From Out of the Outlands
Part five
Police File:
We'd heard about the old lady's stash for years.
Every dumb mother and his son talked about it, their eyes glowing, mouths slavering, minds calculating the numbers better than a think head or cybercrazy calculator.
“She's a near dead bitch, man,” Queer Kid tells me, his shriveled head ranting in that high pitched voice of his from my other shoulder, the ugliest son of Satan you'd ever seen right there attached to me, always talking schemes as if a germ of an idea had an ice cube's chance in hell of growing in that peanut brain of his. “And she' rich, man, loaded to the teeth with greenbacks.”
I wanted to shake the fool to his senses, like I'd tried a hundred thousand times since we were kids, wanted to try and jar something in him loose so as it might go back together with a little old-fashioned sense. He was always coming up with schemes, always pretending like he'd thought them up for himself, when he hadn't, as if I hadn't been standing right there in his shoes listening to this fellah or that chick telling us all about things.
I knew as much about the old lady as he did, maybe more. I didn't need to New Age guru or Potato Eye to picture the senile bitch pacing around in that uptown mansion just waiting for someone, anyone to come and lift her lid for her.
“It's got no Spy Guy either, nothing more than the wall, man,” Queer Kid went on. “Just those lazy lobs on the wall and you know how bad those fools are. We could take them with spit, man. You know we could.”
“Just shut your crap,” I told him, trying to sort out the thoughts in my own head. When Queer Kid went on like this, I got kind of dizzy, too, as if his thinking drained my thinking by thinning our blood.
Lot's of people in the zone talked about going after the bitch, all talk, no guts, or at least not enough guts to take on the Lazy Lobs, who liked to hurt any street freak they could catch. Even the Potato Eyes didn't like those gigs, spinning out the future doesn't make a dude bullet proof. I had guts enough, but didn't trust rumors to tell me the truth about anything. Maybe I could have hired a New Age to check the webs to see what her credit looked like, though rumors said her stash was in old fashioned, one hundred percent green stuff, the kind of stuff nobody bothered to print these days, not with ATMs and ITRs and all that kind of thing. Who needed a wallet when a store could scan you? I'd heard talk of people slicing ITR's off people's foreheads, but never known one to work in a scanner afterwards.
But cash?
Who even remembered back that far? God knows I'd seen a wrinkled fiver from time to time, changing hands among the zoners like a holy relic. Store keeps even took them, selling them off to the collectors downtown. The old Soviets, they say, still relish all that cold war stuff. If she had it and had it in quantity, then maybe it was worth a trip inside, for a look and lift. Maybe we'd be sitting pink when we got back, and we could even afford to hire one of those Laser-fakers to cut me and Queer Kid free, giving him or me our own set of limbs.
Yet I worried over the lack of a stash, wasting our tick tocks on a goddamn ghost dance, not to mention the chance we'd take getting heat. I didn't want to get blasted over no false alarm, if you dig my thinking.
“And what if there ain't any money?” I asked. “What happens if we take the tube up there, get passed the lazy lobs and all we find is a house and a rotting old bitch?”
“There's money there,” Queer Kid said in such a way as I almost believed him, that scratchy voice of his speaking the way the gurus do when got the sight.
“How do you know?”
“You think the lazy lob people would let her live like that if she didn't?”
I had to look at Queer Kid twice, just to make sure it was him speaking this drift, it sounding too sane to come out of his mouth no matter in what voice.
Everybody knew how little the Lazy Lobs liked drift, how anybody who didn't have a load to spend didn't stay on the wall side like that, let alone in the kind of house people said she had, all crumbly and dank, like something haunted. Maybe the Lazy Lobs wanted her to die, too, without a blood to pass her bucks to, Lazy Lobs legal-eagles drafting up their swift kits to take what was left over once the old chick cashed in. Legal Eagles and Lazy Lobs tearing that old house down stick by stick.
“Well we can dream all we like,” I said. “You and me won't get our hands on that stash.”
“Why not?” Queer kid asked.
“Look at us,” I said, waving our hands in his face. “Even if we get in past the Lazy Lobs on the wall, how would we walk around in that neighborhood looking like this?”
“We could,” Queer Kid said. “This is Halloween.”
