Dragon Justice (14 page)

“Venec will find someone who is.” If he hadn’t been distracted
by the alarm system, he would have already, I suspected. I made a mental note to
mention it to him, discreetly, when we got to the diner.

“So what do you want us to do? You’re lead on this.”

The cab turned a corner and stopped. Apparently, we had
arrived. Pietr paid the guy, and we piled out, the question put on hold for the
moment. Which was good, because I still wasn’t sure how to answer it.

The place was a classic diner, from the metallic front to the
old guy sitting on a stool behind the glass-countered register and the
harassed-looking waitress who took us to the back booth, where Venec was
waiting.

He looked tired and rumpled, and I felt the immediate urge to
go sit next to him, to let my presence be a comfort.

And for the first time since the Merge hit us, that’s exactly
what I did. He didn’t seem to react to my sitting next to him on the booth’s
bench, but there was a slight, barely noticeable easing of his body tension.
Anyone else I’d have said they weren’t aware of it, but this was Benjamin Venec,
so I knew he’d noticed. But he didn’t comment on it, didn’t look at me, didn’t
even let his elbow brush against me.

I felt welcomed, anyway.

“Glad you two made it. Has Bonnie briefed you?”

Pietr put the folder on the table, next to the pot of coffee
that was already waiting. “Yeah. But let me see if I have it down. Two bodies,
killed within a week of each other, sliced up like lab animals, and we think
this is the work of a guy who has done it at least to ten others before in two
different cities, which means if he holds to pattern we have another eight
bodies waiting to be found before he moves on?”

“Conjecture and theory,” Venec said. “But, yes, that about sums
it up. Except the fact, which you omitted, that the victims were all
Talent.”

Pietr’s expression didn’t change, but the fingers of the hand
resting on the folder twitched. Venec still had a way of making us feel like
rookies sometimes.

“How strong were they?” That was one thing that wasn’t in the
examiner’s report. There was no way to tell that after someone was dead. When
all the other electrical impulses powering the human body stopped, so did the
ability to power current. It took a little longer to fade entirely than, say, a
heartbeat, but nothing lasted once the corpse was cold. My mentor used to say
that he thought the myth of vampires came from that idea that there were some
who could hold current even after death, keep their hearts pumping
postmortem.

“You think that’s connected to their deaths?” He wasn’t
questioning my assumption, just asking if that was my assumption.

“I don’t know.” I reached for the coffeepot, pouring a dose
into one of the heavy white mugs that bore a startling resemblance to the ones
at the cop shop. A liberal splash of milk and two sugars, and my tongue started
to forgive me for the hotel-room crap. “I was just thinking about the girls in
the Park.”

“The what?” Sharon looked up, at that.

“Oh, right.” It seemed like a week ago to me, but it had only
been, god, twenty-four hours? “Stosser had me track down a missing girl. It
ended up being almost stupid-easy, mainly because the fatae seemed to have an
interest in getting her home, too. Rorani took me to where she was—yeah, I know,
but believe me, that’s almost the least weird part of it. The girl-child, she
was part of a bunch of girls, most of them older—seven and fourteen and
twenty-one were the points. And, yeah, you’re thinking what I thought—old
magic.” I lifted my left hand palm up, indicating that I didn’t have any
definite proof, one way or the other. “I didn’t stick around to get the details,
but there’s a woman living in the Park who’s gathering these girls into a coven,
telling them that if they clap their hands hard enough or some crap, she’ll be
able to turn them into magic users.”

Sharon looked puzzled. “And this connects to the case down
here…how?”

“It doesn’t. But I guess it’s been in the back of my head,
about how we look at each other not by money or looks, at least not all the
time, but about power.” Not consciously, but one of those things that only comes
to the surface when you have enough data points to make a picture. “A woman
approached me this week back home. Someone I’ve known for years. She’s Council,
high up. She might have been flirting with me—god knows she did that before. But
when I thought about responding I also thought about power and leverage and
usefulness. And it was all based on the fact that she’s pretty high-res and
respected, and we could use that. And I know, not for a fact but a pretty good
suss, that she’s interested in me not just because I’m cute, but because I’ve
gotten stronger since she knew me before. Both in current-use and in
allies.”

