Page 26 of Origin in Death

  "You try to charge them, the media's going to chew it bloody. Hu­man rights groups are going to get in on it, and in five short minutes, we'll have the newly formed Clone Rights organizations. You get them to lead you to Deena, that's chummy, Dallas. I'd like to hear her story. And maybe, if there's only one of her, we manage to cut some deal. But with these?"

  She gestured toward the glass, and the three women at the table. "You've got enforced imprisonment, brainwashing, diminished capac­ity, child endangerment. And if I were going to bat for them, pure old self-defense. I'd make it work, too. There's no way to win this."

  "Three people are dead."

  "Three people," Reo reminded her, "who conspired to break inter­national laws, and who broke said laws for decades. Who, if you're get­ting the truth in there, created life, then terminated those lives if they didn't meet certain standards. Who created that which killed them. They're smart."

  She walked closer to the glass. "Did you hear what they said? 'We were imprinted to be, do, feel,' and so on. That's a strong, impenetra­ble line of defense. Because they were created and engineered and imprinted. They acted as they'd been programmed to react. They defended their children against what many will see as a nightmare.'

  "Get what you can out of them," Tibble ordered. "Get Deena Flavia, get locations. Get details."

  "And then?" Eve asked.

  "House arrest. We'll keep them under wraps until we get this closed down. They wear bracelets. Guards-droids-twenty-four/seven. We're going to have to pass this up, Jack."

  "Yes, sir, we are."

  "Get details," Tibble repeated. "We're going to verify every one of them, cross every T. Twenty-four hours, max, and we're passing this ball. Let's make sure it doesn't bounce up and smash into our faces."

  "I've got to head in, start strategizing what we do when and if we do it." Reo picked up her briefcase. "You get anything I can use, I need to know. Day or night."

  "I'll show you all out." Roarke stepped to the door.

  "I need to speak with the lieutenant." Mira stayed where she was. "Privately, if you don't mind."

  "Peabody, go in. Give them each a bathroom break, offer them food, drink. Then pick one. Take her out and start working her. Soft sell."

  When she was alone with Mira, Eve walked to the large coffeepot Roarke must have put on a table. She poured a cup.

  "I'm not going to apologize for my comments and reactions of ear­lier today," Mira began.

  "Fine. Me, neither. If that's it-"

  "Sometimes you seem so hard it's difficult to believe anything gets through. I know that's not true, and still. .. If Wilfred and his son did the things they-she-claims, it's reprehensible."

  "Look through the glass. See them? I think that goes a long way toward corroboration of the statements given."

  "I know what I see." Her voice trembled a little, then strengthened. "That he used children-not consenting, informed adult volunteers, but innocents, minors, the injured, the dying. Whatever his motives, whatever his goals, that alone condemns him. It's difficult, Eve, to con­demn someone you considered a hero."

  "We've been around that lap already."

  "Damn it, have some respect."

  "For who? Him? Forget it. For you, okay, fine. I do, which is why you're pissing me off. You got any dregs of respect left for him, then-"

  "I don't. What he did was against every code. Maybe, maybe I could forgive what he started to do, out of grief. But he didn't stop. He per­petuated it. He played God with lives, not just in the creating of them, but in the manipulation of them. Of her, and all the rest. He gave her to his son as if she were a prize."

  "That's right, he did."

  "His grandchildren." Mira pressed her lips together. "He would have used his own grandchildren."

  "And himself."

  Mira let out a long, unsteady breath. "Yes. I wondered if you'd real­ized that yet."

  "A man has the power to create life, why bow to mortality? He's got cells preserved somewhere, with orders to activate on his death. Or he's already got a younger version of himself working somewhere."

  "If so, you have to find him. Stop him."

  "She's already thought of that." Eve gestured toward the glass. "She and Deena. And they've got a big jump on me. She'd like the trial."

  Eve moved to the glass, studied the two women still in the meeting room. "Yeah, if the kids were away, protected, she'd fucking love to face trial, and spill all this out. She'd spend her life in prison without batting an eye to make sure what was done is in the open. She knows she'll never spend a day in a cage, but she'd do it if she had to."