Again, I stared at him. You just didn't get two sane things out of that head in one day without wondering how. His plan spread through my head as if transmitted via blood, I saw the whole naked thing, us walking out of the zone in a street full of screamers -- all of them scaring themselves by dressing like us.
“You're crazy,” I said, and spat, but let the idea drift over me. The door jams and spy guys we could skim through, and maybe we could do the street, if nobody looked too close.
“I'm not and you know it,” Queer Kid said, losing a little of the clarity from his eyes, a rush of hormones coming over us as he thought his dirt.
“All right,” I said, infected by his desire, it clouding my thinking like it did his. I was floating by the time we stepped off the uptown tube and scared we'd catch sight of a street sweep, though none made a pass. No one saw our fingers flash over the pad or us slip in the wall door when it opened.
Now we'd been inside a time or two, but never just standing there. It was always grab and run. You don't site-see when you're snatching a screamer. Sure, a few lazy lobs stared at us, panic flashing into their eyes the moment me and Queer Kid started down the street, but with all the screamers rushing around, the lazy lobs got over it.
“They're falling for it,” I said, as if I didn't believe it myself, or didn't believe even a lazy lob could be so stupid. Only then did I catch the manic look in Queer Kid's eyes, and saw how his pale pink tongue slid across his shriveled lips as he stared back at the screamers.
“Don't you go and do anything we'll be sorry for,” I told him.
“I don't know what you mean?” Queer Kid said in a distant voice.
“We're here to get the loot not as tourists,” I said. “You leave all the sweet meat alone.”
A woman with her child came near us. The woman looked shocked, but the little screamer giggled, wiggling its little fingers at us. We wiggled back. Queer Kid said: “Trick or Treat?”
The woman glanced sharply at Queer Kid's shriveled head, her eye widening into dark coins. Maybe she figured it was a trick, one of those TV ventriloquists, making that head speak instead of the proper one. She hurried away.
“That was stupid,” I told him and then pushed on. He seemed to know the way, over the lazy lob cobble stone streets and unwired store front windows. This place was a picnic for any zoner. And everywhere we saw screamers, screamers prancing down the street singing out their "trick or treats," all of them dressed as if they'd come from the zone, looking just like rads like us, some wearing four arms, others with three eyes, but none with two heads which made them look at us. They asked if we'd sewed our heads one and how we got the shriveled one to speak, nodding I told them `a chip.’ Queer Kid's hormone swirled in me and only by keeping the rich bitch vision in my head did I lure Queer Kid away. Sweat poured down our sleeves by the time we got we got to the house and stood on the sidewalk out side its gate. Queer Kid sniffed.
“It's sort of creepy,” he said.
“So?”
He shrugged and didn't stop me when I pushed open the gate and walked in, its hinges wailing like a house jack, drawing stares from passing lazy lobs, all of them wondering why anyone would pay a visit on a place like this.
“What do we do now?” Queer kid asked when we reached the porch.
“Ring the bell,” I said, and lifted our hand to punch at the illuminated orange button that was straight out of a history book, no peep jeep announcing us, no spy guy winking at us through the glass. Just that button.
Deep inside, a shrill bell rang, like a frail voice yelling for help, then quiet with only the stumble of footsteps sounding beyond the door. The dark curtain parted. A face squinted at us from the other side, so wrinkled and pale, it looked as if it had already died. It looked puzzled and opened the door.
“Yes?” she asked, brushing back her stringy hair, a ragged at a witch-bitch though with no evil look in her eyes.
“Trick or treat,” me and Queer Kid said, holding out our bag, though a minute later, Queer Kid dragged me into the house with him as our hand covered over the old lady's mouth. She tried to cry out but the Queer kid hit her with our other hand.
“Shush now, lady,” he said in so sweet a voice it scared me.
Her eyes bulged. She muttered a protest through our fist. Queer Kid hit her again. She calmed down. Then Queer Kid tore off her shirt.
“Stop that,” I said. “All we want is her money.”
“That's all you want,” Queer Kid said, drooling over her as he tore everything, her gray flesh like a dead fish's, and she screamed and screamed as our hand tightened.
“She's a virgin,” Queer Kid said. “I can smell it.”
