KOP Killer

Deluski ordered Nurse Manny down and looked for a place to sit, wobbly legs carrying him to the foot of an unoccupied bed.

I closed my eyes, just long enough to wish it all away. I opened them back up knowing it wouldn’t be gone. They were still here. The man lying naked on his back, a quadruple amputee, six black insect legs coming from his torso and scrabbling at the air like an upended beetle’s. The woman with air tanks for legs, hoses running from her metal thighs directly into her chest. The man encased in a bug shell, his face mostly hidden behind a chitinous mandible. The I-didn’t-know-what lying in a bath, skin looking like gray rubber, a triangle of thick gray flesh hanging over the rim.

A fucking fin.

One of them moved. Three weapons took aim. She slipped out of bed with a thump. Her legs had been shortened, no knees or feet, the skin of her thighs covered with dense, thick fur. She started into an ungainly, stump-legged crawl.

“Don’t mind her,” said the facedown nurse, his bald head raised off the floor. “She’s just going to the bathroom.”

She humped and bumped to the aisle’s end and turned for a toilet against the wall, used a step to get herself up. She looked young. Evie’s age or thereabouts. Her face was flat. Dominated by big eyes. Down’s.

What the fuck was this place?

Maggie put her shaky voice to the question.

“The doc does experiments here,” said the nurse.

“What kind of experiments?”

“He’s a genius, you know. Crazy, but a genius.”

The toilet flushed and the girl slowly began the return trip.

Maggie stepped over to the nurse, looked down at him like a lizard had taken a shit on the floor. She stared at the back of his smooth head, her weapon hanging tensely by her side. Hair fell in front of her face, sweaty straggles dangling over dark eyes. “Explain.”

“He’s trying to make more effective workers.”

“More effective?” She leaned down at him. “She can’t walk!” I kept a close eye on her lase-pistol. Didn’t want her doing something stupid.

“She can walk in space,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m talking about zero g. Hands are all that matter when there’s no gravity. You float from handhold to handhold. Legs just get in the way.”

“The fur?”

“Say you need to turn a wrench or something. Doesn’t work too good when your feet come off the floor. You have to anchor yourself, but do that with one of your hands and you’ve only got one left to work with.”

“The fur?” Maggie repeated, her tone maxed out on impatience.

“Works like Velcro.”

Velcro? Fuck me. I felt numb, my whole body ready to melt into the floorboards. Somehow, against all odds, I held shape as I watched the girl drag herself up a short ramp back to her bed.

Maggie was stunned into silence.

Velcro. Fucking fuck.

Nurse Manny pointed at the man with the bug legs. “That’s another model the doc developed.”

Model? The poor sap’s eyes were lost in another world, legs clicking in a feeble attempt to turn himself over.

“The legs are way too weak to carry his torso down here, but get him in zero g and he’ll be scooting up walls, across the ceiling. He’ll be perfect for going EVA, won’t need to fuck around with a jetpack or a tether.”

“He has no hands.”

“True. The doc still has to add those. That, or he might go with a prehensile tail. He’s gotten good at those.”

Deluski spoke up for the first time. “Why all this talk about zero g? The Orbital has artificial gravity.”

“They’re mining asteroids up there. Most are too small to worry about setting up any kind of permanent base. The space stations and space liners have gravity, but most of the mining facilities operate in zero g or whatever little gravity they get from the asteroids themselves.”

“Have you shipped out any of these workers?”

“Not yet. He hasn’t even tried any of his designs on real people yet.”

Maggie raised her brows. “These aren’t real people?”

“Shit no,” he said. “This here is a vegetable garden. Nothing but cripples and retards. That one there was in General Z’s army, but he got lobotomized by a shot in the head, burned a hole straight through. There’s a couple more woundeds over there, the rest were dumped by their families. People around here are crazy superstitious. They think their kids are possessed when they don’t come out right, so they sell their defectives to the doc. He doesn’t buy them all. He’s picky about his specimens.”

Specimens. Cold-ass bastard. Maggie lifted her piece just a smidge, enough to make me call her name as a caution. Nurse Manny wrenched his neck around to see what was going on. Maggie’s piece dropped back to her hip. “Continue.”

“Before he starts doing real people, he wants to test his designs by chartering a shuttle to take the whole bunch out of the atmosphere. He doesn’t quite have the funds yet, though. Soon as he does, he wants to close his plastic surgery biz in Koba. He funds this work here with the money he makes down there.”

“Where does he plan on getting the real people?”

“People will volunteer.”

“You must be joking.”

“Listen, lady, where the fuck do you think you are? This is Yepala. We’ve got an army of kids terrorizing people. Girls around here get gang-raped every day. People will do anything to land an offworld job. And the offworlders will pay for labor. You know how successful the mining operations are. Those people can’t wait to get a bunch of immigrants in to do all the shit work.”

I didn’t know what to say. None of us did. The horror of it all was beyond us.

Silence reigned for the next minute. Until a nervous Nurse Manny asked, “What are you going to do with me?”

The young guard glared at him. Manny said me. Not us.

Nobody responded.

He decided to keep talking, like he figured he was safe as long as he had something to offer. “The one in the tub can breathe underwater. Pivon has a moon that’s all ocean. The waters aren’t as developed as ours when it comes to sea life, but they do have these little shrimplike creatures that are evidently mighty tasty. Doc figures a swimmer would be useful untangling nets and shit.

“And Quentin, the guy fused into the bug shell, is designed for EVA work. You attach a faceplate, and he’s airtight. You know how much time workers waste suiting up to go into vacuum? The doc figures that making people EVA-ready could boost productivity by ten percent. Maybe more. Plus it’ll be safer.”

I stopped listening. I didn’t want to know about the woman with air-tank legs or the young boy with sockets on the end of his wrists, myriads of attachments surely available for the right price. “Does General Z run this place?”

“Not the clinic. But he does run the opium operations. The guards are all his. This one’s job,” he pointed at the young guard, “is protecting the big storeroom downstairs. If the general knows there’s a clinic out here, he’s never shown any interest in it.”

“So you work for the doctor and the doctor alone?”

“Him and the sheriff. This is the sheriff’s land. He bought it real cheap a couple years back and had it cleared of jungle so he could lease it to General Z.”

“Lease it?” asked Deluski. “Can’t the general take whatever land he wants?”

“The money buys more than the land,” I said. “It buys YOP too. Let’s go. We got what we came for.”

Deluski stood. “What do we do with these two? We can’t let them send up the alarm until we’re away.”

Maggie raised her piece, the barrel leveled at Nurse Manny.

“Maggie? What do you think? Should we tie them up?”

Her contorted face was flushed.

“Maggie?”

She lowered the lase-pistol. “Get some rope.”

Deluski rummaged for rubber tubing, made quick work of tying hands and feet and using bandages for gags. I inspected his knots. Looked solid. Didn’t have to last long.

Maggie was already at the door, Deluski on his way. I made like I was following but turned back. I put my lase-blade in the kid guard’s palm. Pressed his fingers around the handle. “If your bosses find out we got past you, you’re as good as dead. Nobody needs to know we were ever here.”

The kid’s eyes scrunched up. He was reasoning it through.

I didn’t want Maggie doing anything stupid. Me, stupid was what I did best. “Best I can tell there’s only one witness in here who can talk.”

I saw understanding in his eyes. I gave Nurse Manny a wink as he struggled against his restraints and screamed into his gag. I turned and hustled to catch up.

Just before I exited the door, the unmistakable sizzle of a waking blade brought a smile to my face.

April 26–27, 2789

We were outside, jogging past snail pens. Forgot to ask about the snails, dammit. Goddamn information overload in there.

We passed behind the last shed and sprinted into the darkness of the poppy field.

Evie met us and wordlessly led us back into the jungle. Flashlights on, we pushed along the trail, chirps and squawks sounding over the jungle’s drone.

Maggie stopped in front of me, almost bumped into her. “We have to go back.”

I took her wrist, dragged her along. “We can’t do anything for them.”

“We can take them with us.”

“How? We can’t parade them through town.”

“We can’t just leave them.”

“We won’t.” I felt more centered than I had in a long time. Nothing like a dose of true evil to remind me I wasn’t so bad. “We’ll stop them. Just not tonight.”

“But-”

“Not tonight.” I pulled her along until she started walking on her own.

Evie stopped us, told us to turn off our lights. She snuck ahead to check the road, came back a minute later. “There’s a patrol down the way.”

Deluski whispered, “They must be looking for us.”

“Agreed.” By now, the arrival of a one-armed man in Yepala had probably spread to the wrong ears. “How many soldiers, Evie?”

“Plenty,” she said. “I hope you have a lot more money.”

I doubted we had enough. If Panama knew we were in Yepala, he could’ve offered a bounty to the general’s soldiers. “Is there another way back to town?”

“There’s another trail we could take to get around that patrol, but when we get to town, you’ll have to pay one way or another.”

We’d take another. “Can you get home on your own, Evie?”

“What do you think?” Her words came loaded with attitude.

