Slab City Blues: The Collected Stories

  “Come on, do I have a treat for you.”

  “Are you sure? We only just…”

  She stopped, taking hold of both my hands, meeting my eyes with serious intent. “Trust me. This is a night you’ll never forget.”

  *

  “Wow,” I said, about three hours later.

  “I know,” Janet said with a lazy smile.

  “That was…”

  “Amazing?”

  “Oh yeah. I mean…” I shook my head. “How can he be Luke’s father?”

  “One of the best twists in movie history.” She reached for her remote and began scrolling through the library. “But there’s more. Prepare yourself for Return of the Jedi, just try not to get pissed at the Ewoks.”

  “Looks like we skipped a few episodes,” I said, squinting at the menu.

  “No we haven’t. OK, here we are.”

  We were on the couch in her living room, sharing a pot of coffee in front of her near-antique entertainment hub. She’d shed her heels and sat with long legs curled up, occasionally twiddling her toes. For the first time in years I found the word adorable coming to mind.

  “Who’s Mr Mac?” she asked as the credits came up accompanied by a now familiar bombastic score.

  “Don’t miss anything, do you?”

  “Vampire hearing. Bat DNA.”

  “Really?”

  She laughed and threw a cushion at me. “’Course not, dumbass. So who is he?”

  “A very bad man. I’ve been looking for him.”

  “A very bad man who did you a favour by killing someone.”

  “He thinks he’s my friend. It’s complicated.”

  “And when you find him?”

  “He’s not the type to forgo resisting arrest, not that I’ll have that option after next week.”

  “They’re really going to fire you then?”

  “I’ll be lucky if they leave it at that.”

  “What will you do? I know you have your bar and all…”

  “I’ll worry about it when it happens. Till then, we have a case to work.”

  “You still want to work it? Even with no reward?”

  I laughed, short and bitter. “Can’t say I’ve ever been rewarded for anything. Besides, I promised Mrs DeMarco.”

  Her fingers crept along the couch, spider style, reaching out a pinky. “Didn’t thank you for taking me seriously, did I?”

  “I was kind’ve a prick, so I guess it evens out.”

  “Still.” She entwined her pinky with mine and gave it a shake. “It is appreciated.”

  I met her gaze, finding it warm and kind behind a half-veil of ebony hair. “Who are you?” I asked. “Really. Who are you?”

  Her gaze dropped. “You know who I am. Who I was is a whole other question.”

  “I’m listening.”

  She licked her lips, uncertain, fearful even. “I’m not… I wasn’t…”

  Which, of course, was the precise moment her smart started beeping.

  “Damn,” she breathed. “Thought I’d turned it off.”

  “Emergency override,” I said, recognising the tone. “You should get it.”

  She thumbed the smart, Sherry’s voice, loud and strident. “Dr Vaughan. Is Alex with you?”

  “I’m here,” I said.

  “Good. Yang Two, Quad Alpha. Both of you. Now.” She signed off.

  “Shit.” I got up to retrieve my coat from the back of the couch. “You should change.”

  “What’s up?”

  I pulled on my coat and transferred the Python from the inside pocket to the small of my back. There could be only one reason for the urgency and the lateness of the hour. “There’s been another one.”

  Chapter 6

  We found Harry Red Wing throwing up outside the entrance to the power relay station on Yang Two. There was a thick cordon of uniforms around the building and the sweat-rain was coming down heavier than usual.

  “Bad, huh?” I asked Red Wing.

  He braced himself against the wall, breathing deep, voice hoarse. “Fuck you, Alex.”

  “Always a pleasure, Harry.” I led Janet through the cordon, eyeing the power station entrance with a novel sense of unease. Red Wing was every bit as jaded as I was and it had been a while since my calloused gaze had fallen on something vile enough to make me lose my lunch.

  “OK?” Janet asked and I realised I’d paused. The entrance seemed very dark all of a sudden.

  “Sure,” I said. “Just wishing I hadn’t eaten.”

  The power station interior was dimly lit with police issue glow-sticks and busy with white overalled forensic types.