“Don't be disgusting,” I said. “She has to be ninety years old.”
“I don't care I want it,” Queer Kid said, as I jerked our hand away from the old lady's mouth, releasing her scream. It stopped Queer Kid and brought a puzzle look to his face. The screaming went on and on, and he looked more and more confused.
“Stop it,” he told her.
She just screamed.
Then he hit her. Hit her hard with the back of our hand. Hit her so he head rolled back and we both heard the snap of her neck. The screaming stopped. Her eyes opened with surprised, and then she sagged.
“Ah, damn, now look what you've done,” I said. “You went and killed her.”
But even that didn't change his expression and a moment later, Queer Kid was yanking open our pants and pulling out our instrument, and pushing it at the old lady's mouth, my screams replacing her screams as Queer Kid humped and humped and humped, pumping every orifice until the body grew stiff and we grew limp.
“You're an ass!” I said when he was finally done. “Here you go and have to ruin everything. Now how are we supposed to find the money?”
Queer Kid shrugged, sagging a little after expending himself. He looked like he wanted to go to sleep, and then, woke only at the sound of sirens. We looked at each other, somehow knowing the lazy lobs were coming here, some sensor in the house announcing us, that we never figured on.
“We got to get out,” I said.
“What about the money?”
“Forget the money,” I said. “You don't know what these people will do to us if they find us here -- especially after what you did.”
Already someone pounded on the door, and we could see the faces pressing in at the glass.
“Out the back, quick,” I said and started towards the rear of the house, stumbling over whole rooms of antiques the woman didn't know were antique, finding a way through the maze to the kitchen and the door out into the back. We plunged through and found ourselves confronted with a yard of brambles and weeds, a rusted push-type lawn mower standing among them. Behind this, a ten foot spiked fence made escape that way impossible.
“Around the house,” I said, and turned and followed the path along the house, back towards the front, hearing the sounds of people inside the house, lights flashing on and off as the lazy lobs rushed through the rooms with their night beams. By this time, they'd found the body and seen what Queer Kid had done.
I didn't hear the shots at first, or mistook them for some other sound. But I saw Queer Kid's head explode and felt his warm brains splatter on my face. The wave of pain came next, and I must have passed out. I woke here, with tubes in my arms, and wires on my fingers and toes, and the grinning man at the lever tells me to expect a real jolt.
“Oh it won't kill you friend,” he said. “It'll just hurt. And keep on hurting. In fact, friend, we're going to keep you alive, a long, long time.”
Then, the grinning Lazy Lob hit the switch.
***********
Vincent walked down the cool corridor of City Hall, his footsteps echoing ahead of him, the security devices at the doors, keeping the population down to a bare minimum. He saw only staff members scurrying from office to office, carrying computer CDs or print outs, their faces haunted by years of steady employment in a world that longer appreciated civil servants. They glanced at Vincent as they passed, wondering about him, a little suspicious by his lack of security tag. Was he a visitor? Or an inspector looking to downsize again? Or maybe he was one of the many angry residents of the city with a machine gun beneath his coat?
Vincent only nodded, too angry himself to care how nervous he made the help, a little unnerved himself by having to physically come here. The mayor had refused to answer his calls; the political heat getting to him as Chelsea upped the ante, declaring itself under siege from the city police department. Vincent felt the pressure, recognizing the signs from the last time a police chief had been fired. The mayor sought to distance himself from the offending member of his staff, and lacked the moral courage to tell Vincent himself. The firing – when it came – would come via the media. Vincent would find a reporter standing at his door or shimmering on his monitor, asking him if he had any comment.
The mayor presumed victims of such firings would go quietly. But Vincent was not like the slugs that'd preceded him. He had no soft slot to slide back into, an administrative post in the state or federal government, a seat at one of the universities in the suburbs. His life centered on the NYPD, and he wasn’t about to give his post up without a fight. More importantly, one of his officers had gone down in the line of duty. He wouldn’t let her killer go unavenged. Justice demanded and arrest and prosecution and Justice was more important than a mayor, a police chief or a career in the police department.
Vincent’s step said as much as he marched ahead, propelling him towards the huge glass doors that marked the mayor’s office. No one had questioned his authority at the door. Security had no reason to believe Vincent had come on any other business but his own, as official as anything generated out of these hollowed halls. Above all, security had no reason to notify the mayor of the police chief’s arrival.
