The Tenth Legion (Book 6, Progeny of Evolution) (20 page)

“I suppose
you’re pleased with how things ended at your facility.” A host from
the British business channel quizzed Ed three days into the trip. A
hand held a microphone up to his face.

“Yes, we were
fortunate. They completed repairs almost before I arrived.”

“And the
aircraft contract must’ve been like frosting on the cake. Beating
out General Electronics in the bidding must’ve been exciting for
your company. How did they take it?”

“You’ll have
to ask them.” He glowed with pride at besting CI’s biggest rival.
“But we were lucky to have the perfect design available. Moreover,
we can build them at a good price.”

“Does this
signal a move by your company into the field of military
contracts?” the reporter asked from off-camera.

“No. If this
had been a war plane, we wouldn’t have bid. The design for this
aircraft is utilitarian, with a host of non-military applications.
I predict it will be in use for decades.”

The host
adjusted position to improve the camera angle. “So with everything
settled, where to next?”

“Since I’m
already here, I decided to extend my time to include a brief visit
with old and dear friends.” Not the answer Lorna wanted, but better
than some that came to mind.

To keep busy,
she threw herself into work, signing up for a ton of overtime. On
the regular shift, she had to face Mike’s empty desk. In the
beginning, she assumed in the wake of the tense parting, she and Ed
both needed time alone, figuring after cooling down for a few days,
he’d call to patch things up. When he didn’t after the first week,
she decided maybe he needed a lesson in manners, so she ignored his
first attempt to phone her.

There was no
second.

Two more days
passed.

“Check it
out,” a female detective cried from the bull pen. A crowd gathered
in front of the monitor carrying the news stream. “Damn, she’s
hot,” one of the men said.

Lorna rose
from her desk to see what caused the commotion. When she
approached, a silence fell over the small crowd. One or two
wandered away, intent on distancing themselves from the impending
nuclear detonation.

“What’s up?”
Lorna asked of the group.

“Oh, nothing,
boss,” the female detective answered. “Just some news about Edward
White.” Being the newest member of the shift, she was ignorant of
Lorna’s involvement.

“What
news?”

The guileless
reply cut like a Bowie knife. “See for yourself. There he is with
his new girlfriend. She’s quite lovely.” By then, everyone else had
cleared out, leaving the unfortunate woman to bear the full brunt
of Lorna’s legendary wrath.

Lorna’s heart
dropped to her stomach. The screen filled with Ed accompanied by
another. A tall, blonde woman, no older than twenty, hung on his
arm. Her hair was pulled back in a tight chignon. Thin, dark
streaks wove through the mass that shone like polished gold. A
silver sequined gown molded to narrow hips, small erect breasts
accompanied long legs.

The program
originated from the Red Carpet Ceremony for the Brazilian Academy
Awards. “Of course you may,” Ed was saying to the interviewer.
“This is Valeria.”

“Valeria, how
do you like Brazil?”

“Oh, dear boy,
I am not visiting. This is my native country,” she answered in a
husky Portuguese accent with an elegant forward tilt of a narrow,
diamond-shaped face. The brow and chin were softly rounded, but the
cheeks made creases at the widest part of her face, curving to
small jewel-studded ears, giving her tiny, painted full lips a
pouty appearance.

“Well then,
are you being a good tour guide?” the interviewer asked.

Valeria
giggled, and kissed Ed’s cheek. “We have been everywhere.”

“I’ll bet you
have,” Lorna muttered bitterly, snapping the monitor off. Spinning
around, she faced a hapless crowd of one. “We have cases to solve.
Get back to work.” She snarled, stalking back into her office,
leaving the bewildered female detective not sure what just
happened.

The
bastard!

If he’d
planned to end the relationship, he should have been man enough to
tell her face to face, rather than by way of a cheesy interview on
the Brazilian Entertainment feed. Cynically, she wondered how long
before he’d ask her to leave the condo and return to taking the bus
to work.

As she lunged
at the phone to call Ed and give him an earful, it started ringing.
“Lieutenant Winters,” she snapped into the receiver.