  “Power’s out, Inspector,” a fresh-faced uniform told me.

  “The whole thing or just the lights?”

  “Just the lights. It’s weird, power relays are fine. The techs can’t explain it. DCI Mordecai’s at the scene if you’ll come with me.”

  We followed her down a series of corridors and tiered walkways, descending into the heart of the station. According to the uniform it was completely automated save for the occasional inspection crew.

  “He seems to have a talent for finding deserted places on a densely populated hab,” Janet observed.

  We came to an automatic door, jammed open and held in place with a Departmental seal. The lettering on the glass read ‘Equipment Room.’

  “Through here, sir.” The uniform stepped aside.

  “Not going in?” I enquired.

  She shook her head and I noticed how pale she was. “Once was enough for this lifetime.”

  The first thing to hit me was the smell, a melange of rotten meat and burned flesh topped off with an acidic chemical sting. I fought down my rising gorge and focused on the tableau in the centre of the room. A man on his back, laid out on a steel-frame work table, hands and feet bound with chains to the legs, neck positioned at the table-edge so that his head was thrown back. Where his face should have been there was a cavity, coloured pink and black.

  I heard Janet exhale, long and slow, and wondered if vampires could vomit.

  “Inspection crew found him.” Sherry was on the other side of the body, watching Fabio Ricci run a spectrometer over the victim’s skin. “Ricci estimates about three hours since death. No immediate parallels but given the obvious ritualised elements…”

  I moved closer, forcing my eyes to focus on the corpse’s non-face.

  “Alex,” Ricci said. “Heard you got fired.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for small talk. “Any ID on the weapon?”

  Ricci looked up at the ceiling. It was half in shadow but I could make out the sight of a flask, suspended by steel cables, angled so that whatever it contained would fall onto the face of the man on the table.

  “Sulfuric acid,” Ricci said. “Polyethylene container. There’s a stop valve on the nozzle. Drip, drip, drip.”

  “How long?”

  “Good ten hours’ worth of drips given the size of the flask. Which is weird because our friend here should’ve died within the first hour. Instead he lasted at least eight.”

  Janet’s eyes scanned the scene, her predatory aspect a little wild-eyed now. “There was a bowl, right?”

  Ricci frowned at her in surprise. “On the floor in the corner. Also polyethylene.”

  Janet nodded at the corpse. “Who was he? Do we know?”

  “He’s DNA registered,” Sherry said, reading from her smart. “Alan Devant, age thirty-eight, resident of Yin Thirty. No missper on file.”

  “Richie Rich,” I said. “What’s he doing here?”

  “His job?” Janet pressed.

  “Entertainer according to his tax return.” Sherry did some more scrolling. “Professional name the Great Devant…”

  “Illusionist Extraordinaire,” Janet finished.

  “Yeah. Me and Sam watched him on the 2D the other night, come to think of it. Made a tug disappear from the docking bay.”

  “Trickster,” Janet said in a whisper. “He’s switched mythologies.
This,” she waved at the obscenity on the table. “This is Norse, not Greek. And we’re missing a character.” She turned to Sherry. “Was he married?”

  “Yes, Helen Devant, age twenty-two. Second marriage.” Sherry frowned at her smart. “No missper on him but one for her, filed by her sister four hours ago.”

  “She’s here.” Janet moved away, eyes scanning the room, nostrils flared. “Trust me.”

  “You did search the place?” I asked Sherry.

  “It’s a big complex, take five days to fully sweep it. Dr Vaughan!”

  I turned to see Janet disappearing through the door.

  “Wait!” I went after her. She didn’t stop, climbing the stairs and turning right, gaze constantly moving.

  “Will you hold up a minute!” I said, running to catch up, taking hold of her arm. “There’s a procedure for this…”

  “Since when do you care about procedure?”

  “Since hunting through a blacked-out power station for a genius-smart serial killer.”

  “She’s here.” She pulled away. “I can smell her.” She was off again before I could stop her. I grunted in resignation, following as she moved rapidly through the maze of corridors and walkways, tracking her with my smart’s flashlight. She turned this way and that seemingly at random, oblivious to the darkness.