The mayor, being the man he was, would never suspect such a visit. None of the other former chiefs would have come, few had ever seen the inside of the city hall, except during the hiring ceremonies. Vincent came often, seeking the services of the tax assessor or city planners, learning early on that he could not depend on the mayor to authorize his every request. By making his face known to the lower officials, Vincent rarely had to ask the mayor’s permission for anything, and thereby avoiding refusal of that permission. Vincent knew the building, and the building knew him. As a child on the street he had come here, too, standing outside on the steps to stare up at it, the way tourist kids used to stare at the White House in Washington, or the Statue of Liberty down in the harbor, awed by the history and the importance of the place.
He was not awed now. He knew the power now lay in timing, not authority. He knew that if he reached the mayor before the mayor could finish the long process of notifying the city council, Vincent might get some Justice.
The secretaries in the outer office, looking up, startled, a few of them even recognizing Vincent from on-line conversations. Vincent’s chiseled face tended to translate to the screen well. A few of the women smiled. The woman behind the big wooded counter did not, nor did she reach over and automatically push the button that released the electronic lock to the gate. This arrangement had only a semblance of security, designed in an age when a barred gate kept people from wandering into parts of the office not intended for them. Vincent could have leaped the swinging door without breathing hard, but he didn’t. He stopped instead in front of the desk, and the iron-faced woman assigned to it.
“I want to see the mayor,” he said.
“The mayor’s a busy man,” she said, her hard eyes saying she knew who Vincent was and why he had come. “Do you have an appointment?”
Vincent leaned on the counter, his 357 magnum revolver thudding against the wood as its handle made contact. “No,” he said. “But I’m going to see him anyway and I’m going to see him now, and if you don’t open the gate, I’m coming over it. Is that understood?”
For the first time, the steel eyes wavered, in a way Vincent had seen such eyes waver in the past, when the savage world confronts the civilized world head on, when the rules that protect such people as her, suddenly evaporated, and her kind had deal with another, more savage human on terms much more primitive. He watched as her eyes dilated and her thin lips pressed themselves out of existence.
“I’ll announce you,” she said finally, in a voice so grim and low, Vincent hardly heard her as she turned sharply away, her heals competing with the chatter of computer keyboards as she vanished.
Vincent looked around, behind him, he saw several wooden seats propped against the wall, thick armed styled furniture from an bureaucratic world of the past, hard-bottomed and uncomfortable, but built to last an eternity. How many poor souls had suffered hours of torture in those, Vincent wondered, as he eased over to one and sat, shifting it a little so that he could see the door and the counter? No doubt the good clerk had notified both the mayor and security, and at this very moment, a hundred armed guards rushed through the halls from the basement with the intent of protecting their good mayor from assassination.
The guards did come, though hardly as many of Vincent imagined, a few dozen, and none wearing body armor, none carrying anything more lethal than a standard nine-millimeter automatic, and none even had their weapon out. At the same time, from the other direction, a red-faced mayor appeared, as fully flustered as Vincent’s imagination had painted, eyes so red and outraged, the mayor might have shot Vincent if he’d been armed.
“What the hell are you doing here?” the mayor exploded.
“I came to pay you a visit,” Vincent said, slowly rising, aware of just how easily it would be for one of the mayor’s security to shoot him by mistake. They were little better than the rent a cops neighborhoods hired to man the walls. Their fingers itched too much and their minds too little.
“A visit? Don’t you know I’m a busy man?” the mayor said.
“Too busy to answer my calls,” Vincent said.
“Yes, too busy for that,” the mayor growled, waving his security away. “It’s largely on your account that I am so busy, trying to soothe an angry neighborhood association over at Chelsea. It seems they believe you’ve been harassing them.”
“Maybe you should ask me for my side of it,” Vincent said. “Then you would have less trouble sleeping at night. Or perhaps, it’s their votes you’re so worried about.”
The mayor’s face grew red again. “Why don’t we talk about this in my office?” he said, motioning his fat hand towards some door Vincent could not see from his side of the gate. A buzzer sounded, the gate opened, Vincent slowly rose from the chair, crossed over the threshold, then followed the waddling mayor towards another huge frosted glass door that marked his personal office.