“Lieutenant,”
said a voice that sounded like it came from the bottom of a well,
typical of the acoustic quality from a police car radio patch.
“This is Patrolman Larry Hicks out in Oakridge. I have one of Mike
Geurin’s informants. He says you really need to see him.”

“Do you have
him in the car?”

“Yes, ma’am,
we collared him so as not to compromise the cover arrangement. The
neighborhood thinks he was busted for drug possession.”

“Let me speak
to him.”

The sounds of
a lot of shifting around, augmented by a little cursing, came
through before a reedy voice said hello.

“You have
something for me?”

“Mike had me
checking into some things,” the voice said noncommittally. “He told
me to call you direct if I found something and he wasn’t around. He
was a good man. We all miss him.”

“No more than
I do. What do you have?”

After a pause,
he said, “Mike told me if I talked to you to say it’s about Claire
and Cassandra. He said you’d know what it meant.”

“I see,”
Lorna’s voice trailed off while she considered the possibilities.
“Put one of the patrol officers on.”

“Yes, ma’am.”
Hicks returned.

“Listen to me
very carefully. Bring him to booking. I’ll meet you there to take
custody. Turn him over to no one else.”

The
seriousness of her tone, along with the prospect of participating
in an important case, commanded his rapt attention. “Right away.
We’ll be there in ten.”

Booking
occupied a large room on the ground floor of headquarters—a
well-worn space and, like the city buses, saturated with the reek
of effluvia and grimy bodies. In the case of this place, decades of
criminality left their marks. A battered, high desk dominated the
area. Most of its walnut varnish had peeled away, leaving long
streaks of gray wood. Perched behind on a high stool sat an
overweight desk sergeant.

Lorna came
from the back, at the perfect angle to see his hams drooping over
the edge of the seat. They often shifted position, driven by a
hemorrhoid, plague of the sedentary.

Officer Hicks,
accompanied by his partner, slipped in through the front door,
followed by a small gust of grit. They manhandled a dwarfish man
between them. He groused and complained with every step. The little
drama continued even after Lorna caught their attention. The desk
sergeant turned laboriously to her. His face of aggravated scrutiny
suggested she represented another brass come to disrupt his routine
for some harebrained reason.

“
Thank
you, sergeant. I’ll take this man. He’s also a witness in a major
case.” She spread on a thick layer of gratitude.

He ignored the
effort. “Anything to help the front office.” The sarcasm in his
voice came through loud and clear.

She walked the
informant away, catching a glimpse of the desk sergeant on the
phone, staring after her.

Lorna brought
the diminutive informant to an interrogation room, which contained
two chairs parked under a stainless steel table. He watched her
with cunning, black, rodent eyes while she took off the handcuffs.
“Thanks,” he said, rubbing his wrists. The man reeked of body odor
and bad breath.

Lorna
dismissed the officer assigned to be in the room for her
protection. “I’m lycan,” she told him. “This rube would make the
biggest mistake of his life by attacking me.”

Nodding
understanding, he told her he’d be right outside.

Lorna turned
to her charge. “All right,” she said, taking a seat across from
him. “What do you have?”

“Mike said
you’d take care of me.”

Leaning
forward, she folded her hands on the table in front of her. “What’s
your name?”

Seeing him
admire the finish on her expensive manicure, she figured he raised
calculations for remuneration by at least twenty percent.

“Russel,
ma’am. Russel Larson.” He smiled through crooked teeth.

“Okay, Russel,
you got me away from a desk full of unsolveds. This better be
good.”

Licking thin,
purplish lips, he said, “I need five hundred to get by.”

Lorna thought
about the wad in her purse back at the office. Since being with Ed,
she always seemed to have plenty of cash. “I can do that.”

“Okay, then.
Mike asked me to keep an eye out for X-10 action. I got some. The
Orlando gang’s putting on a to-do. The whole region’s coming. The
buzz is they’re planning something big against the woofers.”

Lorna ignored
the deprecation. “Do you have any idea what’s going down?”

“No, except
they’re having a meeting to talk about it.”

