Hurley's Heroes Collection 2015-2020, page 41
“Following up with the medical examiner today,” Abijah said.
Rylka let out her breath. “Good,” she said. “These deaths are worrying to me personally, and to the council. If they get the atten- tion of the continent, we could very well find ourselves occupied by their police forces. Our garda should be able to handle this issue. My family has proudly served among the garda for generations, and I won’t have a small crop of bad actors open us up to injury from the continent.”
“If they come down here, it’ll be shit trying to get them to go back,” Abijah said. “I get it.”
“Thank you, Abijah,” Rylka said, and ended the call.
Abijah finished her beer and left a digital IOU on Maliki’s pub- lic message board.
She caught a trolley out front and took it up north toward the forensics and medical research buildings while reviewing the mes- sage from Pats.
“Confirmed the kid works up at the wight factory,” Pats said. “Meet you there after lunch. You’ll love the dirt I’ve got on the owner. Real piece of war work, that one.”
Abijah confirmed the post-lunch date and stepped off the trol- ley at the medical examiner’s building. She transferred her creden- tials to the desk, which was automated, and it admitted her into the building.
When she got upstairs, the medical examiner, Bataya, was wait- ing for her.
“How’s your sister?” Abijah said.
“Still annoyed you haven’t called,” Bataya said. “How are your wives?”
“Still in love with each other,” Abijah said. “What do you have for me?” She moved past Bataya and into the morgue. The young man’s body lay atop a grooved stone slab. Without the tatters of his clothes, he looked even more diminutive and sad, a shriveled flower. Abijah ran her hands under the protective glove sprayer and shook the film on her hands dry, then approached the edge of the table. He had already been cut open; just a small incision in the chest and on the inside of the thigh where he was pumped full of recording devices that traveled throughout his body taking record- ings, tiny and mobile as his blood had been.
His face was lacerated; he had been lying on it when she last saw him.
“You must have his name,” Abijah said. “Pats verified where he was working.”
“Yes,” Bataya said, moving to the other side of the table. “Turns out this one didn’t drown either, just like the last one. He was dead of head trauma before being dumped.” Bataya was a small woman, nimble, with luxurious purple-black hair and faux gray eyes. She was studying for a certificate in combat yoga and advanced reiki; maybe she’d already earned them. It had been months since Abijah was last in here. They had only almost slept together once, or as Abijah had explained it to Pats, “We were going to have sex . . . but then we decided not to.” And Abijah blamed that on the alcohol. Or perhaps her own fascination with what a woman trained in both reiki and combat yoga would be like in bed.
“Did Pats give you the button?” Abijah asked.
“Yes,” Bataya said, and her mouth thinned, and Abijah wondered if she’d done something wrong. Bataya went over to the counter and fished out the button, which rested now in a glass dish. The evidence webbing had been removed from it. Bataya set it directly on top of the body’s chest.
“It’s a garda Inspector-class, all-weather coat button,” Bataya said, “which I assume you knew. The rest—there’s no evidence on it. No fingerprints. No DNA. No unusual organic material. It’s pos- sible this was just something washed up on the beach near the body.” “How’d you know it was near the body? I didn’t tell you or Pats that.”
She smiled thinly. “Particles,” she said. “That beach has a very unique signature because of the burning of the palace. Lots of base metals, including mercury, after it got blown up during the war, settled into the sand there. It was toxic to swim there until twenty years ago.”
“So the body had these same particles, then?” “Of course. I mean, it was found there.”
“Both sides, clothing too, I mean. Nothing out of the ordinary there? Let’s say the body had been dropped upriver, say, near the factory? Would it bear traces of other particles from its journey downriver that could help us identify where it came from?”
“I see,” she said. “Well it did, yes. The fingernails tend to be good for that. No human DNA under them, but there was silt, and it’s not a match for the beach near the pier. That’s all glass. That beach is glass all the way up to the factory.”