I loved this kid. I pulled a wad from my pocket, pressed it into her palm. “Take us to the trail, then get home without being seen. If you get stopped, you tell them you took us to the clinic and left us there. You got me?”

“I got you.”

We slunk across the dark road, entered the jungle on the far side, picked our way through some brambles to a well-worn trail.

“That’s it, Evie. On your way.”

Maggie told her to wait. She pulled her earrings out of her lobes. “Take these.”

“I told you somebody will just steal them.”

“Hide them someplace.”

Evie took them and ran.

We followed the trail for a kilometer or two, my heart leaping at every snapped twig. Finally, the jungle opened into a tamed expanse dotted with tin-roofed mud-brick homes. The area was illuminated by gas lamps that emitted piercing white light. “Where do you think the pier is from here?”

Deluski pointed at a church on the far side. “Should be near that church.”

I agreed. “How you want to do this?”

“We walk straight through,” said Maggie. “Act like we know where we’re going. There’s no guarantee that the patrol was looking for us. If we run, we’re asking for trouble.”

“Objections?”

Deluski shook his head no. We tucked our weapons away and walked into the village. As we passed homes, off-duty farmhands stared our way, and the sour smell of shine rode on the breeze. Wood fires pumped smoke through the gaps between walls and rooftops. People ate from bowls with their fingers, geckos dancing in the dirt, scurrying across tables.

We passed an open-faced two-story home on the right, the bottom level reserved for dry wood and a roped cow, the top floor a small deck for sleeping under the overhang. A young girl shoved branches into a clay wood stove. Flames licked at a steaming pot, and her soot-coated face gave us a once-over.

We strode forward, each step taking us closer to the pier and the river. A shirtless old man shooed us along, crazy eyes under wispy hair, ribs standing out like roots from a toppled tree. He hissed and nabbed a machete, brandishing it wildly before a family member scolded him and took the tool out of his hand.

I spotted a woman standing behind a post, a phone to her ear, her eyes tracking us step for step. Her lips moved, speaking unheard words into the receiver. I looked all around, found two others, phones to their ears.

Racing to rat us out to Panama.

I accelerated into a jog, my hand moving to my piece. Maggie and Deluski matched pace, the church still in the distance, its cross fashioned from scrapped street signs. Maggie had her phone out, holding it to her mouth, yelling into the speaker, “Josephs!”

A soldier appeared in front of the church. Then a second. I tried to stop, skidded, and slipped to the ground, my body sliding through the mud. Now there were three, four, a whole squad pouring into the church courtyard.

I scrambled to my feet and ran after Maggie and Deluski, who had already turned for the jungle to our right. I was in full sprint now, darting between houses, hurtling through family dinners, startling children and scattering chickens.

My right shoe slipped out from under me. I went down a second time, an uncontrolled slide taking me into a set of chairs. I was back up, untangling my legs, tossing chairs, as the rumble of clomping feet approached from behind.

I was running again, speeding for the jungle, knowing the river had to lie somewhere behind it. Deluski was the first to disappear into the green, Maggie a couple seconds later. I pushed my lungs to their limit and leapt into the darkness, branches and leaves, vines and brambles. A hand grabbed my shirt, Maggie’s voice, “C’mon.”

I followed as close as I could, my eyes straining to keep up with the jouncing beam of Maggie’s flashlight. She yelled into her phone, “Track my signal! We’re heading for the river!”

The crackle of lase-fire ripped overhead, burned leaves raining from exploding clouds of foliage. The undisciplined shits were taking potshots. If they were going to catch us, they’d have to follow us in. Whether they did would depend on how bad they wanted us.

The shooting stopped. I listened for following voices but heard only our own heavy footfalls and the rustle of leaves as we crashed through. These were the general’s soldiers, not Panama’s cops. I gave myself permission to hope they’d dropped their pursuit. Maybe the bounty Panama offered wasn’t so big.

Another burst of lase-fire quashed that hope. We raced through the snagging, slapping, scraping jungle. Lase-fire tore through the trees to our right. The soldiers were veering off course. Maggie and I responded by angling left, widening the gap. I could hear the sputter of an outboard motor ahead. The river was close. Please be Josephs.

We scrambled up a steep embankment, kicking and clawing through muddy earth and deep piles of damp leaves. The air turned fetid with overturned compost. I coughed and choked on mold spores, my feet churning at the slick slope.

Maggie crested first, me a step behind. We raced down the embankment. Josephs’s voice called to us, the boat a short distance out, floodlight aimed our way. We dove into the water and paddled toward the floodlight. Josephs and the boat captain pulled Deluski on board.

The boat putted up. Maggie grabbed hold of the rail. “Turn off the light and the motor!”

The motor went silent. The light went dark. I held on to the rail and waited for Maggie to get pulled up. “Sssh. Nobody talks.”

I heard voices upriver, the voices of boys. I could see them scanning the water with their flashlights, thirty meters upriver, maybe less. A real army would’ve spread out, cast a wide net as they moved through the jungle instead of going in follow-the-leader formation. Those kids weren’t real soldiers. They had no training. No fucking clue.

I held up my arms, letting hands grab hold. They lifted me slowly, my torso rising out of the river. I winced at the water running off me, knowing every drop could be the one that they heard. Lucky for us, the punks didn’t have the good sense to shut up and listen. Instead they argued and took random shots at the river.

My feet slipped from the water. They set me down on the deck. I didn’t dare move. I just breathed, told my heart to quit pounding. Minutes passed, and the river took us away in its silent flow.

We putted under one of Koba’s many bridges, city lights all around. The journey was almost over. Maggie and I sat next to each other, scratching at skin savaged by bug bites.

Deluski kept fiddling with the boat captain’s phone, said he was looking up some things. Josephs stared at the stars, his gaze quiet and peaceful, not shellshocked like the rest of ours. He hadn’t seen what we’d seen. A goddamned freak show. The kind of shit nightmares were made of.

The captain turned the boat into a canal. A nightclub floated to the right, the crowd overflowing onto a pontoon dock, suits and dresses, cocktails and party voices.

“He has to be stopped.” She was repeating herself. Saying it over and over and over.

“I know.” The same empty response.

“KOP has no jurisdiction.”

“I know.”

“I can go to the governor. See if I can convince him to send the army in to raid that compound.”

“You can try.” But you know you’ll fail.

“If he refuses, I’ll go to the press and amp up the pressure.”

Which you know will simply spook the doctor into relocating. I waited for her to come to the same conclusion.

She shook her head. “There has to be a way to stop him.” Back to square one.

She knew the riddle had no legal solution. The doctor operated in General Z’s territory, meaning the clinic might as well be a million miles away, for all the authorities could do about it. Shit, the General regularly slaughtered entire villages and took the children as his soldiers. Gang rapes were a way of life up there. If the pols hadn’t found the will to do anything by now, they sure as hell weren’t going to start a full-scale invasion just because of a rogue doctor.

Yet she kept at the riddle, around and around, trying to solve the unsolvable. I had to admire her for it.

Deluski jumped up. “I got it!” He held out the phone for me.

“Got what?”

His grin was huge. Didn’t know the guy had that many teeth. “The lizard the killer turned into. I found it.”

I wasn’t in the mood. “Not this again.”

He put the phone in my face. “Fucking look at it already!”

I took the phone, studied the lizard’s pic. Charcoal skin. Red stripes. Wide mouth. “Could be.” I made to hand the phone back.

“Read the description, the part I marked.”

Christ. I held it so Maggie could see and navigated into the text, skipped over the species name-some kind of Latin shit-my eyes pausing on the common name: stripe-faced man-eater. I read the portion he’d highlighted, the text focusing on the lizard’s sexual habits. I took the information in, my smirk fading, my back straightening.

I soaked it up, let it mingle with the case facts, images gaining clarity. I read it a second time, read how the female attracts the male with those red stripes, stripes that get thicker and brighter during mating season. How the male stands on its hind legs, making himself look big, making himself look like good genetic stock. How they mate, the male inserting his genitalia, the female’s vagina closing around it, a vagina made of a bonelike material that pinches down until it severs the male genitalia. Severs it in its entirety. Only then, after the genitals are severed do the muscles relax to release his seed.

Holy shit.

Maggie pulled the phone from my fingers to read it again. “Oh my God.”

Deluski sat back down. “I told you I’d find it.”

Maggie had her face practically pressed into the display. “That steel trap thing he snapped onto your hand. You think the doctor installed another one inside him?”

Josephs perked up. “Inside where? What are you humps talking about?”

Franz Samusaka, Wu, and Froelich all had their dicks chopped.

“Somebody gonna answer me?”

Chopped during mating. Holy fuck.

I rolled over. Again. I scratched my ankles, my neck, my ears. Damn bugs chewed the hell out of me.

I couldn’t sleep. Again. Bad thoughts always came at night. Gave me a good reminder why I usually drank myself to sleep. Niki. How could she do that to me? I loved her. I trusted her.

The love was real. But I knew now the trust was an illusion. Our curse was too many secrets. Secrets that separated us like walls of glass that were so crystal clear that we could fool ourselves into believing we were in the same room all along.