Inside, the mayor made his way around a monstrous oak desk, the top, cluttered with old fashioned file folders and ball point pens. In this setting the man looked like a teacher, with a half dozen spiral notebooks stuffed with hand written notes. Around him, on four sides, book shelves loomed, his own and editions from the previous mayor, filled with tomes on everything from philosophy to engineering. The oddly missing ingredient here was a computer terminal, or for that matter, any communication device at all, no telephone, no intercom, not even a 19th century brass blow tube. Just how he communicated with his staff was anybody's guess. The mayor likely went out to his secretary’s desk each time he wanted to scold Vincent.
“Sit down,” the mayor said, jabbing a thick forefinger towards one of the leather chairs in front of the desk.
Vincent sat.
“Now what the fuck are you doing here?”
“Trying to get some answers,” Vincent said. “Before you fire me.”
“Fire you? What are you taking about?”
“I know the pattern. You or the council gets pressure from the neighborhoods and off goes the police chief's head.”
“That's bullshit.”
“Is it?” Vincent asked. “I called you. You shut me out. That's part of the pattern, too.”
“I told you I was busy.”
“Busy on account of the stake out?”
“Yes, damn it!” the mayor exploded, his fat hand smacking the top of the desk so that the portrait of his three kids fell flat on its glassy face. “What the hell do you think you're doing, encircling Chelsea?”
“Trying to catch a murderer,” Vincent said.
“A suspected murderer.”
“We have enough proof to get the death penalty. He was sloppy with this one, in a hurry. He left prints. And the computer has pretty good shots of him advancing with his hands outstretched, till he tore her dress off.”
“So does that give you the goddamn right to lay siege to the place?”
“It's standard operating procedure to check people in and out.”
“It's an outrage, and news of its has spread throughout the city. If I had to run for reelection this year, I'd lose by a landslide. Hell, the city council is so pissed, they might just try a recall.”
“So I should let a murderer go free because you can't handle the council?”
“No, damn it. I just want you and your men to stop harassing innocent people.”
“They are not innocent.”
“What?”
“They're harboring a criminal. We did the usual request, asking the neighborhood security to hand Cromwell over for trial. They wouldn't comply.”
The mayor's thick black brows folded in towards the bridge of his nose. “I didn't know that,” he said, falling back in his seat, his fat hands folded on his stomach. He stared across the fingers and the desk at Vincent. “It's that solid -- your evidence?”
“As solid as evidence comes. We were on the scene within minutes. Our team analyzed the data within the hour. We have the pictures. We have the finger prints. We even have witnesses who saw them together at the club. What we don't have, is him.”
“I see,” the mayor mumbled, then stared at his fingers for a while, looking almost lost in the bulging vest and its accumulation of brass buttons, like a pudgy child dressed in his parent's clothing. Then, he looked at Vincent again, his eyes less angry. “You're a son of a bitch. You come crawling up out the sewer, more moral and righteous than any of us who have grown up in fine neighborhoods.”
“The sewer is the reason I'm so moral,” Vincent said. “I've seen the world at its worst. I know what the world becomes when civilization fails, when laws are ignored, when people start thinking only of themselves. That's why I want this ass hole so bad. He's worse than any killer in the Outlands. He feigns respectability. He can pull the strings that make people like you and the council quake. His kind is the most dangerous kind. They really do get away with murder, sometimes made to seem like saints, too.”
The mayor stayed silent, this time glancing around the room, at the gold lettering on the brown and tan bindings of his books, as if he expected some easy answer to leap out from them.
“I don't mean to put you off the case,” he said finally. “I don't mean to let anyone get away with murder. But I have plans for this city. I can heal some of the hurt the last generation has caused here, bind it back together, make it one city again. But only if I can stay in office, only if I can keep the trust of the neighborhood fathers. But something like this can make them hate me, and destroy my plans for unity.”
“I'm sorry,” Vincent said. “But I think Laura's life is more important than your reelection.”
“Yes, I agree,” the mayor said. “But I was thinking of all the other Lauras out there, a sane city can prevent from dying. If I can bring down the walls between people and neighborhoods, then maybe there won't have to be as many Laura's lying dead in the gutter.”