Sliding a note
pad and pen across the stainless steel, she ordered, “Time and
address.”

* * * *

Back in the
office, Lorna used satellite images to examine the building where
they planned the meeting, avoiding the risk of being spotted during
a drive by. The image showed an old warehouse standing alone in a
field. Years before, everything within a quarter-mile had been
leveled. No chance to sneak up on them to peek in the windows.

Could she
infiltrate the meeting?

Ethan would
help her with getting proper identification. The main problem
remained the damned dogs X-10 brought to their gatherings. The
animals were trained to alert to the presence of vampires or
lycans. Every corporation attempt to infiltrate ended in
frustration or disaster. A meeting of this magnitude would have the
best security precautions in place.

Lorna
discarded the idea.

Russel
identified one name in the local X-10, a woman named Elsa Travers.
Lorna pulled her up on the OPD search engine. The monitor displayed
a round, black face, with salt-and-pepper hair puffed out and
combed back. A sealed juvenile record supported by a couple of
arrests for demonstrations stood out, but nothing connected her to
X-10. Still, the name sounded familiar. For the rest of the shift,
it darted around in her mind like a bird without any place to
light.

As she fell
asleep, the name still hung in her thoughts. When she woke up, the
avian flutter resumed. Back in the office, she pulled out recent
case files.

In the one
relating to Mike’s death, she found what she sought. Among the
arrested from the eighteen-wheeler was one Ben Travers, presently
held on a half-million bond in the county jail, charged with grand
theft and evading arrest. Lorna contemplated the sad-eyed,
desperate face in the booking photo. If ever someone needed a
friend…

On the intake
sheet, he listed ex-spouse Elsa Travers among his next of kin.

“Curiouser and
curiouser,” Lorna muttered to herself. What were the chances Ben
didn’t know something about his former wife’s affiliation with
X-10? Answer: between slim and none. He had to have answers.

The next
afternoon, Lorna met with Ben Travers, accompanied by his court
appointed lawyer, in one of the visiting areas at the jail—a group
of open cages with a checkpoint at one end. Lorna sat in silence
with Travers across a steel table, waiting for the attorney to
finish signing in. Ben avoided eye contact, preferring to stare at
a pair of small, brown hands folded in his lap, which he worked
like they were washing each other. The intermittent buzz of a
failing ballast in one of the overhead fluorescents bored into
Lorna’s head. Presently, a young man in a seersucker suit, wearing
the harried expression of the overworked, entered the search area,
taking the empty chair on Ben’s side.

“You called
the meeting,” the attorney began. Lorna was sure he was trying to
show his client he could be tough for him.

“Mr. Larson.
We think Mr. Travers may have information critical to another case
we’re pursuing.”

“Is there a
deal on the table?” he asked.

This guy watches too much
Crime and Punishment. “If he has useful
information, I can put in a word with the prosecutor.” Lorna worked
hard not to laugh.

Attorney
Larson appraised her for a moment. She could almost see the wheels
turn. Her involvement with Ed White had graduated to common
knowledge, meaning he was dealing with more than an ordinary police
lieutenant. One word from her could start good things happening for
his client, not to mention himself. After a minute, he nodded in
the affirmative. “Okay, how can Mr. Travers help?”

Lorna turned
her attention to the owner of the nervous hands and their process
of mutual massage. “I need to learn about your ex-wife’s
involvement with the X-10 organization. Is there anything you can
tell me?”

Ben began to
work his hands faster. “It’s not healthy to talk about them. They
find out, and you’re a goner.”

“They have a
presence in every prison in the region. Even among the guards,” the
attorney added.

Lorna weighed
the concern. Background checks on cops, even prison guards, were
too stringent to allow anyone with X-10 affiliation to pass, but
that didn’t preclude some from taking bribes to look the other way.
“Tell you what. Talk off the record. If your information is useful,
I won’t take an official statement until after I arrange for
transfer to solitary for your prison term.”

“Okay,” Ben
said doubtfully.

“Tell them
what you told me,” Larson said.

“Well, it’s
like this. Last month, right before you busted us, a bigwig comes
to town from out West.”