I heard the now familiar sound of high heels clopping down the hall, heard the curtain slide open. Heard it close again. The sheet moved, somebody slipping under, a wave of perfume leaving no doubt who. She curled up next to me, warm skin pressed into my back, an arm worming its way under what was left of my right arm, sliding up my stomach, hand settling on my chest.

I looked at the window. Dark as ever. “What time is it?”

“Morning.”

I scratched my ear, the back of my neck.

“You okay?”

“Got eaten up last night.”

“Yepala?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“More.” I rolled over to face her. “Found too much. Listen to me, do not bring your sister to the offworld doctor.”

Her hand pulled away. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

“He’s a monster.”

“I’m not going to work for Chicho the rest of my life. And neither will my sister. We’re going to start our own house, and the doctor is our ticket to better days.”

I couldn’t let her do it. I made the decision right then. Had to blurt it out quickly before I went back on it. “Take my business.”

“What?”

“The protection racket. Take it.”

She sat up. “Is this a joke?”

“Tell your sister to quit, and the two of you run the business.”

She flicked on the light. I squinted at the brightness, her image a blur of hair and rouge and lipstick. “I can’t run a protection racket.”

“Why not?”

“Women don’t run protection rackets.”

“They’re not bouncers either.”

“You think I can face down Captain Mota?”

“I’ll take care of him.”

“What about the next Captain Mota? If KOP or a street gang wants to move in, how am I going to stop them? Sic my fifteen-year-old sister on them?”

“Throw my name at them. You need me to show up, I’ll show up, flex my muscles, but the business is yours. You run it. You keep the money.”

The corners of her heavily painted lips lifted, the beginnings of a smile. “You serious?”

I went to the gate and rang the bell.

“Yes?” came a voice from a speaker.

“I’m here to talk to Hudson Samusaka.”

“That won’t be possible, sir. Your face is on file, and it’s on our no-entry list.”

I sneered into the lens. “He’ll see me. You tell him I had a nice talk with his son Ang. Couldn’t shut the kid up.”

No response. Good. Meant he was checking with his boss. I leaned against the gate and waited.

Worked better than a fucking key. The gate buzzed, the voice telling me Miss Paulina would meet me at the door. Samusaka had to find out what I knew.

I pushed through. My eyes took in the well-lit grounds. The walkways branched and merged into a meandering network of stone paths. Manicured hedges and fountains; stone walls and wrought iron railings; the air scented by flowers. I headed for the main house, my shoes clacking on stone.

The door was open, Miss Paulina standing guard, arms crossed over a blue dress, eyes staring down the length of her nose. “You again?”

I came up the steps. “Where is he?”

“In the study.” She held out a hand like an usher.

“I know the way.” I breezed past her into the foyer, got a few steps down the hall before turning back to face her. “I’ll take a brandy. Make it a twenty-year.” I was off before she could respond. Might as well act the part from the get-go.

I moved down the hall, then through the study’s entrance. He sat at the desk, white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled up, eyes sharp like monitor claws. I strode to the desk and took the seat across from him. Opened with a bluff. “You’ve been a naughty boy.”

He bared teeth. “What did my son tell you?”

“Everything.” My face was straight like a piece of rebar. Time to beat him with it. “Kid found your dirty little secret right here in this study. He ransacked this room until he found it, then made it look like somebody broke in. Kid’s been naming his own allowance ever since.”

Color leaked from his cheeks and pooled into a flushing triangle between his collar points and under his Adam’s apple. “What do you want?”

Gotcha, asshole. “Truth.”

“Or else?”

“Or your dirty secret doesn’t stay secret.”

His shoulders rode high, like every muscle in his body was tensed. “You want money?”

I shook my head. “I want answers.”

He threw up his hands. “Ask your damn questions.” Bluffed into folding. Game over.

I kept signs of victory off my rebar face. “You know your eldest son was murdered, don’t you?”

He stayed silent, giving me a big spoonful of that hostile glare. I knew his type. Controlling. Domineering. I knew how he’d treated his wife the last time I was here, making her stand a step behind him. Prick was used to treating people like property.

A knock came on the door. Miss Paulina entered, brandy snifter in hand. She carried the glass to me and silently hurried out.

I sucked in a sip, swished it around in my mouth, tongue wrapped in flavor and the tingle of alcohol. I swallowed it down and set the glass on his desk. One sip was enough. Gave me a perverse satisfaction to know the busybody housekeeper would have to pour the rest down the drain.

“Murder. Killer cut your son’s dick off.”

He didn’t flinch. “I know what happened to my son.”

“Why did the police report it as an OD?”

“They wanted to save our family from the embarrassment.”

“Telling the public your son doped himself to death isn’t embarrassing?”

His granite face didn’t budge.

“Detectives Wu and Froelich handled your son’s case, correct?”

He nodded that rock on top of his neck.

“How much did you pay them?”

“Enough.”

“You know they’re both dead. They suffered the same fate as your son.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Did you know them before your son’s murder?”

“No.”

“But they knew your son.”

“They did.”

“How?”

“They were business partners.”

“What kind of business?”

“I stayed out of my son’s affairs.”

These bare-minimum answers were pissing me off. Didn’t he realize he’d lost? I’d bluffed him into folding, and now it was time he paid up. I wanted to crank up the pressure, use my leverage, but I still had no idea what his youngest son had found in this room, what he was dangling over his father’s head, what had turned this take-charge alpha dad into a whipped cash register. I didn’t know.

He moved up in his chair. “Are we done?”

I screwed up my face. “No, we’re not fucking done. Your son was murdered, and I’m trying to catch his killer. Now why won’t you help me?”

“I’ve told you everything I know.” He pushed a button on his desk. “Paulina will see you out.”

I stayed where I was, my brain struggling to comprehend why this blackmail angle wasn’t scoring shit. If it worked for his son, why didn’t it work for me?

Her voice came from the door. “Right this way, sir.” She’d shown up fast. Too fast. Damn woman must’ve been eavesdropping again.

I couldn’t make sense of why he was shutting me out. I looked into his eyes, closed windows staring back. I gave it one more incredulous shot. “What the hell is your problem? You telling me you’d rather I go public with what I know than help me catch your son’s killer?”

The lights went out behind his closed-window eyes. “Good-bye, sir.”

Deluski came strutting up, a small grin on his face. Kid was feeling pretty good about himself, finally pinning down that lizard. He could be a detective one day. A good one.

“Any luck with Samusaka?”

I fell into step alongside him. “No. He didn’t say anything useful.”

“Did you threaten to expose his kid’s blackmail scheme?”

“He still didn’t talk.”

We turned left, into the university campus: boxy concrete structures, moss-covered walls, and rusted window frames.

Deluski pointed straight ahead. “Biology department should be up there. He’s hiding something, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, and whatever it is, it must be bigger than what his kid has on him. He tried to buy me off, but when I wouldn’t bite, he just shut down.”

We crossed a footbridge-foul-smelling canal water running underneath-and veered right, BIOLOGY painted over a door. Inside, we took the stairs up two flights, then down a short hall and in through a glass door to a lab with cages and terrariums, and white-coated techs with goggles.

A young man stepped forward. “Can I help you?”

Deluski flashed his shield. “We want to talk to whoever’s in charge.”

“That would be Dr. Stark. Wait here. I’ll see if I can locate her.”

We stayed put, eyes scanning across the glass enclosures, where iguanas-and tuataras and geckos, skinks and chameleons-perched on dead branches, and salamanders parked on leaves. It was feeding time, a lab tech moving down the line, pouring beetles from a coffee can.

“I’m Dr. Stark,” said a tall, ponytailed woman with a horsey smile. “How can I help you?”

“We’re interested in your stripe-faced man-eaters.”

“Ah, the lagartus lacerta zebrata. You know how they mate?”

“We’ve read about it.”

“Those poor chaps get a raw deal.” She chuckled. “Why are you interested?”

“Part of a murder investigation. We can’t say more.”

“A murder?” She practically brayed she was so excited. “Nothing like that ever happens around here.”

She waved for us to follow and led us down the long room with a clumsily unbalanced stride. Probably spent too much of her childhood in libraries instead of playgrounds.

She stopped at a cage sitting on the floor. “We keep a pair of specimens in here.”

Deluski and I dropped to our knees. I put my nose up to the wire mesh and studied a lizard resting on a rock, sitting so perfectly still that it looked fake, like a kid’s toy. Its body was as long as my hand with a cigar-sized tail that tapered down to a cigarette as it snaked through some leaves. “Is that the female?”

“No, that’s a male. He’s a nubby hubby now.” She laughed at her own joke. “He mated two days ago. It’s too early to tell if it took. He only gets one shot at it, you know. That’s the female with her tail in the water.”

I looked at her glassy eyes, stripes like three sets of crimson eyebrows. Broad, red-speckled lips. Skin the color of polished granite.

“Ever seen one before?”

I absently rubbed my right arm. “I think so.”