  "You admire her."

  "I give her an A for balls. I admire balls. He put her in a mold, and imprint or no, she broke it. She broke him."

  She knew what it took to kill your jailer. Your father. "You should go home. You're going to have to spend time with them tomorrow it we're going to cross all Tibble's T's. It's too late to start that tonight."

  "All right." Mira started for the door, paused. "I'm entitled to some degree of upset," she said. "To my irrational outbursts earlier, to anger and hurt feelings."

  "I'm entitled to expect you to be perfect, because that's how I see you. So if you go around acting flawed and human like the rest of us lower beings, it's going to throw me off."

  "That's so completely unfair. And touching. Do you know there's no one in this world who can annoy me so much as you, other than Dennis and my own children?"

  Eve slid her hands into her pockets. "I guess that's supposed to be touching, too, but it sounds like a slap."

  A smile whispered around Mira's lips. "That's a mother's trick, and one of my favorites. Good night, Eve."

  Eve stood at the glass, watched the two women. They nibbled on what looked to her like a grilled chicken salad, sipped water.

  They spoke little, then only about the innocuous. The food, the weather, the house. Eve continued to study them when the door opened and Roarke stepped in.

  "Does having a conversation with your clone constitute talking to yourself?"

  "One of the many questions and satirical remarks that will be made if and when this becomes public knowledge." He moved to her, behind her, laid his hands on her shoulders. And found exactly the spot where the worst of the tension knotted.

  "Relax a bit, Lieutenant."

  "Gotta stay up. I'm giving it about ten more minutes, then we'll jug­gle them around again."

  "I take it you and Mira have made up."

  "I don't know what we did. I guess we're down to irritated rather than supremely pissed."

  "Progress. Did you discuss the fact that Reo told you what you'd hoped to hear?"

  She let out a sigh. "No. I guess she was irritated enough that one got by her." She glanced over her shoulder, met his eyes. "Not you, though."

  "I'm not irritated with you, which is approaching a term record, I believe. You don't want them punished. Charged and tried and judged."

  "No. I don't want them punished. Not my call, but it's not what I want. It's not justice to lock them up. They've been locked up all their lives. It has to stop. What's being done, what they're doing."

  He leaned over, kissed the top of her head.

  "They've got a place to go already. Got a place to run already set up. Deena would have that nailed down. I could probably find it, sooner or later."

  "Given enough time, I imagine so." Now he stroked her hair. "Is that what you want?"

  "No." She reached back to take his hand. "Once they get sprung, I don't want to know where they are. Then I don't have to lie about it. I've got to get back to this."

  He turned her, kissed her. "Let me know if you need me."

  She worked them. Took them as a group, separated them. She tag-teamed them with Peabody. She let them sit alone, then hit them once more.

  She was going by the book, right down the line. No one studying the record of the interview could claim it wasn't thorough or correct.

  They never dema
nded a lawyer, not even when she fit them with homing bracelets. When she took them back to the Icove residence in the early hours of the morning, they showed considerable fatigue, but that same unruffled calm.

  "Peabody, wait for the droids, will you? Get that set up." She left her partner in the foyer, moved the three women into the living area.

  "You're not permitted to leave the premises. If you attempt to do so, your bracelets will send out a signal, and you'll be picked up and-due to the violation-brought into Central holding. Believe me, you'll be more comfortable here."

  "How long do we have to stay?"

  "Until such time as you're released from this restriction by the NYPSD or another authority." She glanced back to make certain Peabody was out of earshot, and still kept her voice low. "The record's off. Tell me where Deena is. If she kills again, it's not going to help any­one. You want this stopped, and I can help stop it. You want this pub­lic, and I've got a line on that."

  "Your superiors, and any government authority that gets involved, won't want this public."

  "I'm telling you I've got a line on it, but you're squeezing me. They'll block me out. They'll block me and my team and the depart­ment out. They'll scoop you up like hamsters, you and anyone else like you they can find, and put you in a fucking habitrail so they can study you. You'll be back to where you started."