  “What makes you think she’ll still be alive?” I asked, during a brief pause.

  “She didn’t die in the myth.” She raised her head, eyes closed, trying to catch the scent. “But then, neither did he. This way.”

  More corridors and a steep descending staircase. A sign on the wall said ‘Servo Repository.’

  “And who exactly are they?” I asked. “In the myth.”

  “Loki and Sigyn.”

  The first name set off a vague memory, some vintage 3D from childhood, or what used to pass for 3D. “Loki was Thor’s brother, right?”

  “In some iterations. In others he’s just another minor god, but always a trickster, a deceiver. He was punished for his lies by the goddess Skaoi. Bound to a rock in the bowels of the earth whilst venom from the fangs of a great serpent dripped from above into his eyes, given succour only by his faithful wife Sigyn, who would hold a bowl over his face to catch the poison as it fell. But inevitably the bowl would fill up and when she turned away to empty it…”

  “Poor old Loki got a face full of poison,” I finished, “or acid in this case.” The cruel invention of it was chilling. Slow death by dripping acid wasn’t enough, had to put the wife in the room too, knowing what would happen if she went for help. I had already concluded that whoever we were hunting was bat-shit crazy, but the calculated sadism of this latest atrocity told me something else. “This guy’s a truly evil piece of shit.”

  Janet stopped and held up a hand, head cocked. I fancied I actually saw her ears prick up as she strained for some faint echo. “Over there.”

  We took a westward corridor and came to a half-open door marked ‘Servo-bot Maintenance.’

  “No!” I hissed, restraining her with some difficulty as she began to dart forward, feeling her strength as she resisted the impulse to push me away. “I mean it. Stay behind me.” I drew the Python and approached the door at a slow walk.

  The room beyond was lit by a single LED-orb in the ceiling, casting a circle of white light on the bare floor. In the centre of the circle knelt a young woman, face buried in her hands as she wept. I checked the rest of the room, the barrel of the Python tacking the flashlight beam, finding only tool racks and some deactivated servo-bots docked into power nodes.

  “OK.” I went in, lowering the Python but still wary. Janet ran straight to the young woman.

  “Helen? It’s Helen right?”

  The young woman said something, hoarse and inaudible behind her hands which I saw were scarred with red and black blotches, dark craters in the flesh. Acid burns.

  “Oh baby,” Janet said, seeing her wounds and gently trying to prize her hands away from her face. “It’s OK now. It’s OK.”

  Slowly she succeeded in parting Helen Devant’s hands, revealing a face that would have been considered glamour-model standard gorgeous but for the reddened, wild-eyed stare and the harsh, pain filled twist of her mouth. “Wasn’t me!” she said in a fierce whisper, a bubble of spit bursting on her lips. “Wasn’t me. I tried.” She showed Janet her ravaged hands, pleading, imploring. “Tried and tried and tried…”

  “We know, baby. We know.” She pulled Helen’s slender form to her. “We know. It’s OK.”

  I was still uneasy. Something didn’t gel. “How did she get here?”

  “They made me,” Helen sobbed. “Pushed and prodded and hurt me. All the way here.”

  “They?” There was a glowing red circle on my sleeve, too diffuse for a laser-sight, but it hadn’t been there two seconds before.

  I looked up. It was one of the bots, its activation light glowing red in the gloom beyond the circle cast by the LED. Another light blinked on a few yards to the left, then another to the left of that, and another… I tracked the successive switch-ons around the room, counting seven, arranged in a circle with us as the centre. There was a multiple thrum as the bots’ hover units sprang to life, the red beads lifted a few yards into the air, and began to circle us.

  It’s not in his nature to hide from threats. I glanced down at the weeping girl in Janet’s arms then back at the bots. “Sonnovabitch baited a trap and we walked right in.”

  “Alex?” Janet said.

  I flexed my fingers on the butt of the Python. Six shots, seven targets. Bad math. One of the bots drifted in front of the still-open door, jagged black silhouette half obscuring the dim rectangle of beckoning luminescence. There was a harsh snicking sound as it unfurled its tool set.