“She lives up to her name, that one. She’s mated four times, makes sure her husbands never cheat on her. She eats some of her young too, but only the girls. The practice assures that there are always more male man-eaters than female. Otherwise the procreative math wouldn’t work.”

A crawling beetle held the man-eater’s attention; her head was swiveling like a turret.

Deluski stood. “Has anybody else come to talk to you about these lizards?”

“Not that I can think of. But we give tours from time to time, and we always point them out.”

The man-eater attacked, her movement so quick that my eyes couldn’t track, like she’d disappeared and reappeared in a new location, the beetle suddenly clamped between her red-speckled lips. She held it like a trophy for a few seconds, then started to chew it down, lips drawing in the beetle’s shell little by little, until nothing but the legs poked out before they too disappeared.

I got to my feet. “Have you ever heard of anybody being obsessed with these things?”

“Obsessed?”

“Ever seen anybody who wanted to turn into one?”

She stroked her ponytail. “I don’t understand.”

I couldn’t say it. Seemed too outlandish to put voice to it. Ever heard of anybody replacing their back-door plumbing with a cock-chopping steel trap? The thought sent a shiver down my back. Nerves jingling on heebie-jeebie overload.

I still couldn’t figure how he got his vics to have sex with him. Froelich and Franz Samusaka were gay; maybe they got seduced into a helluva surprise. But Wu? That scar-headed stiff was straight as they came.

It was unfathomable. Wu’s family was slaughtered, his little girls killed in their beds, and that was when the killer decided to hit on Wu. I just axed your whole family, so how about you come over to my place for a little man love?

Deluski broke the silence. “These tours you give, ever had anybody ask strange questions about the man-eaters?”

“Define ‘strange.’”

“Strange. Weird. Out of the norm.”

“Somebody tried to steal them once. Does that count?”

“Who?”

“I don’t think I ever asked his name. This was a while ago. Could’ve been a year, maybe more. He stuffed them inside his shirt. He must’ve been quick, because nobody saw him do it, but I later saw a tail poking out between the buttons.”

“Did you call the police?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Didn’t want the hassle. I didn’t think anybody else saw, so I just held him back when the tour ended and asked him to return them.”

“What did he look like?”

“Young. I figured him for a student, although I never saw him around here again. He had a thick mess of hair.”

Deluski gave me a questioning look. I grinned on a surge of hope. Yeah, that could be him. “We need a name.”

“I really have no idea. But we do sign-in sheets for our tours.”

My ass was planted on a bench in the Old Town Square. Street vendors with woks and grills filled the air with an oily reek. Pedestrians wandered about, children with balloons tied to their wrists, young couples holding hands.

Deluski sat next to me busily scanning the names on the sign-in sheets into his newest anonymous phone. I watched the fountain, a circular pool surrounding a statue of four intertwined iguanas climbing for the sky. Even the natives wanted to escape this world.

Mota hung heavy in my thoughts. I knew I was going to have to kill him. Panama too. I reasoned it every which way, but there was no getting around the fact that it was them or me. The moment I first stepped into Chicho’s office, I put us on a collision course. Them or me.

I had to do them right. Not like when I went out to his house. Couldn’t let my nerves get the best of me. I had to be a pro.

The tricky part was getting away with it. But there was always a way.

Deluski elbowed me. “Got a hit.”

“What?”

“One of the names showed up in Wu and Froelich’s case files.”

“Who?”

“His name is Bronson Carew, age nineteen. He went to the police with a rape complaint.”

Rape. Interesting.

“His complaint was taken by Inspector Jeljili, but the case got passed to Wu and Froelich.”

“How could that be? Wu and Froelich worked Homicide, not Sex Crimes.”

“It doesn’t say.”

“When did this happen?”

“The day after the break-in at the Samusakas’.”

The timing nailed it. Too big a coincidence for him not to be Lizard-man. Your day of reckoning is coming, Bronson Carew. “Call Jeljili.”

He gave me a dark stare. “I just bought this phone.”

“It was compromised as soon as you logged into KOP. Mota could be tracking us already. We call Jeljili then dump it and go.”

“You’re buying the next one. Do you know Jeljili?”

“Yeah. I’ll talk.”

I waited while Deluski rang him up, my thoughts centered on the man who stole my hand. A rape victim. I didn’t feel sorry for him. I didn’t care how hurt he’d been. He could’ve been raped a thousand times, and I wouldn’t care. He didn’t have to kill Wu’s girls. He had to be punished.

Mota. Panama. Dr. Tranny. They all had to be punished.

Inspector Blake Jeljili’s holo appeared before the fountain, tailored suit hanging on a trim frame, young eyes and a thick shrub of hair. I almost laughed at how comically ancient this holo was. Must’ve been scanned twenty years ago, long before that shrub of hair lost most of its leaves. Before Jeljili’s waist tripled and his chin had twins.

Deluski passed me the phone.

“Jelly, this is Juno.”

“Juno? It’s been a while. Hey, I heard about your wife. Tough break.”

“Yeah.”

“What the hell did you do to piss off Mota? From what I hear, that queen’s got a tiara up his ass over you.”

“Anybody buying his BS?”

“Nobody I’ve talked to. The hommy boys are fed up with him meddling in their case. Rumor has it Froelich and he were lovers. You know anything about that?”

“Yeah, that one’s true.”

“Damn. Didn’t know Froelich swung that way.”

“I need some info.”

“Can’t help you.”

“Just some simple questions about an old case.”

“Listen, Juno, you know I always respected you and the chief. I really did, but these are different times.”

“I just-”

“I can’t help you. Shit, if anybody found out I was talking to you…”

“Just some sim-”

“I can’t take any chances until you get cleared.”

I raised my voice. “I have been cleared. I was questioned and cleared by Rusedski himself.”

“People are dying all around you, my boy. You heard Kripsen and Lumbela got killed?”

“No.” Seeing wasn’t the same as hearing.

“They got necktied. Word is you and that Deluski kid were chummy with them.”

I looked over at Deluski. He had his head in his hands, probably wondering if he’d ever be able to shake these questions. Wondering if he’d ever be able to erase the stain of sins.

The kid needed to chill. This was just a negotiation. He was mistaking Jeljili’s questions for accusations. Everything in this city was negotiable. Everything. I spoke into the receiver. “I don’t make the kind of scratch I used to.”

“Don’t gimme that. I know you, Juno, you always got something going. Am I right?”

Deluski gave me a bewildered stare while we haggled over price.

The money settled, I asked my question: Bronson Carew. Rape complaint. I want the whole story.

“Yeah, I remember that kid. He was one scary freak. He came in with this vid, said it proved he was raped.”

“You watched it.”

“I watched the whole thing. Hours and hours of it. Must’ve been shot over several days. It looked like they were living in an abandoned house, just a crappy old mattress on the floor.”

The party house where he’d staged Franz’s body. And later Froelich’s and Wu’s.

Jeljili rolled on. “I couldn’t help the kid. He wasn’t raped. He never objected, never said no. He didn’t cry or call for help.”

I already knew the answer but asked anyway. “Who was the alleged assailant?”

“Franz Samusaka. A rich kid. Father’s an oil tycoon.”

I clicked the new facts into place. “I know who he is. Did you question him?”

“Absolutely. Found out his house was broken into the day before Carew came into KOP. Didn’t take a genius to know Carew was the burglar.”

I processed the new info, incorporated it into the building narrative.

Jeljili continued, “Franz Samusaka denied the rape. Said it was consensual, which it was. This freak was digging for gold. Scored some high-class ass and now he wanted to get something for it.”

“Did Carew say he wanted money?”

“No. But it’s obvious, isn’t it? The Samusaka kid wanted me to return his stolen property, but I couldn’t do that.”

“Of course not.”

“This was evidence in a potential rape.” I could practically hear him smile, he was so pleased with himself. Translation: he wanted to get paid. “That was when Franz called in Froelich and Wu. He knew them somehow.”

“And?”

“And they brokered an arrangement.”

“The vid?”

“I heard it got lost.”

Of course it did. “That it?”

“That’s it.”

I tossed the phone into the fountain. “Let’s move.”

I took a chair next to the wall so I could look down on the Square.

Deluski went to the bar to pick up drinks, and came back saying, “I don’t get it. I thought Ang Samusaka staged the break-in in order to cover for the fact that he trashed his father’s study.”

I sipped my ice water, eyes tracking a panama hat that had just entered the Square. Its owner walked with a second man. It was too dark and too far to see faces, but I knew who they were. They walked toward the fountain.

Deluski was still waiting for an answer. “Well?”

I’d already reasoned it through. “Ang found the mess in his brother’s room after Carew broke in to steal the alleged rape vid. Then Ang took the opportunity to ransack his father’s study before reporting the break-in to the police. Whatever Ang found, he’s been using it to blackmail his father ever since.”

“But that doesn’t explain how Carew could’ve broken in without leaving any jimmied doors or broken windows.”

“True.”

