encouragement he could have been so much more. I’ve tested him. I checked his grades and his aptitude in many areas. That’s why I chose him as the man who would help me to repopulate the world with smart, black children who would grow up to be doctors and scientists and engineers instead of ballplayers, entertainers and misguided ne’er do wells leading generation after generation to ruin. I’m choosing you, too.”

“Choosing me?”

“Yes. When I gave Max our baby, I knew I was making a mistake. I knew that Japanese-American bitch from the FBI—you don’t know her obviously-- would take DNA samples from the baby. As stupid as I knew it was, as smart as I am supposed to be, I HAD to give Max that baby. It just had to be done! But now, I can’t afford any more sentimentality. I can’t deliver any more babies. I want you to carry one.”

“WHAT?!”

“Yes! That’s my bargain. I will take care of your Russian serial killer problem. In exchange, you will let me artificially inseminate you. You’ll get on with your life without having to go into WitSac, where these two crazies might have found you anyway. Also, you’ll get money. You won’t have to work at that gym anymore if you don’t want to. You could finish up at LIU, or go somewhere more prestigious. And you will raise this child to be a shining example of what a black American can be.”

Janice was shocked. “And if I say no?” she finally managed.

“I’ll render you unconscious and hand you over to the Russians before the night is out.”

Kendra gave Janice a minute to process what she’d said before she pressed. “I’m going to need an answer, sweetie.”

“Yes.” Janice began to sob.

“Oh, no!” With the mask muffling her voice, Kendra sounded like a sympathetic cartoon super-villain. “Everything is going to be fine. You have to trust me.”

When Janice stopped sobbing, Kendra wiped a tear away, then got behind the wheelchair and unlocked the wheels. Only when Kendra had stepped out of the way did Janice see the gurney and the stirrups.

“You’ll thank me for this someday, Janice. Yes, you will. You’ll be happy you’re a part of the revolution.”