  "Why would you care what happens to us? We've killed."

  So had she, Eve thought. To save herself, to escape the life someone else planned for her. To live her own.

  "And you could've gotten out of this without taking lives. You could've gotten your kids and poofed. But you chose this way."

  "It wasn't revenge." The one who spoke closed those strange and lovely lavender eyes. "It was liberty. For us, for our children, for all the others."

  "They would never have stopped. They'd have made us again, repli­cated the children."

  "I know. It's not my job to say whether or not you were justified, and I'm already going outside the lines. If you won't give me Deena, find a way to contact her. Tell her to stop, tell her to run. You're going to get most of what you're after. You've got my word."

  "What of all the others, the students, the babies?"

  Eve's eyes went flat and blank. "I can't save them all. Neither can you. But you can save more if you tell me where she is. If you tell me where the Icoves have their base of operations."

  "We don't know. But..." The one who spoke looked at her twins, waited for their nod. "We'll find a way to contact her, and do what we can."

  "You don't have much time," Eve told them, and left them alone.

  Outside, the air was cold on her face, her hands. It made her think of winter, the long, dark months coming.

  "I'll drive you home."

  Peabody's tired face brightened. "Really? All the way downtown:"

  "I need to think anyway."

  "Think all you want." Peabody climbed into the car. "Gotta get ahold of my parents in the morning. Let them know we'll be delayed if we make it out there at all."

  "When were you going?"

  "Tomorrow afternoon." Peabody yawned, enormously. "Maybe beat the most insane of the holiday shuttle traffic."

  "Go."

  "Go where?"

  "Go as planned."

  Peabody stopped rubbing her exhausted eyes to blink. "Dallas, I can't just take off to go eat pie at this point of the investigation."

  "I'm telling you that you can." Traffic was blissfully light. She avoided Broadway and its endless party, and drove through the canyons of her city nearly as alone as a lunar tech on the far side of the moon. "You've got plans, you're entitled to keep them. I'm stalling this," she said when Peabody opened her mouth again.

  Peabody shut it, smiled smugly. "Yeah, I know. Just wanted you to say it. How much time you figure we can buy?"

  "Not that much. But my partner's off with her face in the family pie. I got Roarke's relations zeroing in on us. People start scattering with turkey on the brain, they're harder to get in touch with, get balls rolling."

  "Most federal offices are closed tomorrow, and through to Monday. Tibble knew that."

  "Yeah. So maybe it slows things another few hours, maybe another day if God is good. He wants the same thing, so he'll make noises, but he'll stall, too."

  "What about the school, the kids, the staff?"

  "I'm still thinking."

  "I asked Avril, well one of them, what they were going to do about the kids. How they were going to explain that there were three mom­mies. She said they'd be told they were sisters who'd found each other after a long separation. They don't want them to know, not about them. Not about what their father was doing. They're going to go un­der, Dallas, first opportunity."

  "No question."

  "We're going to give them one."

  Eve kept her eyes straight ahead. "As police officers we won't, in any way, facilitate the escape of material witnesses."

  "Right. I want to talk to my parents. Funny how when something really twists up your thinking-the order of things for you-you want to talk to Mom and Dad."

  "Wouldn't know."

  Peabody winced. "Sorry. Shit, I get stupid when I'm this tired."

  "No problem. I'm saying I wouldn't know because I didn't have any-not normal ones. Neither did they. If that's what makes them ar­tificial, then so am I."

  "I want to talk to my parents," Peabody repeated after a long mo­ment. "I know I'm lucky to have them, and my brothers, my sisters, all the rest. I know they'll listen, that's the thing. But not having that, hav­ing to make yourself out of what gets dumped on you, creating your life out of that. . . it's not artificial. It's as real as it gets."

  The streets and sky were nearly empty. Occasionally an animated board bloomed out color and light. Dreams of pleasure and beauty and happiness. Bargain prices.