Panama circled the fountain. Mota climbed onto a park bench so he could get a better view of the crowd. I aimed my left index finger in their direction, cocked my thumb like it was an antique-style gun. Bang.

“So how did Carew get inside?”

“Somebody must’ve let him in.”

Panama stepped into the fountain, water up to his knees, reached down and fished out Deluski’s phone. He held it up for Mota to see.

I aimed my finger. Bang.

He got out of the fountain and spiked the phone on the ground, drawing startled glares from passersby.

A smile came to my lips. I reveled in their frustration. They had scored some early points on me, but that was before my head was straight. Before I’d purged the booze out of my blood. They couldn’t match me now. I was a fucking master.

They moved out, heading in the opposite direction. I pumped finger shots into their backs. Bang, bang, motherfuckers.

I stared at the ceiling. Snails. It had to be the snails.

I heard Maria call my name from down the hall and sat up on the bed a second before she stepped through the curtain. “Hey, I can’t stay for long or Chicho will miss me. The evening rush will be starting soon.”

“What’s up?”

“Just wanted to make sure you’re still breathing.”

I gave her a wry grin and sucked in a couple life-proving deep breaths.

“Where’s Deluski?”

“He’s trying to track down the bastard who did this to me.” I lifted my arm. “The guy went off-grid a year ago.”

“But you know who he is?”

“We do.”

“So what are you doing lying around here?”

“Thinking. Ever seen anybody drink snail juice?”

She raised her overplucked eyebrows. “Snail juice?”

“Supposed to be an aphrodisiac.”

Her eyes lit with recognition. “Oh, you’re talking about the genie. It’s supposed to do more than that.”

“Tell me.”

“Supposed to make a person open to suggestion. Like when people get hypnotized. ‘Your wish is my command.’ I don’t know if it works, but I was there when Mota tried to sell some to Chicho. He claimed that it only took a drop to put somebody in a sex trance.”

“Sex trance?”

“It’s like you tell them what to do and they do it. Can’t help themselves. Mota said this particular species of snails produces some chemical they use as a defense mechanism. Makes hungry iguanas get disoriented or something, and discourages them from eating more snails. Mota said the snails he was selling had been enhanced with a concentrated version of the chemical.”

“Did Chicho buy any?”

“No. What would be the point? You don’t need a snail to make a hooker fuck your brains out. That’s what money is for.”

It finally made sense. The new fact meshed with other facts. I turned and twisted them into proper place.

A little drop was all it took for Franz Samusaka to turn Bronson Carew into his sex slave. He ordered Carew to enjoy it so the vid wouldn’t look like rape. Carew might not even be gay. No wonder he went psycho.

Fueled by humiliation and victimization, he fixated on the stripe-faced man-eater. That was one badass bitch. Couldn’t fuck her for free. He fantasized himself as the victim turning all powerful. You want to rape me? I dare you. C’mon, do it. There you go. That’s it…

Snap.

A shiver rippled down my back.

The fantasy was so powerful he made it real, got a steel trap installed inside himself. He re-created the rape by using the snails on Samusaka and brought him back to the original scene of the crime. Then he forced his rapist to rape him a second time, but this time he turned the tables. Took his pound of flesh in revenge.

God, a fantasy like that must’ve dominated his every waking thought. The urge to do it again grew over the months since, the drive like a tidal force, pressure building day after day until the bursting point, when he chose two more victims, the men who covered up Samusaka’s crime. They deserved it. They were accessories, rapists by proxy. He made them attack him, made them mount him.

It was the doctor who did this. Genetically engineered a new breed of snails and kept them in a pen outside his clinic. Wu, Froelich, and Mota were his distributors with connections to the gay community as well as the brothels. The trio headed upriver every so often to pick up a new cask of snails. The pile of cash in that picture of them was their latest ill-begotten haul.

And Panama was their partner. A Yepala sheriff who took his cut of the profits in exchange for providing muscle as well as allowing the doctor to run his clinic on his land.

Maria sat next to me. “What’s wrong? You look lost.”

Not anymore, I’m not. The doctor had to be stopped. He’d brought us the genie. The ultimate date rape drug. The bastard was a menace. A scourge.

Her phone rang. “It’s Chicho.”

“Take it.”

I stood and walked into the bathroom, lifted the seat with my shoe.

The genie.

A sickening thought came to mind. Lizard-man might’ve made Wu kill his own family, his own girls. Jesus. I didn’t know if the drug was strong enough to make somebody do a thing so horrendous, but if it could make him shove his junk into a steel trap, then what couldn’t it do?

The sudden urge to vomit overwhelmed me. I dropped to my knees and gagged into the toilet. Jesus.

I flushed and stood on my quivery legs. Maria was still on the phone. “Where? Tell me where!”

I hadn’t paid any attention to her conversation until now. A rush of alarm struck, and I was out the door.

She was pacing, Chicho’s holo moving to and fro to stay in front of her. I stepped through him, into her path, grabbed her by the elbow. “What is it?”

Words came out in a frantic, hyper stream. “My sister. A john attacked my s-sister. She’s g-going to the hospital.”

“That you, Juno?” asked holo-Chicho.

I took the phone from Maria. “It’s me.”

“A john cut one of my girls. What are you going to do about it?”

“Who is he?”

“He goes by the name J.T. I’m paying you for protection, you better take care of this.”

“You know his address?”

The address popped in over his holo-head. I read it twice before hanging up.

I passed the phone back and looked into her terrified eyes. “Go to the hospital. Take care of her.”

“He said she lost a lot of blood.”

I guided her toward the door. “Just go. I’ll take care of everything else.”

I watched her hurry down the hall. A john cut her sister, and Chicho wanted me to rough him up.

I wasn’t buying it. A john my ass. Chicho cut her himself. That rat bastard had gone back to Mota and helped him and Panama set their trap.

The showdown was near.

The Rojo Caballo.

I sized up the hotel from a neighboring rooftop, eyes scanning up and down six stories of stone staircases and long outdoor walkways. Lights shined inside windows of the lower levels. The upper levels were dark and empty. Vacant. Abandoned.

This was the address Chicho gave me. The address of the supposed knife-happy john.

I scoped the two-tiered roof, its ragged tarps and gnarled rebar. Scrap metal rested in piles. Scaffolding had been there so long it could be mistaken for part of the structure.

The address came complete with a unit number: P2. P for penthouse, 2 for the two men who were about to die.

A light glowed inside one of the rooftop unit’s windows. Probably just a flashlight positioned to make me think the john who had cut up Maria’s sister actually lived there. I kept my eyes on the shadows, primed to spot movement of any kind. But they were keeping cool. Disciplined.

The smart move was to stay clear. The smarter move was to take advantage. They were planning to kill me on that rooftop. That meant they’d taken great pains to make sure they hadn’t been seen getting up there. And that meant they hadn’t told anybody of their whereabouts.

Which meant they’d made my job of getting away with murder that much easier.

Mota’s setup was a yawner. Did he really think he could lure me to my death with that flimsy-ass story? That shit was grade-school.

I crossed the rooftop, feet tromping through leafy vines and ripped tar paper. I climbed a wall and jumped down to a lower rooftop, the long bag slung over my shoulder bouncing on my back. All I had to do now was hurdle that rail, cross that balcony down there, climb out onto that ledge, jump across this alley.

I checked the time. Maggie should be along any minute. Careful to stay in shadow, I leaned out and peered down at the street, where a jam of cars was gridlocked like bathroom tiles, pedestrians walking the grout lines. Horns and shouts echoed up the alley walls, the noisy sounds of a dysfunctional city.

There she was, crossing the street. Even from way up here, I recognized her, that confident stride, black locks waving in a light breeze. Maggie passed the Rojo Caballo’s front door and entered the alley, reaching a staircase and starting up.

I moved again, butterflies lifting off in my gut, pulse beating faster. Harder. I walked to the edge and stepped off, dropped a meter to a balcony, the landing muffled by a soft bed of moss. I ducked under a pipe, detoured around a ventilation fan, and sidestepped my way out onto the ledge.

I looked down at the hotel. Maggie was on the fifth floor now. She tried a gate that led to the roof but found it locked. Mota and Panama had seen to it that there was only one point of entry, meaning Maggie would have to walk to the opposite end to the other gate. She stepped along the outdoor walkway, heels crunching crumbled concrete, hotel rooms on her left. Door, window, door, window, door, window…

I caught a glimpse of her face as she walked under a light, the beam catching a rock jaw and eyes like jade.

She passed below my position. I kept still. She had no idea I was here, no clue what I had planned.

I hadn’t liked lying to her, but I did it. I’d told her I was ready to surrender my protection racket to Mota. I just needed her to negotiate the truce.

I’d told her all about Maria’s sister getting cut, and how I thought Mota and Panama would be on the hotel’s roof ready to ambush me. She could go in my place and work out a deal.

But it was all a ruse.

What I really needed was for someone to draw out Mota and Panama from their hiding places so I could kill them.

I couldn’t feel bad about using her. Not now. Not until it was over. Time enough to repent later.