“You can't heal wounds with injustice,” Vincent said. “The son of a bitch is a killer and if you let him get away with it, then the whole idea of law is bullshit, leaving one law for the Outlands and another for bastards like him.”
“I know, I know,” the mayor moaned, hands pressing the sides of his puffy cheeks. “But it's public opinion I'm fighting here. People don't see your side of it. They only see your police outside one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, and they think that their neighborhood will be next.”
“Then maybe you should show people our side,” Vincent said.
The mayor looked up. “How?”
“We have the pictures of Cromwell's victims. We have the computer generated images of Laura's last moment. Send it to the neighborhoods, let the neighborhood fathers see the truth.”
“Sure,” the mayor laughed weakly. “Like any of them would look at such footage. They're busy men and women. They would laugh at me, and still make sure I'm voted out of office.”
“Then broadcast the evidence,” Vincent said, drawing another frown from the mayor.
“What do you mean?”
“The neighborhoods hardly own their own cable television stations. Talk to the broadcasters. I'm sure they'd cooperate if you used some of your persuasion.”
“Broadcast the pictures of dead people? Are you crazy?”
“My team can doctor it up to make it more appealing, give it the right build up. Hell, half the people in those neighborhoods are bloodhounds. Every time there's an accident, you can see them peeping out their cars to catch sight of blood or brains. They like this kind of thing. It appeals to their voyeurism. But I have a feeling if we sell it as if these victims aren't street scum, but wives and daughters of respectable families, those neighborhoods will want Cromwell hung as much as we do.”
The mayor stared. “It might work,” he said. “We have a television team here in this building. I could moderate it. Not only would people listen to the broadcast, but they might just connect my face to it come election time.”
“Fine,” Vincent said, slowly rising from the chair, slumped slightly, his eyes heavy with weariness. “Do what you need to do. Just get me Cromwell's head.”
***********
“Mayor's office, chief,” Hudson said, sticking his head through the open door, his horn-rimmed glasses shimmering as his booming voice stirred Vincent from sleep.
“Thanks,” Vincent said, his fingers fumbling to click the mouse. The image of a frowning mayor appeared on the screen.
“What's wrong with you?” the mayor asked. “You look terrible.”
“I haven't been sleeping well,” Vincent said.
“Have you even been home?”
“No,” Vincent admitted. “That's too much out of the loop. Have you received any news.”
“Yes,” the Mayor said. “Though you're not going to like it.”
Vincent sat up straight in his chair. “What is it?”
“The neighborhood association has refused to give him up.”
“So? We have the authority to take him.”
“Cromwell went to the governor. It seems he's well connected in Albany. He asked for your head.”
“What did you tell the governor?”
“I told him what you told me.”
“Even with that, he won’t let us go after Cromwell?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He’s not convinced that we’ll handle the situation properly.”
“You know me. I do everything by the book.”
“I told him that as well. But he believes with a police officer’s death involved that you might be rushing to convict Cromwell.”
“I’m rushing to convict a guilty man,” Vincent said, bitterly. “Besides, the governor can’t put state troops on the walls to stop us if we decided to go in after the bastard.”
“As a matter of fact, he's already done so.”
“What?” Vincent exploded. “You're kidding me? You mean to tell me the governor is going to defend a mass murderer, just because the bastard happens to live in Chelsea?”
“The Governor has worked out a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“Cromwell will be tried in Chelsea by a Chelsea court.”
“But that's not a criminal court,” Vincent objected. “They're not set up for anything more than property disputes.”
“The governor said he'll provide the court with whatever expertise it needs.”
“You mean to help get Cromwell off?” Vincent said angrily.
“That's not fair. The governor is trying to work things out. You're team will be able to present its evidence.”
“Yeah, right,” Vincent said. “To a bunch of planning board members who wouldn't know a video finger print from a color collage.”
“It's the best we can do,” the mayor said, the image of his face vanishing instantly, leaving the reflection of Vincent's infuriated face in its place.