“So the body was dumped no further south than the factory.” “A reasonable conclusion. But that leaves a hundred kilometers of river.” She pursed her mouth. “I was getting to the silt under the nails, you know. But you started with that banter about the button.”
“Entirely my fault.”
“Just so,” she said, and sniffed.
“Any way to match the silt to a smaller patch of river?”
She sighed. “We can try, but you should know that the garda aren’t happy about me running these tests.”
“It’s a private contract,” Abijah said, “from Rylka vo Morrissey.
They can be unhappy all they like, but the job is legitimate.”
“I’ve seen the order,” Bataya said, “or I wouldn’t have let you in.”
“It’s good to see you again too,” Abijah said.
“You didn’t have to call me,” Bataya said, “but you should have called my sister.”
“I’ve been—”
“Drunk?” she suggested.
“That too. But . . . on a case, so.”
“On a case for a day,” Bataya said. “Sorry, you just . . . disap- point me a lot. All the time.”
“We’ll keep things professional, then. I promise.” Bataya sighed. “I’ll buy you a drink.”
“One drink,” Abijah said. “But later. I’m meeting Pats at the factory to ask about the boys.”
“Boys,” Bataya said, shaking her head. “We had no word for such a thing, sixty years ago.”
“We did,” Abijah said, “it just wasn’t very polite.”
Pats waited outside the factory gate, chewing on betel nut leaves and scratching at what Abijah confirmed were mosquitoes as she stepped off the trolley and onto the packed gravel of the factory road.
“You look like shit,” Pats said. “Garda?”
“Katya was with them,” Abijah said, “if you can believe that.” “No shit? Cheeky weasel.”
“That’s what I said.”
Abijah presented her credentials at the gatehouse and asked to see the factory supervisor. There was a human attendant here, and she closed up the door and conferred with a superior for a few min- utes before admitting them. Abijah fixed her with a grin, but the woman only glared at her.
Inside, they were met by one of the owner’s aides, maybe a sec- retary or a deputy, who warbled on the whole time as if they were there for a public investor tour.
“We employ over six hundred people here,” the little birdish woman said; she was approaching fifty, and she zoomed about in a little chair like Rylka vo Morrissey’s, no doubt afflicted by the same ailment. Nobody asked about injuries much, after the war. Not sober, anyway.
“All off-worlders?” Abijah asked.
“The floor workers, yes,” the woman said. Which meant most everybody. “Management and skilled labor are all local. You can see our public safety records. We abide by all treaties and accords. Getting placed here is considered a boon for off-worlders.”
“No doubt,” Abijah said, “when the alternative is living three thousand to every cramped can in the sky.”
“Certainly we provide them with many opportunities!” the woman said, and showed them into the factory owner’s office.
The desk was clear of all items except a single nameplate, which read, “Ofram Fucking vom Amadson.” One wall was projected with a view of the factory floor, a teeming morass of bio-machines and humanity merged to perform complex manufacturing tasks. The woman behind the desk blinked and rose as they entered, no doubt immersed in some real-time shooter on her interface. She was a top-heavy woman with razor-cut hair dyed a bright red; the fringe was long and hung into her eyes. The haircut made her look young, but if Abijah had to guess, she’d say the woman was forty.
“You own the place?” Abijah said.
“Can we call you ‘Fucking’?” Pats said, and that elicited the smallest moment of confusion for Ofram, who seemed to have mo- mentarily forgotten about the nameplate.
“Ah,” Ofram said, giving a smile that was so obviously forced it hurt Abijah’s own pride to watch it. “The nameplate, yes. A joke from my mother. Can I help you? I read over your credentials. You’re looking into the death of the workers? A tragic case.”
Ofram didn’t invite them to sit, but Pats did anyway, and Abijah followed. She tracked the movement of the workers on the floor as she did. “You all made weapons here during the war,” she said. “What you make now?”
“Fertilizers, cleaning products,” Ofram said, settling into her own seat again. Behind her was a stretched canvas banded in sev- eral colors. Abijah couldn’t figure out the medium, but it seemed like a freshman effort.