She was on the other end of the hotel now, going through the unlocked gate and disappearing up the stairs. I could hear her call Mota’s name. “Don’t shoot! It’s Maggie Orzo.”

I used my left to put the earpiece dangling on my shoulder into my ear. I recoiled at the volume when she shouted his name again. The bug I’d dropped in her hair had a sensitive pickup. She’d never find it. Small like a flea.

I sloughed the bag off my shoulder and reached in, pulled out a lase-rifle, unfolded the stock and snapped it into place.

“Captain Mota?” I heard in my ear. “Come on out. I came alone.” So she thinks.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Mota’s voice.

“I’m unarmed,” she said. “Juno’s not coming. He didn’t fall for that story Chicho told him. He knew it would be a trap. He sent me to negotiate a truce.”

So she thinks.

I dropped the now empty bag, watched it sweep and sway its way down to the alley far below. I checked the rifle to see if the telemetry from Maggie’s bug had been received. Green light.

“Who is this?” Maggie’s voice.

“I’m a business partner from upriver.” Maggie, meet Panama.

I gauged the distance across the alley. Two meters. A drop of, say, four. I could clear it easy. No problem.

I looked straight down. The alley was long and narrow with evenly spaced lights, the last one infected by a jittery flicker. I figured it best to jump now in case the jitters were contagious.

I held the rifle out front and pushed off with both feet. Air blew through my hair and billowed my shirt, my stomach climbing into my throat. I dropped as I crossed the narrow alley, sailing over the blacktop far underneath. I cleared the hotel wall, feet reaching for the roof of one of the penthouse units.

Contact.

Knees buckled.

Impact.

The rifle wrenched out of my hand. My body folded up, my chin driving into my knee with a clap of teeth. I fell backward, my back and head striking the wall.

Too stunned to move, I stayed where I was, my heart pumping mad beats. My lungs sucked wild breaths. I swallowed blood. My chin, teeth, and jaw suffered from a wicked uppercut. I thought the forward momentum would’ve been enough to take me into a roll, but my downward trajectory must’ve been too steep.

I fumbled for my earpiece, stuck it back in my ear. Maggie’s voice came through the dazed fog. “He doesn’t care about the protection business. You can have it back.”

“And in exchange?”

“All we want is the doctor. We’ve been to that hellhole he calls a clinic. He’s using people as lab rats.”

“That’s a little outside your jurisdiction, don’t you think?” Panama’s voice.

“He has an office here.”

“He doesn’t do anything illegal here. And what he does in Yepala is my jurisdiction.”

They hadn’t heard my fuckup of a landing. I tested my legs, couldn’t feel them, but they moved when I told them to. I forced myself onto my hands and knees, started feeling around for my gun, thorny weeds poking and scraping.

I crawled on numb knees. It felt like I had two more stumps. My hand made contact, fingers wrapped around the rifle. I pulled the weapon up, pressed the cool steel of the barrel against my cheek. I struggled upright, using the rifle as a third leg.

Maggie spoke in my ear. “Juno offered to sweeten the deal.”

Mota laughed. “Now you’re saying he wants to buy his way out? What happened to the empty threats?”

I took slow, lurching steps, wobbled and weaved, toddler-like, toward the open arms of scaffolding pipes. I hooked my arms around them and leaned out, took a look, couldn’t make visual. My weapon required line-of-sight.

I went to the corner, looked in another direction, couldn’t see them. Shit.

I looked into the gunsight, studied the rifle’s display. I saw numbers. Coordinates. Maggie’s bug was reporting her exact position, its camera eye picking out Mota and Panama, calculating their positions, feeding the data into the targeting system. Somebody smarter than me would know how to read this thing. They’d do some quick math and know right where to go. All I saw was random numbers. Shit.

“It’s too late for him, Maggie. He can’t undo this. It’s time he paid for all the shit he’s done.”

I climbed out onto the scaffolding. I needed to make my way down from the penthouse rooftop to the hotel proper. They had to be behind the other rooftop unit, close to the staircase Maggie had climbed.

I pulled out a pocket light and risked flicking it on. I carried it in my teeth, seeking a way down. I spotted a ladder, took a step in that direction, and stopped. How was a one-armed man going to carry a rifle down a ladder?

I jogged in the opposite direction, toward the street, found an access stairway and struggled with a single-hinged door, managing to angle myself through.

“She knows where he is.” Panama’s voice. “We can make her lead us to him.”

“No. We’ll find him another way.”

“Fuck that. Let’s teach her how we do it in the jungle.”

“We’re not in the jungle.”

“I’ve never given a necktie to a woman.”

“This is a homicide detective.”

“So?”

“So, we can’t bring that kind of heat down on ourselves.”

I exited the stairwell and turned toward the hotel’s rear.

“What are you talking about? You weren’t opposed to killing cops when I nectktied those two in the Cellars.”

“This one’s well connected.”

Maggie had no fear. “Don’t be stupid. You touch me, and there’ll be no deal. It’ll be all-out war.”

Panama’s voice was full of malice. “That ship done sailed. The war is on.”

I stepped into the shadow of the second penthouse unit. Flashlight off. Rifle raised. Eyes peeled. I lifted one shoe and then the other, taking high steps to keep from getting tangled in the vines.

Silence in my earpiece. Mota was mulling his options. I inched my way around a pile of scrap metal, choosing my steps oh-so-carefully. Sweat rolled down my nose, stung my eyes. The corner was close. Almost there.

I moved past, edging my way up to what used to be a mini-courtyard pinned between penthouse units. The staircase leading down sat on the far side. The junk-strewn courtyard was lit by a portable gas lamp sitting on a crate. Maggie faced my direction, her hands raised halfway, like she’d gotten tired of holding them high. Mota and Panama stood opposite Maggie, their weapons drawn, covering both her and the staircase.

Maggie broke the silence. “So what if the war already started. I’m giving you the chance to end it.”

“And if we don’t?”

“If you don’t, my money’s on Juno.” A lengthy pause followed before she added, “He can be a ruthless son of a bitch.”

Damn straight. Exhibit A: I wasn’t above shooting two men in the back.

I blinked sweat out of my eyes, told my racing heart to settle down. I held my weapon lefty, finger on the trigger, forestock resting on what was left of my forearm.

I pinned down the trigger. No hesitation. No doubt. Panama was right. This was war.

I swept the weapon left to right, the targeting system firing timed bursts that briefly cast the rooftop in a fiery glow. Panama collapsed first, Mota an instant later, his body falling into a pile of scrap, followed by the sound of breaking glass.

Maggie’s body jerked and she let out a startled scream. Her eyes and jaw opened wide. She blinked, her face dotted with blood. Same with her hands and shirt.

I rushed forward, toward the smell of roasted meat. She ducked and went for Panama’s weapon, which still sat in his hand.

“It’s me.” I came out of the shadows, rifle in one hand.

She pulled the weapon from his dead grasp and held it in both hands, her face seized by shock.

“It’s me,” I repeated. “It’s okay.”

She lowered the gun. “What did you do?”

I stepped up to Mota’s lifeless body, peeled his gun out of his hand. “I ended it.”

She stared at the bodies, bewildered.

I watched the spreading pool of blood, his hat getting caught in the flow, blood sponging into the hat’s weave.

Maggie looked at her hands, at the spattered blood. She wiped them on her pants.

My feet tickled with pins and needles, sensation slowly coming back. I turned to take another look at Mota, a pane of glass partly trapped under one shoulder, shards radiating outward. His pretty-boy face was pressed into the rooftop, nose squished up, lips pushed into a guppy mouth.

A fist struck my back. “What did you do!”

I winced and arched my back. Another shot landed, this one on the kidney, the heft of her pistol making the blow sink painfully deep. More blows came and I took every one of them. She hit me with words too, a torrent of angry venom: They were listening to me, asshole. Why did you jump the gun? They were going to take the truce.

She figured the rest of it soon enough. Words snapped from her lips. You set me up. You didn’t want a truce. You used me as a diversion. You made me an accessory.

I waited quietly until she was spent, my back getting plenty tenderized.

Tentatively, I turned to face her and bowed my head. “I had to end it. There was no other way.”

“Yes, there was, dammit! I was about to make a truce.”

“We can’t trust Mota’s word.”

“How do you know? You didn’t even try.”

I looked into her blood-speckled face. “Some doubts can’t be left to chance.”

Exasperated, she rubbed her forehead with her free hand. Feeling the blood, she pulled her hand away. “Jesus.” She buried her face in her sleeve and tried to wipe it off. “You couldn’t do it, could you? Couldn’t give up your protection business like you promised. Now you’re eliminating your competition.”

“I gave the protection business away.”

“Bullshit.”

“I did. I gave it to Chicho’s bouncer. She and her sister are going to run it.”

Maggie aimed her gaze down at the bodies. A cloud of flies swirled about. The sound of chittering lizards came from the shadows, a four-legged army ready to feed. “Why didn’t you tell me what you were going to do?”

“You think you could’ve convinced them you were on the up-and-up if you’d known? Would you have even come?”