Sharon shook her head, shifting in her seat, crossing one leg
over the other and, from Pietr’s grimace, kicking him in the process. “Sorry.
I’m still not seeing the connection.”

I tried to find the words to explain why these things kept
crisscrossing in my brain, but couldn’t.

“There may not be one. I don’t know. I just keep flicking back
to it, and when my brain does that—”

“There’s usually a good reason,” Pietr finished. “Yeah, all
right.”

“I think it’s important that we know how good the dead guys
were. And the ten dead in San Diego, too, if we can.”

I didn’t even mention Montreal. The Canadian Talents were…not
organized would be a kind way of putting it. I doubted, twenty years later, if
there was any record at all, beyond what a friend or relative remembered, and
getting information through traditional channels, across international borders…
By the time we got anything, the killer would have moved on already.

“If the killer is targeting based on their skill level, that
would be useful to know,” Venec agreed. “Sharon, your research skills are
best—you work with that. And get Nicky on it, too.”

So much for me being point. Then it struck me: Venec had called
Nick, Nicky. He never did that. But I did, all the time.

It wasn’t enough to make me smile, not with a killer on the
loose, but I did file the fact away for later teasing.

“Pietr, Bonnie wanted you to look at the bodies.”

He grimaced and added more sugar to his coffee. “Gee,
thanks.”

“Relax, we’ve seen worse. I just want to see if you pick up
anything more than what I did, which is why—before you ask—I haven’t told you
what I picked up.” He knew they were cut open with a knife, but just looking at
the bodies would have told him that. I wanted to know if he sensed anything
beyond the physical, either about the victims…or the killer. Or the knife, for
that matter. The knife still bothered me. Why were Venec and I both picking up a
sense of current from the knife, when all other trace was wiped clean?

“What kind of a timeline are we working with here? If this is
the same killer—and we don’t know that for certain—then how long did he stretch
his spree? Are we talking one a day, or…?”

“I spoke with Andrulis this morning,” Venec said, ignoring the
fact that it was barely 8:00 a.m. right then. “The previous murders were
committed over a period of nine weeks. Time of death for our two was estimated
to be five days apart, and the last body’s been in the morgue for a day, so if
we don’t move fast…”

“We’re going to have another body on the slab by the end of the
week,” Sharon finished.

Suddenly, my coffee tasted metallic in my throat, and I put the
mug down. Sharon’s blond head dipped slightly, her chin toward her chest, and
Pietr’s body didn’t move, but there was an audible sense of slumping in his
presence.

“Stop it.” Venec’s voice was hard but not harsh. “None of that
is your fault. I know you people are good, damn good, but you can’t stop a
killer you didn’t even know about twenty-four hours ago from killing twenty-four
hours ago.”

The fact that he was right didn’t change anything.

“Fine. If guilt will make you work harder, then use it. If not,
dump it now. Cholis, Torres, get in gear—they’re expecting you at the morgue.
The sooner you get that done, the sooner the families can have their deceased
back.”

When he used our last names like that, it was like a switch
flicked in our brains, and the guilt was replaced by determination. Or it did in
mine, anyway, and from the way Pietr stood up, I think it did for him, too. I
wasn’t sure if it was psychological manipulation or just good management—or if
there was any real difference—but it worked and that was good.

Venec was right. We couldn’t do anything for those who were
already dead except make sure nobody else joined them.

We left Sharon sitting at the table with Venec—leaving them
with the bill for the coffee we didn’t finish.

* * *

I still had my ID badge from the earlier visit shoved
into my pocket, but we had to stop and check in, anyway, to get Pietr cleared.
Once his name was checked off against the list, we went on into the main area,
where a white-coated lab tech waited for us, looking both impatient and
bored.

“This way.”