  “I’ll clear you a path to the door,” I told Janet. “When you hear the first shot get her out of here. Keep running till you find Sherry.”

  “If you think I’m just going to…”

  I snap-shot the bot in front of the door to forestall any further discussion, the epoxy slug punching through the machine’s thin metal casing, impacting on the titanium super-structure inside and exploding as the phosphorus core met the air. The disintegration of the bot was fairly spectacular but there was no time to enjoy it.

  “GO!” I commanded Janet, stepping away, Python in a two-handed grip, blasting the bots in random order, one shot each, four more exploding in quick succession. There was a blur as Janet picked up Helen Devant and sprinted for the door. A bot veered off in pursuit, its tools, a set of metal grinders, whirling silver discs. I blew it away a yard from the door and threw myself flat as the last bot whooshed overhead, a flare of agony and tugged clothing telling me I’d picked up another battle wound. I suppressed the pain with savage urgency, emptying the spent cartridges from the Python’s chamber, trying to slam in a speed-loader, left hand suddenly numb and way too clumsy to make it in time.

  I heard the sound of rending metal and looked up to see Janet perched atop the last bot, fully ten feet in the air. I noticed a gaping rent in the bot’s casing as she drew back her right hand, fingers and nails now extended to about eight inches in length, gleaming like miniature daggers. The bot twisted and turned in a desperate attempt to throw her off but she rode it like a champion surfer, plunging her new-grown claw into the rent she’d torn in the casing, reaching deep and tearing out a chunk of circuitry and cable.

  The bot stopped, shuddered, and fell to the floor with a clunk, Janet leaping away to land in front of me. “Thank god I was here,” I muttered.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “It’s nothing.” I got to my feet and promptly convulsed in pain, a warm stream of blood soaking the left arm of my coat. “No, it’s something! Get a medic!”

  Chapter 7

  “I bought you a new shirt from the fabricator in the lobby.” Janet placed the neatly folded garment on the hospital bed. I watched her fingers twitch on the label, normal-sized fingers, normal-sized nails. “Think I got y
our size right.”

  “Neat trick,” I said. “The claw thing.”

  “In-built defensive measure,” she said, forcing a jovial tone. “Only kicks in when my adrenal levels indicate a threat to life. Bit of a drag if you’re fond of theme-park rides.”

  “I’ve never seen it before.” My tone wasn’t jovial. “Never seen any splice do anything remotely like it.”

  She avoided my gaze and moved away, plucking the med-tablet from the wall to check my stats. “Rapid heal nearly complete. Says you’ll be fully recovered in twenty-four hours. Minimal scarring. There’s an alert icon against your liver though.”

  “An inch to the left and I’d be minus a chunk of spinal cord. Don’t change the subject.”

  She looked up from the tablet with what I could only describe as fear. “I’m sorry you think I’m some kind of monster, but I can’t talk about it, Alex. Not now. Not until this is over, please.”

  “I don’t think you’re a monster…”

  The door slid open and Sherry came into the treatment room, accompanied by a big, blocky middle-aged man with cropped steel-grey hair and an expensive but ill-fitting suit. Joe followed them in and stood by the door, his expression rigidly neutral.

  “Jean-Michel!” I said, grinning at the blocky man. “Ca va?”

  “It’s Chief Arnaud to you, you insubordinate fuck,” the Chief of the LCPD growled. He hated it when I spoke French; despite his background he couldn’t speak a word of it. He looked at Janet. “You the historian?”

  “Classicist,” she corrected.

  “Whatever.” He levelled his gaze at me. “Chose a real doozey to buy you way back in, dintcha?”

  “Hey, I’m just lucky that way.”

  The Chief grunted, reached into his inside pocket and tossed something onto the bed. My gun and ID. “This cost me a lot of favours and if I wasn’t running for mayor next year, I’d happily let you drink yourself to death in that piss-hole you call home. DeMarco was bad enough but now we’ve got a dead Yin-side celebrity. Can’t have it. So fix it.”