“I can’t believe you. I really can’t. What are you going to do with them?”

“Hide them under some scrap, come back in a few days after the flies and lizards pick them clean to collect the bones.”

She closed her eyes. “Christ.”

With nothing more to say, we stayed where we were, alone with our thoughts, me hoping she’d accept the decisions I’d made, hoping I hadn’t driven us permanently apart. The air hummed with flies. Squawking horns sounded from the street while sirens sang somewhere in the distance.

I built up the nerve to ask, “Are we okay?”

She kept quiet, seconds stretching by. Finally she spoke. “Are those sirens coming this way?”

My ears tuned into the whine of sirens. They couldn’t be coming for us. Couldn’t be. We were totally alone. Isolated in this condemned rooftop courtyard.

Yet they grew in strength, the walls echoing with their wail.

Maggie pulled out her phone. I dropped my rifle and nabbed the portable light, took off on a dead sprint, crossing the roof, running for the side that faced the street.

I sped past ventilation fans, weaved around piles of junk, skidded around a corner and up to the wall. I poked my head over, into the blare of sirens, the strobe of blue and red lights a mere block away.

I told myself they weren’t coming for us. They were coming for some other reason. Some kind of coincidence.

Packed traffic slowly parted, cop cars creeping closer, more coming from the opposite direction. Shit!

I was running again, back the way I’d come, my brain teetering on the brink. Maggie yelled to me, “We gotta go! They’re responding to a call of officer down.”

She went partway down the stairs before I could summon the breath to tell her to stop. “It’s too late. They’re almost here. They’ll have the alley and the hotel entrance blocked before we can get down there.”

She stopped. All I could see was the back of her head, the rest of her body hidden by the staircase she’d partially descended. Her voice sounded distant. Defeated. “Mota has a biomon. He gets wounded and it alerts KOP. Tells them where he is. They’ve been thinking about making them standard-issue.”

“It’s okay,” I said, as if saying it could make it true. “I’ll ’fess up. I’ll cop to everything. You had nothing to do with it.”

She turned to face me, her voice rigid with stern accusation. “You ruined everything.”

“It’ll be okay,” I pleaded. “You’ll be in the clear.”

She came up a step. “I’ll never see another promotion. You destroyed my career.”

“It’ll be okay.”

Another step. “You made me an accomplice.”

“I’ll tell th-”

“I never should’ve associated with you.” Step. “What was I thinking?” Step. “You’re a selfish prick.” Step. “A crazy drunk.”

The words struck with such force that I wished she’d just punch me some more. I’d fucked it all up. Fucked it every possible way. I was going down. Hard.

But no way in hell was I going to let her fall with me. She didn’t do anything wrong. She was KOP’s only chance for a better future. She was family.

I had to keep her clear, but a flurry of logic painted a bleak best case. There’d be a full investigation. She’d have to face inquiries. What was your relationship with cop killer Juno Mozambe? To defend herself, she’d have to vilify Mota. She’d have to sully a dead cop’s name. That in itself was a violation of the cop code. Even if she managed to keep her shield, her chances of becoming brass would be destroyed. Rusedski would bump her out of Homicide. She’d never be trusted with a position of leadership.

Cleaning up KOP was Maggie’s mission. People like us needed a mission. Without a mission, we were empty shells. Husks of skin and bone.

Without a mission, we were like Niki. We might as well kill ourselves.

Maggie sliced me again with her tongue. “You ruin everything you touch, everything and everybody.”

No. I squeezed my hand into a fist, pressed it into my forehead. I wouldn’t go down like that. I couldn’t. There was always a way. I’d flip this thing on its head. No such thing as a rap I couldn’t beat. Nobody could work the angles like me. I was the king of cover-ups. Master of the frame job. Reality didn’t mean shit to me. Not when I could create my own.

There was always a way.

I closed my eyes, darkness closing around me. I pushed a knuckle into my temple. Think!

Darkness cracked, a ray of light shining through. I rode the light. Thoughts dominoed. Random patterns lined up into rows.

I rushed up to Maggie, nose to nose, eye-to-eye. “Lock the gate.”

She scrunched up disbelieving brows, but already there was a glint of hope in her eyes. She knew my genius. My gift.

I could feel the fire in my eyes, nerves gone electric. I was a mad scientist. A possessed soul. “Lock the gate. Do it now!”

She ran down the stairs, the power of my insanity impossible to resist.

I knelt next to Mota’s body, blood seeping into my pant legs, flies bouncing off my hand, my face, slipping inside my shirt. I didn’t let myself think about what I had to do. I grabbed his belt, yanked it free of its prong, and slid it through the buckle. I reached for his pants, grabbed the cloth next to the button, and wrestled it free.

Maggie was back.

I didn’t look up. “My rifle. Get rid of it. Heave it onto another roof.”

I pulled down the zipper, parted the flaps.

I heard the gate rattle on its hinges. They were here.

I gave instructions, my voice calm and flat. Disassociated. Like it wasn’t my voice at all. “Flash your badge. Give orders. Tell them there’s no emergency. I need a minute so don’t let them break through the gate. Make them get a key. Stay back so they don’t see the blood spatter on your clothes.”

I reached into his shorts and pulled it out.

Voices echoed up the staircase, Maggie’s take-charge attitude silencing them. She was the real deal. Always rose to the occasion. She was going to make a great chief.

I took a moment to study the broken glass that had been trapped under his body when he fell. I selected a long shard, picked it out of the expanding pool of blood.

Maggie returned. “What now?”

I stayed between her and Mota’s body. “Did you let them see you?”

“I stayed back far as I could.”

“Good. You need to cover the spatter patterns on your clothes. Flip Panama over like you’re checking to see if he’s alive. Get as much blood on you as you can.”

I squeezed the glass shard tight in my hand, felt it dig into my palm. “We were following Lizard-man. He did this. We surprised him before he could finish. He made it down the stairs before we could stop him. He locked us in.”

She wrestled with Panama’s body, knees slip-sliding in blood as she rolled him over. She rubbed her hands together, wiped them on her shirt.

“That’s good enough. Now get down there to greet them.”

She hurried for the staircase. I waited until she disappeared from view. Didn’t want her to see this.

I pinned it to his stomach with my right, sawed with my left. I was on autopilot. A machine. My soul locked inside a safe.

Cold. Efficient. Utterly ruthless.

The glass cut all the way through. The jingle of keys on a chain sounded nearby. I took my glass shiv by the edges and wiped it back and forth on my pant leg, bloody prints wiping off before carrying it a couple steps to a ventilation fan and dropping it through the grate, hearing it shatter somewhere inside.

The gate creaked open, the sound of shoes on stone stairs. I rushed back to Mota’s body. Reached for it, picked it off his stomach.

Unis spilled onto the roof, two, four, six. Flashlights and quiet voices.

I held it in my fist. Had to take it with me. Had to plant it on Lizard-man when I found him. Had to.

I backed away from the body, from the mass of dancing flies. Nothing to see here.

I watched the unis, watched them look at me, at the bodies, back at me. I moved into shadow, leaned against the wall. I took my balled fist and shoved it into a pocket.

Maggie jumped on them. “This is a crime scene, people. We have a dead captain here. Nobody touches anything. Somebody go get me a goddamned towel.”

One of the ashen-faced unis leapt at the chance to get away from the corpses. Maggie called to his back, “Get one for Juno too.”

More unis arrived, one of them announcing that Lieutenant Rusedski was on his way. I stayed put, felt the cool brick through my shirt, luxuriated in it. A rush came on. The surge of exultant heat made my skin flush. My tingling feet felt like they were floating. I’d done it!

My soul came up from where it hid, body and soul reintegrating. With it, my mood spoiled, the rush going south. My floating feet fell, and my flushed skin broke into a sweat.

Did I really do it? Inside my pocket, I felt it in my fist. God, I had it in my hand. The urge to throw it and run seized me, and rattled nerves brought on a case of the shakes. I tamped it down, forced my hand to let go and pulled my fingers out of my pocket.

I stared at Mota’s corpse. His defiled, desecrated corpse. Christ. If there was any justice at all, hell would have a special place reserved for me. They’d build me a whole wing.

The young officer returned with towels and a couple wet cloths. I approached and greedily nabbed a cloth before moving back into the shadows. I wiped my face, rubbed it over my cheeks, my forehead.

Maggie talked as she cleaned up, explaining to no one in particular, “We came here to find the serial who killed Froelich and Wu. I caught a tip from one of my informants. Said she heard from one of her hooker friends who turns tricks downstairs that she’d seen a strange guy hanging around up here. The description was close enough I thought I should check it out. Juno had a run-in with this guy so I brought him with me to see if he could identify him. We were about to plant ourselves in that bar across the way and watch for him to show when we see these two fools head into the alley and up the stairs. We wait a few minutes, unsure what to do, then decide to follow them up.”

I wiped the cloth across my neck and forced myself to pay attention. Maggie wasn’t really speaking to them. She was talking to me. Getting our story set before Rusedski arrived. Just in case he interviewed us separately.