“You play rugby?” Pats asked. She had brought out a little switch- blade knife and was cleaning her fingernails with it.
“No,” Ofram said. “Did the boys play rugby?”
“We’re here about the latest one in particular,” Abijah said. “Name was—” She glanced at Pats, realizing she never had gotten around to getting his name from Bataya. Shit, she was as bad as all of them.
“Sam Kine,” Pats said. “I have his little tin pod number here”—she tapped her head—“which I’m sure you used to tell his family he’s not coming back.”
“That’s correct,” Ofram said. “We were given permission to beam out that message.”
“And you’re getting a replacement sent down, then?” Abijah said.
“Per the treaty,” Ofram said, “yes. It’s protocol. There’s really nothing strange about it. The boys here get lonely and stupid. They don’t understand water. They never see much of it up there, and when they get here they get dangerous in it. Go paddling around, and the little fucks can’t swim, and they drown.”
“Three of the four didn’t drown,” Abijah said. “They were dead before they hit the water.”
“There is disagreement among the boys,” Ofram said. “They fight a lot in those cans up there. Hard to break them of it once they’re here in a civilized place.”
Pats snorted.
“I’ve told the gardai all of this,” Ofram said. “You can read it in the report.”
“Seems the kids would be happy here,” Abijah said, and her gaze moved again to the projection window. It immediately turned off, then flickered again and showed an image of a massive red cherry tree blowing in the breeze. Abijah raised her brows and regarded Ofram.
“They’re never satisfied,” Ofram said.
“That why you sell them out?” Pats said casually. “Got some reports that boys here get sold out for labor, the ones that don’t do what they’re told.”
“Where did you hear that?” Ofram said. “That’s against the treaty.”
Abijah cocked her head at Pats. “Where did you hear that?” Pats shrugged, but a message pinged at the bottom left of Abijah’s vision, and she blinked it open. It was from Pats, and read,
“Maliki hears the best shit at the bar. Listen more than you talk over there, lushie.”
Ofram leaned over her desk. “These people are trash,” she said. “You know what we called them when they first started coming here forty years ago, twenty years after those blasted space boats got stuck in orbit on the way to some exploded star? ‘Not-people.’”
“I know.”
“Then you understand.” “Do I?”
Ofram said, “These people, you call them, they’re aliens. Alien biology, alien urges, alien customs.”
“So that justifies their treatment?”
“What do you think?” Ofram said. “Dogs are tools. These boys are tools, too. Companion animals. They send us these ones be- cause they’re useless to them. They don’t bear babies. They can’t feed babies. At best, they’re useful for brute labor, and that’s what we use them for too. Maybe it’s not us you should be questioning, but the sort of people that send their own down here to dig shit and die.”
“One last question.”
“Quickly, now. This factory doesn’t run itself.”
Could have fooled me, Abijah thought. “You ever been a garda?
Anyone in your family served civilian?”
“Certainly,” she said, “my grandmother was Inspector Sixth Class.”
“You have her coat?” “What?”
“The all-weather regulation coat everyone above Inspector gets.
You have it?”
“Those have to be returned to the garda on retirement,” she said. “So no, I don’t expect so.”
“Not in any storage cellar somewhere? Maybe reported lost so a kid or a cousin could have it as a memento?”
“Not that I’m aware, no. Why?” “Just tying up some loose ends.”
Abijah ended the interview, and Pats followed her out. “That woman’s a piece of shit,” Pats said.
“You don’t know that Maliki’s information is good,” Abijah said. “If we ran every investigation on tips from the bar we’d have half the island in rehabilitation.”
“Let’s come back tonight,” Pats said, “when she gets off. Some- one has the grandma’s coat. We soften her up, ransack her place for the coat. C’mon, what else are you doing tonight?”
Abijah thought about lean little Bataya, and combat yoga. She sighed. “Not a damn thing,” Abijah said. “But I’ll need a drink first.