“Fuck!” Vincent said and slammed down his fist. The monitor shook. A cup containing pens fell to the floor, contents scattering on the rug – A few falling onto a pair of sharp-toed boots. Vincent glanced up, following the line from the boots to the face, along a particularly attractive female body. The hair and makeup of Cromwell's niece had changed since the last time Vincent had seen her, but not the sharp, shark-like features, nor the hard steel-colored eyes.
“Hello,” she said in a cold voice meant to sound seductive.
“How the hell did you get in here?”
“I walked in, naturally.”
“What do you want?” Vincent asked, taking a much longer time to study the woman, the platinum colored hair shimmering like melting metal around her face, matched by silver colored eye shadow, lip stick and finger nails. She looked as mechanical as a robot, though oozed forward without any of the clunky mannerisms of a machine.
“Is that any way to talk to me?” she asked, almost sounding injured.
“I'm busy,” Vincent said.
“I came about my uncle,” she said, sounding less cold and more concerned. “I want to know why you're harassing him.”
“I'm not harassing anybody,” Vincent said. “I'm pursing a murderer, and that investigation has led me to your uncle.”
“But he didn't do it.”
“That's for a court to decide, not me,” Vincent said, finding himself surprised at the conversation, and how honest her shock seemed to him. Did she really believe her uncle innocent? Why shouldn't she? After all, she hadn't seen the evidence, nor would she understand it all, even if she had. That was the problem. Even the good intentioned people in Chelsea might not get what the police were driving at, would see it all as an attack on one of their most prominent citizens, and would close around him to protect him, keeping him free to kill again. “Unless you have some other business here, I would recommend your leaving.”
“I mean it, William,” the woman said, leaning across the desk so that Vincent could see well down into the swell of her breasts, sighing, trembling breasts, drawing a undesired reaction in Vincent. “I'll so anything to help my uncle.”
“You understand all conversations in this office are recorded?” Vincent said slowly.
The woman glanced around, not annoyed, nor even especially surprised, but in a manner that suggested she would like to find the camera and smile for it, or play up to it -- a regular movie star.
“That is convenient,” she said, smiling at Vincent again. “I suppose you can get your kicks later, looking over your little conquests after your girl friends leave.”
“Why don't you get out,” Vincent said.
For the first time, the woman looked annoyed, apparently realizing he had no intention of taking her up on her offer.
“You son of a bitch,” she said, pushing her shoulders back. “I want you to stop hounding us.”
“No one's hounding you,” Vincent said, pressing the palms of his hands against his pants to rid them of sweat.
“You've got Chelsea surrounded and you've taken my uncle to court.”
“If he's innocent the court will let him go,” Vincent said. “That's the way justice works.”
“If?” she said, in a voice ring in pitch. “Of course he's innocent.”
“That's not what I believe,” Vincent said. “And it's my job to arrest people who I believe have committed crimes.”
“you're saying my uncle raped this woman cop?”
“Among others.”
“Let me see this proof,” the woman said.
“I can't do that.”
“Why not? Are you afraid that it won't convince me?”
“No, but the matter has to go before the prosecutor and we have regulations about how these things are done. The investigation is still ongoing. I can't just let you look at what we have for you to carry it back to your uncle.”
“But won't you have to hand it over to my uncle anyway -- as part of this court thing?”
“Yes,” Vincent admitted. “That would come as part of the discovery process.”
“So why can't you show it to me now if your evidence is so strong?”
This invitation intrigued Vincent. Why shouldn't he show the woman some of what he had, shock her into losing a bit of her loyalty, make her realize just what kind of monster her uncle was?
“All right,” he said. “I'll show you something. Not a lot. But something. Come around here.”
He motioned for her to come around the desk where she could better see the images on the monitor. Then, he tapped out a few commands, calling up the file from the night of Laura's murder. Then, after a few more clicks, Laura's face appeared. He deliberately called up the close up first, the pain and horror of the woman's last moment depicted in pixels like a impressionist painting. He heard Cromwell's niece gasp a little, some private connection made between the dead Laura and the live niece, some aspect of the expression that only women could read off each other's faces – perhaps a message of violation, perhaps only one of agony. Then, Vincent clicked again, the computer drawing in a new picture, a point of view back from the face to show the torn body, and the throat, and the indentations where Cromwell's rings had cut into the flesh. This time the niece's gasp sounded pained.