“We come up those stairs, and this is what we find.” She gestured at the bodies. “He must’ve heard us coming and hid behind that pile of junk there. We come through, and all of a sudden he’s racing down the stairs behind us. Juno tried to catch him, but the guy was too quick. He got to the gate at the bottom first and locked us in.”

I could feel the bulge in my pocket. I stood totally erect, trying to make my pants hang loose so I wouldn’t feel it pressing against my leg.

Maggie unfolded her cloth, put the whole thing over her face and scrubbed it clean, her voice coming through her hands. “We checked to see if they were still alive, but they were long gone. By the time I went for my phone, the sirens were almost here. You must’ve just missed him. Anybody see a young guy running down the street, big mop of black hair?”

They shook their heads no.

I felt a trickle on my leg. Holy hell. I lifted my knee and sopped up the blood by forcing my pant leg taut.

A gruff voice came from the staircase. Lieutenant Rusedski. “What happened?” Spotting us, he stomped across the tar paper. “What the hell are you two doing here?”

Maggie kept cleaning her hands. “We were-”

He jabbed a finger at her. “I took you off the goddamned case!”

I squirmed in my pants, a blood spot showing right below the bulge.

Rusedski kept his ire on Maggie. “You are so fucking fired. I don’t care who your parents are. You went too far this time.”

She raised a hand, thumb and index finger almost touching. “We came this close to catching him. Where were you and your precious task force?”

Rusedski leaned in. “You’ve been holding out on me. Keeping evidence to yourself when you should’ve turned it over. You’re fucking finished, you hear me?”

“I’m not going to listen to this shit. C’mon, Juno, let’s go.”

I gladly took a step toward the staircase. Toward salvation.

Rusedski put up a hand. “Not so fast, dammit.” He motioned us past a pile of junk to where we could talk privately. “Tell me what happened, and you leave anything out, I swear to God I won’t just bounce your ass, I’ll bring charges.”

Maggie huffed, playing the wrongly accused to a T. She went into it, same story as before. This time with more detail, more embellishments.

Another day, another place, I would’ve appreciated her performance, but I had to get out of these pants. God, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t keep from checking the blood spot again. I could feel it resting on my leg. I could feel it.

Calm down. Pretend it’s not there. Concentrate.

The coroner arrived. Not Abdul, dammit. He’d picked a fine time to take a day off.

The forensics wouldn’t match. Wouldn’t be close. Bronson Carew didn’t shoot his victims. He stabbed them. His postmortem mutilations weren’t ragged, half-assed cuts. He didn’t leave chips of glass in the wounds. Probably wasn’t left-handed either.

But Carew was a psycho. An unstable, delusional psycho. Who could say that his MO couldn’t change? It wasn’t that big a stretch, was it? Rusedski would fall for it. The killer was in a rush. He got interrupted midway. The evidence couldn’t be expected to be a perfect match.

It was too big a leap for him to think I could’ve done this. That I shot two men in the back. That I pulled down Mota’s pants, picked up a piece of glass, and did what I did. Too outlandish. Even for me. I wasn’t that vicious. Or that desperate. I wasn’t that fucked in the head.

Except I was.

Med techs set up lights. The coroner got generous with the fly gel, gunky globs applied to the wounds.

“Who is that?” He pointed at Panama.

Maggie said, “Ask Juno.”

Great. Rusedski aimed eagle eyes at me. “Well?”

A fly landed on my pocket. I nervously swiped it away. I cleared my throat to make sure I still had a voice. “He’s a Yepala cop, a sheriff.”

“You shitting me?”

I shook my head and waved for him to come close, like I didn’t want the unis and med techs to overhear. He took an impatient step forward, and I beckoned him closer, hoping that I could bring him in near enough that he’d have no place to put his eyes except my face.

He stayed where he was, his pissed glare telling me I better talk.

“The YOP sheriff was in business with Wu, Froelich, and Mota.”

“What kind of business?”

I glanced down. Three flies on my leg. Fuck. I stuck my thumb in my pocket, let my fingers hang over the bulge. “They were dealing a new drug. The genie.”

“Genie? As in magic lamp?”

I nodded as I struggled to line up the words in my head. Concentrate. “It’s a date rape drug harvested from genetically engineered snails, but it doesn’t put anybody under. It gives you control over them, makes them do anything you want.”

He chewed his lip, processing.

I felt a fly on my knuckle, twitched a finger to make it take off. “You give somebody the genie and you get a helluva lot more than three wishes. It puts you in complete control until it wears off.”

“How long does that take?”

I gave him an unknowing smirk.

He was silent, gnawing on his lip, wheels turning inside his eyes.

I wiggled my fingers, flies launching and boomeranging straight back. I had to get out of here, needed to fast-forward to the end of this conversation. This charade wouldn’t last. Damn flies were going to give me away.

Words spilled out fast, nervous energy impossible to contain. “These assholes unleashed the ultimate rape drug. And the fucker who took my hand was one of its first victims. Bastard got raped, and then he got ignored when he came to the police.”

“He came to us?”

“Damn straight. But when Froelich and Wu found out, they swept it under to keep their operation going. They said he was a willing participant, told him he must’ve enjoyed it. Now he’s getting his revenge.”

Rusedski kept gnawing that lip. I kept spinning my yarn. “Mota was all over my ass because he was trying to cover his. He and this piece of shit from Yepala necktied Kripsen and Lumbela in an attempt to stop me.”

I saw a hint of fear creeping into his eyes. He was beginning to understand that he’d landed in the middle of a big-ass shit storm, and he was already trying to figure a way to keep himself clean. Classic low-level brass. First thought: containment.

I glanced down, my hand dotted with flies. My pants pocket too. I took a hurried step forward and bumped into him. I pulled my hand away from my pocket, put it on his shoulder, and whispered in his ear, “All these killings, it’s all about the genie. The public gets word that two of your detectives unleashed this devil, you’re going to fall.”

Check-fucking-mate. I had all the leverage I needed. You want containment, you stop riding Maggie. You give her whatever she wants. You make her a star.

I opened my mouth to drive the point home.

He pulled away from me. “Who is he?”

“Who?”

“Who the fuck do you think? The serial. What’s his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t try that crap on me. He came to the police. He filed a report. What’s his name?”

Shit. Shit. Shit. My heart sank into my stomach, my stomach into my intestines, intestines dropping right out of me. My leverage was gone, evaporated. You said too much, you stupid shit.

I couldn’t let him find Carew. Not until I found him first. I had to plant my evidence. This case had to be closed up tight. And soon. I couldn’t let Rusedski’s task force mull over all the fucked forensics on this rooftop, couldn’t let them think too long or they might pull on one of a thousand loose threads and unravel the fabric of our story.

“You two are done holding out on me.” He turned to Maggie. “You think you can steal the glory? You think you can steal my job one day? Well, fuck you. You want to keep your job, you give me that name.”

I couldn’t tell him. I had to find Carew first. What were the odds we could outrace an entire task force? They’d post his pic on the news. Some do-gooder spots him and calls it in, we’re done for.

“Tell me,” he insisted.

My pocket was hopping with flies. I was out of time. Had to get out of here before he looked down.

He stared at Maggie. Then at me. He had us and he knew it. I’d said too damn much, gave my whole game away. Idiot.

“His name is Bronson Carew.”

“Where does he live?”

“I don’t know. He’s been off the grid for months.”

He eyed me with intense suspicion. I happily took the heat. All that mattered now was that he kept his gaze above my belt. “Look him up yourself, you don’t believe me.”

He pulled out his phone. “Don’t think I won’t.”

I took the opportunity to move away, deeper into the darkness, my mini-swarm coming with, my heart rate red-fucking-lined.

I tried to ignore the flies, the thing in my pocket. I watched Rusedski call up a holo-head, black hair, eyes like wildfire. Bronson Carew.

My spine went to ice, visions of that face shifting into the stripe-faced man-eater, steel teeth dug into my flesh. The missing part of my arm tingled, a hollow kind of prickle. Unscratchable. Unsootheable. Unbearable.

I wanted out of these pants. Wanted out of this skin. Out of this nightmare of my own making.

Maggie kept her distance. The look on her face said I better get used to it. I told myself she couldn’t cut me out of her life. Shit like this sticks to you. It follows you around for the rest of your life and beyond. She and I were permanently linked. Shackled. Like me and Niki. Me and Paul.

You couldn’t ever cut the shackles loose. You just had to learn how to drag it all with you as you walked.

Rusedski put the phone in his pocket and stepped up to Maggie. “Here’s how it’s going to play. You’re going home to clean up and then you’re going in to work. You’ll sit at your desk until I catch Carew. Day, night, I don’t give a shit. You’ll stay there until we catch his ass.”

She nodded.

“And you’re going to keep this genie shit under wraps, absolutely no mention of Froelich or Wu’s involvement. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You be a good girl, and I’ll keep all this off your record.”

The status quo had been reestablished, my checkmate reduced to a draw. I could live with a draw. So could Maggie. But I had to find Carew first.

Or it was game over.