  "Do you know why I came to New York?" Eve said.

  "No, not really."

  "Because it's a place where you can be alone. You can step out on the street with thousands of other people and be completely alone. Besides being a cop, that's what I thought I wanted most."

  "Was it?"

  "For a while, yeah. For a long while it was what I wanted. I'd gone from being anonymous to being monitored constantly through the fos­ter program and state schools. I wanted to be anonymous again, on my terms. To be a badge, period. I don't know, if I'd caught this case ten years ago-five years ago-if I'd have handled it the way I'm doing now. Maybe I'd just have taken them down. Black and white. It's not just the job, the years on it that bring in all the gray. It's the people, dead and alive, you end up connected to who paint it in."

  "I go with the last part. But no matter when you'd caught this, you i go this way. Because it's right. And that's what counts, that's what do. Avril Icove's a victim. Somebody needs to be on her side."

  Eve smiled a little. "She has each other."

  "Good one. A little bit of a cheap shot, but good nonetheless."

  "Get some sleep." Eve pulled up in front of Peabody's building, tag you if I need you to come in, but for now plan to catch some sleep, pack, and go."

  "Thanks for the lift." Peabody yawned again as she got out. "Happy Thanksgiving, if I don't see you before."

  Eve eased from the curve, and saw in the rearview that McNab had left a light on in the apartment for Peabody.

  There'd be a light on for her, too, she thought. And someone who’d listen.

  But not yet.

  She put her vehicle on autopilot, pulled out her personal 'link.

  "Blah," Nadine said, and Eve could see the faintest of silhouettes on screen.

  "Meet me at the Down and Dirty."

  "Huh? What? Now?"

  "Now. Bring a notebook-paper not electronic. No record Nadine, no cams. Just you, old-fashioned paper and pencils. I’ll be waiting."

  "But-"

  Eve just clicked off, and kept driving.

  The bouncer on the door of the sex club was big as a sequoia, blac
k as onyx. He wore gold. A skin-shirt stretched across his massive chest, boots molded their way up the leather pants that coated his legs, and the trio of chains around his neck she imagined could be used as a weapon.

  There was a tattoo of a snake slithering over his left cheek.

  He was rousting two mopes as she walked up. One white, maybe two-fifty of hard fat, the other mixed race, heavy on the Asian, who looked like a contender for the sumo arena.

  He had them both by the scruff of the neck and was quick-stepping them toward the curb.

  "Next time you try to stiff one of my em-ploy-ees, I'm gonna twist your cocks clean off before you get a chance to use 'em."

  He knocked their heads together-a technically illegal action- then let them fall in the gutter.

  He turned, spotted Eve. "Hey there, white girl."

  "Hey, Crack, how's it going?"

  "Oh, can't bitch much." He slapped his palms together in a drying motion, twice. "What you doing down here? Somebody dead I ain't heard about?"

  "I need a privacy room. I've got a meet," she said when his eyebrows rose up into his wide forehead. "Nadine's on her way. We were never here."

  "Since I figure you two don't want one of my rooms so you can roll around naked together-and ain't that a shame-this must be official. I don't know nothing about official. Come on in."

  She stepped into the blast of noise, of smells that included stale brew, Zoner-and a variety of illegals that could be smoked or otherwise in­gested-fresh sex, sweat, and other bodily fluids she didn't choose to identify.

  The stage at the front was jammed with naked dancers and a live band outfitted in neon loincloths. Table dancers wearing feathers, glitter, or nothing at all jiggled or wiggled to the obvious delight of the paying patrons.

  The bar was jammed, most of the occupants well drunk or stoned.

  It was perfect.

  "Business is good," she said at a conversational shout as he blazed a path through the packs of people.

  "Holiday time. We be slammed from now 'til January, then we be slammed 'cause it's too fucking cold to party outside. Life's good. How 'bout you, skinny white cop girl."

  "Good enough."

  He led the way upstairs to the privacy rooms. "Your man treating you right?"

  "Yeah. Yeah, he mostly has that down cold."