Unsurprisingly, Ofram quit work early, heading out across the road to the trolley. Abijah waited in the shadow of the station in case Ofram slipped away from Pats, but Pats was an old hand at kidnap- ping, and Ofram was unprepared.
Pats pressed her switchblade directly behind Ofram’s left kid- ney and walked her back around the side of the factory to a rear entrance. Abijah had pulled up a schematic of the place and found a little abandoned room at the top of a rickety set of metal stairs. Abijah took up the rear, ensuring they weren’t followed as they trod across the catwalk that overlooked one of the abandoned fac- tory floors. No doubt this wing had been used in the heyday of the factory when it manufactured the sort of weapons that had made toxins like the ones that were ticking away inside Abijah.
Pats sat Ofram down on a crate and pulled up another one in front of her.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Ofram said. She was sweating heav- ily. “You ask anyone here. Everything is regulation.”
Abijah leaned against the wall by the door. This one was up to Pats.
“Listen,” Pats said, “I don’t like the idea of you all dumping aliens in a river ’cause they won’t work themselves to death here. I’ve seen labor camps. Not a fan.”
“That’s not what this is,” Ofram said. “It’s all regulation. Public files! You can access it all right now.”
There was a banging outside on the catwalk. Abijah ducked out, quickly, to see what the noise was. One of the overhead lights had fallen against the wall.
Behind her, Abijah heard Ofram make a break for it. She whirled around just as Ofram careened out the door, Pats hot on her heels. “Little fuck!” Pats yelled. She ran with her switchblade out.
Ofram was shrieking.
Abijah ran after them. Ofram tripped and stumbled onto the catwalk below them. Pats pinned her in on the other end. As Abijah rushed after them, Ofram pressed herself against the railing. The whole catwalk creaked and juddered.
“Don’t move!” Abijah yelled.
Ofram screamed. The railing gave way and Ofram tumbled, arms pinwheeling as she fell, her mouth a shocked, terrified O.
She hit the rock floor with a heavy, wet thud, like a melon.
Abijah rushed down the stairs to the musty floor and picked her way to Ofram, but it was a wasted effort. Ofram’s head was split clean open, blood pouring all around her. Abijah looked up and saw Pats gazing over the broken railing, knife still out.
“Ah, well,” Pats said.
It wasn’t the first time an interrogation had gone wrong. Fuck, Abijah thought. “Clean it up,” Abijah said. “Don’t tell me anything more about it.”
“Thanks, Jeesmo. You’ve not gone totally soft,” Pats said. Abijah grimaced at the old nickname. “Clean it the fuck up,” she said.
She didn’t start shaking until she reached the trolley station. Public contracts didn’t excuse her for murder, even an accidental one. She waited out by the trolley station until Pats was done, and they traveled back into town sitting side by side. Pats was animated and chatty, giddy about old times. The death and cleanup had no doubt reawakened her love of wet work.
“We all come back after they train us to get good at stuff,” Pats said. They were alone in the trolley car, but she knew better than to speak in specifics. “Then they tell you not to do it. Like telling you sex is great, sex is fun, have sex, and you have a lot of sex, and then they say, you know, stop. Just like that. Like, stop drinking water.”
“I need a drink,” Abijah said.
“Good call, Jeesmo,” Pats said, thumping her on the back. “Don’t fucking call me that.”
“Those were good times, Jeesmo. Good, good times.”
They stopped along the way to Pats’s place and picked up four cans of rum apiece and cracked them open on the walk along the canal and down to Pats’s one-room garden flat. The door squeaked. The place smelled of mildew. Abijah was already good and tipsy when Pats yelled for the lights and Abijah found herself staring right at an Inspector-level, all-weather coat slung over the tatty divan.
Abijah narrowed her eyes. She snatched the coat off the divan and dropped her bag of rum. She counted the buttons. And there it was. A little tangle of synthetic thread was all that was left of the last button on the front of it.