“Turn it off,” she said sharply.
Vincent complied, the image fading from the screen but not from the horror-stricken eyes of Cromwell's niece, who continued to stare down at the now blank screen as if Vincent had not turned the picture off.
“Are you trying to tell me my uncle did that?”
“He was the last person seen with her -- within seconds of her death.”
“But he couldn't have done that.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know him. He's a gruff man, sometimes gets angry quickly, but he's no madman.”
“We're all madmen somewhere inside,” Vincent said. “We all have the beast. But some of us contain the beast better than others. Some of us fear the law. Some of us have trained ourselves to be civilizing animals. But sometimes, something breaks down, some bit of madness creeps out. I'm sure in some ways your uncle is a fine man. But not in this way. When he goes out on the town, he's a killer, and we intend to prevent him from killing again.”
But the niece shook her head slowly, backing away from the blank screen as she did, her mouth so pressed that the metal color squeezed out making her look a little mad, too.
“I don't believe it,” she said.
“I can show you the video images showing him with her until he ripped her dress off.”
“You have that?” the niece said, now staring with horror at Vincent instead of the screen.
“Yes,” Vincent said, finger poised to make the images return to the screen. “Do you wish to see them?”
“No,” the woman said, extending the word into what sounded like a howl of pain or protest. “I don't want to see any thing. Leave me alone.”
Then, she ran from the office, leaving Vincent to stare after her.
***********
Vincent saw their laughing eyes as he pulled the police vehicle out of the Chelsea gate, guards laughing the way the jurors had in the court room less than an hour before, guards laughing the way everyone had laughed throughout the trial.
“I don't believe this,” Hudson said, spitting out the words from the dark side of the car, only his hands visible in the slanting lights from outside, though from his voice Vincent could sense the man's outrage. “I don't believe those fucking people could let the bastard off like that.”
“Didn't you?” Vincent said, his own voice remarkable calm considering just how volcanic he felt, how close to the surface his own beast now was -- let loose by Cromwell's smirk after the jury's verdict. It had taken every ounce of will power to keep himself from leaping over the defense table to strangle Cromwell the way Cromwell had strangled those women, to strangle the whole board of judges and jurors, strangle every one of the character witnesses whose weight in the court eyes had counted more than images on a screen, countering every idea that this man, one of them, could ever possibly be a killer of women. “I expected it from the beginning.”
Now Hudson's eyes showed as the car pulled out from the shadow of the gate and into the barrier region of lights, Hudson's eyes furious behind their horn-rimmed glasses, Hudson's eyes showing his own desire to murder.
“You knew it and still went through this joke of a trial?” Hudson said. “How could you?”
“I didn't have an option,” Vincent said. “The mayor and governor set things up like this.”
“You could have refused.”
“And gotten what? My pink slip? Then there wouldn't have been a trial at all.”
“For what good it did,” Hudson said, fire in his eyes dying at the car turned again and the angle of lights returned his face to the shadows.
“It did more good than you think,” Vincent said. “It raised doubts in some of those people.”
“Not enough doubt to convict him.”
“No,” Vincent said. “But enough to make them think differently if it ever happens again.”
“Oh, good,” Hudson said. “So someone else has to die, some other woman has to get raped before anything gets done.”
“What would you have us do?”
“Go in after the son of a bitch.”
“And do what? He's already been tried. We can't try him twice for the same crime. He knows it. He knows we know it.”
“There wouldn't be a second trial if I got my hands on him.”
“Then you would be as bad as he is,” Vincent said. “We can't operate above and beyond the law and still expect it to work as a system.”
“Fuck the system. People are dying here.”
“More would die without some sense of order,” Vincent said.
“So we sit and wait for the bastard to come back out?”
“If we have to.”
“What if he doesn't?”
“He will.”
“After this?”
“He can't help himself.”
“I'm not so sure. All this has proved he's a pretty smart cookie.”
“Smart has nothing to do with it,” Vincent said, the car now passing out of the buffer and into the streets, the twilight returning to the car and its passengers. “The part we're concerned with is not smart. It reacts the way all animals react, fulfilling its needs. When the animal calls, he'll respond.”
“Yeah, but will he respond in the way we expect,” Hudson grumbled.