No
please
in that request. We fell
in behind her without comment, walking not through the back hallway but the main
corridor, filled with people in lab coats, people in ordinary office-wear, and
the occasional uniformed cops, all intent on being somewhere else, and not
paying us a bit of attention.

Pietr looked around, his forehead scrunching up a little.

“What?”

“I thought it would be more…”

I waited, then prompted, “A little more…?”

“I don’t know. More something other than what it is.”

I knew exactly what he meant. “It’s an office.”

“Where dead people are.”

“Well, yeah. You saw the sign that said County Morgue?”

Our escort ignored us: I got the feeling that she was used to
people nattering uncomfortably as they were being led past rooms filled with
dead bodies.

We were brought into the same room as before, only this time
there were no bodies in the open: everything was locked away. My imagination
pictured a walk-in freezer with bodies stacked in permafrost, even though I
knew—now, anyway—that there was no such thing.

“Shultz and Brock, right?”

“Yes, please.” I hoped so, anyway. The thought of them wheeling
out the wrong bodies was too close to farce for me to handle right now. The
coffee was sitting badly in my stomach, and my gut let out an embarrassing
gurgle that echoed too loudly in the empty room.

“Here.” Pietr handed me something; I took it automatically, not
even looking. It was a cylinder pack of Tums, already opened.

“My stomach’s been crap the past six months.”

I hadn’t known. Once, we’d known everything about each other,
the original five. We’d lived in each other’s pockets, gotten drunk together,
bitched about cases, and cried on each other’s shoulders…even after Lou joined
us and we started getting busy…but not so much, these days. I suddenly,
jarringly, missed those days.

“You okay?” I asked now.

“Yeah. Doc says I need to eat more roughage and reduce the
stress in my life.”

I wasn’t sure if you were supposed to laugh in a morgue. “Yeah.
Good luck with that.”

The clattering of wheels brought me back to the moment, and our
escort came back with a body on a gurney. It was still covered with a sheet, the
edges hanging just far enough over the side to hide the flesh but not disguising
the metallic coldness of the gurney below.

“Brock,” she announced.

“Thank you.”

Pietr hesitated, as though expecting something to happen—a more
formal introduction? a list of instructions?—then stepped forward and drew the
sheet down, gently, starting at the face and moving the sheet all the way to its
knees. I chewed on two antacid tablets, concentrating on the gritty chalk
between my teeth, and tried not to think about the fact that the db’s skin color
had changed enough in twenty-four hours for me to notice the difference.

“Male. Mid-forties, maybe. In decent shape before death, based
on what the muscle tissue looks like. Not heavily built but not a little guy,
either. Subduing him long enough to… Hard to tell if there were any restraint
marks on hands or legs… Bonnie?”

My memory supplied the details of the report without having to
think about it. “Marks on the shoulders and upper arms indicated restraint of
some sort, although it was impossible to indicate the form. Bruising around the
ankles suggest that some form of soft restraint was used on the legs.” Not rope:
maybe cloth tape.

“If current had been used to hold them down, there would be
signs of it,” Pietr said, looking more carefully at the skin. “No bruising, no
indication of burst blood vessels or any kind of scorch marks.” Current, like
electricity, burns. We can handle it—that’s what makes us Talent—but when it’s
used as a restraint, there are always traces left behind.

I realized, uneasily, that I’d gotten used to the antiseptic,
over-cleaned smell of the air inside the building, so much so that when a waft
of fresh air came in from an open door or window somewhere, my stomach roiled at
that, not the tang of disinfectants that had clogged my sinuses a moment
before.

“Two different series of cuts. The examiner’s work here—” his
hand moved over the torso, hovering inches above the skin “—and the killer’s
work here. The examiner’s hand was steadier, which would make sense since his
subject was already dead. Less likely to struggle or resist, even with
restraints. But also…” He paused, then finished, “Also, the examiner was just
doing a job. He knew what he was looking for and what he was probably going to
find.”

“The killer…wasn’t?” He’d picked up more than I had, although
I’d been drawn more to the knife than the bodies.

“Gut feeling,” Pietr replied. “Just…gut feeling.”