Mirrors, p.6
Mirrors, page 6
Art drawn by teenage boys instead of masters. The kind who were looking down on women as objects, rather than worshiping them. But that described Dominguez to a T.
Greyson stuck his head into the bathroom, let the projector show him the closet with all those expensive suits that a man on Dominguez’s salary shouldn’t have been able to afford. And the handmade Italian shoes.
Greyson was always amazed at how many bent cops made it so stupidly obvious by dressing so expensively. He didn’t think he’d ever owned one suit that cost a quarter as much as any of those.
Had they been real, he would have run a hand down the front of one to confirm, but he knew they were silk or the finest wool. And impounded as evidence for now, if he really wanted to experience them first hand, back at the station.
Greyson shook his head and went back out into the main room, standing exactly in the center of the projected bed and facing the window he remembered somehow.
“There?” he asked, gesturing with his jaw.
“Yes,” Rachel’s mind had stopped her at the edge of the bed, like it was real. “Thought I hit him with a second shot as he went over the rail, but it didn’t cause him to splatter on the pavement. Damn thing moved like a monkey.”
Yes, her second shot had hit. A glancing kiss on his arm that required him to shift his feet to hands to make the climb down, else he would have splattered.
Greyson shook his head to clear it and turned back to the room.
Ethen knew exactly how to track down the other Phrenic. Not the one that had killed Dominguez. He was already standing in the middle of the room looking at another cop with a big enough nerve scrambler to finish the job.
But he could give them Zaborra. The partner who had tossed Ethen into the role of a lifetime, sacrificing him unless he could survive the stubborn son of a bitch he was impersonating. Zaborra who had laughed when Ethen had suggested that the humans were more dangerous than just a shallow pool of guppies to feed on.
He had had his doubts before killing Leigh, but living inside the man had just convinced him how stupid he had been to ever come to this planet in the first place. How dumb a life of crime really was.
Ethen knew he could escape easily enough. Become someone else and walk aboard a transport. As long as he wasn’t a Phrenic they might want to interrogate, he’d probably be fine. But where would he go?
Greyson Leigh was seductive. Powerful. Self-contained. Maybe what Ethen wanted to be when he grew up, if he could explain that to anyone who would listen longer than it took to shoot him.
Dare he just hide inside the man for the rest of their lives?
Hunter Bureau already knew there was a rogue Phrenic loose. Ethen had no reason to let them know that there were, in point of supreme order, two rather than one.
He’d lived Greyson Leigh for a week already, and it felt like years, struggling to keep the man from reaching up and somehow strangling his killer in ways that had only been stories mothers told rambunctious toddlers to keep them from misbehaving.
Be quiet and pay attention, or one of these days one of your victims will come back from the dead to get you.
He’d never believed it possible. Not then.
Greyson Leigh was curing him of that arrogance, one tiny drip of water at a time. Chinese torture, on the inside of his forehead. Athena, banging away with her brazen axe until she emerged fully grown and killed Zeus.
Greyson sucked in a hard breath and slowly turned in place, committing the room to memory. Over the memories he already had of the place when it was still furnished with more than projected magic.
Asher was playing it cool, standing silently off to one side, watching him like he was a great teacher she needed to emulate on her way to owning the boys and girls at Scotland Yard. There was something to it, over and above Greyson trying to keep his heart rate down and manageable.
Doing it this way imprinted the crime scene in your mind for later. Move through holograms to see things from strange angles. He could even smell the faint hints of ammonia in the air from where they had disinfected blood stains earlier.
Greyson reviewed the file in his head and turned to his new partner.
“So, Dominguez the Casanova of the Eastern Metroplex meets some girl at a bar?” he asked. “Sweet talks her back to his place. They had gone at it once on the bed, but he’s got an appointment with you, so he checks his watch, realizes he’s late, like usual, and tries to get rid of her before you get here?”
“That’s the theory, boss,” she said, looking around like he had done, slowly and deliberately. “Organic evidence of a sexual encounter, both on his body and on the bed. Two glasses of wine spilled in the struggle. One Phrenic running for his life when help accidentally shows up, or we might never have realized we had an infiltrator.”
Greyson nodded. Ethen smiled inside.
It hadn’t been that impressive. Man had a dick smaller than average for a human, but one of the advantages of being a shapeshifter was that you could resize things on the fly and rearrange bits to get the most pleasure for yourself, even out of a useless, self-absorbed shit like Carlos Dominguez, with his slicked back hair and gold jewelry.
Girl might as well enjoy herself before she eats your brains, right?
Dominguez would have never cured Ethen like Greyson did.
“There was nothing useful from the bar interviews in the files,” Greyson said abruptly, stepping backwards in the crime. “Anything you remember that didn’t seem important enough to list?”
He watched Rachel cast backwards in memory, eyes unfocused and shivering back and forth as she looked at things inside her head.
Cop eyes.
“No,” she said after a few moments. “Dominguez was a regular in the place, one of about six meat markets where he usually found dates. Only two of them are gay bars, so the presumption was that the man was about a two on the Kinsey scale, rather than any higher number. Never really mattered, since he did his job and had no more than the usual civilian complaints.”
“Tall blond with big tits walks in and she’s fresh game?” Greyson nodded, walking her through the report she and Jansen had compiled, along with getting Zielinski himself into the field for a rare foray into copdom.
“You know Carlos,” Rachel grimaced. “Anything that will slow down enough. Doesn’t even have to actually stop running, just slow down. Bought her a couple of drinks. Whispered sweet nothings into her ear. A little dancing, a little grinding. Probably a blowjob in the taxi on the way here.”
No, but a good presumption on Rachel’s part. The man had been a little persistent, but Ethen had been more interested in getting him isolated. Too much risk he might blow his load in the car and then dump her with a pat on the ass before they got to his apartment.
Oh, yeah, Greyson knew Dominguez.
“But she’s not human,” Greyson completes the thought. “Phrenic has already killed the girl, absorbed her, and was setting a trap for Dominguez.”
“Not that difficult a trap,” Rachel sneered now, finally letting some personality show through the cop façade. “If you put a giant pencil sharpener in the wall behind a glory hole marked Insert Penis Here and told the man what it was, he’d probably still be convinced it would fail before his mighty dick did.”
“You ever fuck him, Rachel?” Greyson asked.
Cop routine, but necessary here, and best that they covered it as part of the larger topic. It would change things if she had fucked the man, too. Not much, but some.
“Not for lack of offers,” she growled in a terrible voice as she stared at him. “Probably catch things they don’t even have names for yet in the worst South American barrios.”
Greyson grinned. Ethen had absorbed enough memories off of Carlos before they fled to confirm the man’s regular visits to the clinic and prophylactic treatments for every little thing that might come along. But yeah, Dominguez had probably tried everyone he could stick his dick in. Boring in bed, too, in spite of all the practice.
“So we’ll skip the bar for now,” Greyson said aloud. “She wasn’t a regular, so nobody could mark her with anything worth following up on, and we’ve got a missing person’s report two days later that matched up to security footage.”
“Kelly Anne Nazarian,” Rachel nodded. “Good time girl of no great note. Secretary at a law firm not that far from the bar downtown. Not much to go on.”
“That’s why she’s the best target for something like this,” Greyson and Ethen echoed in a strange, Greek chorus. “Right looks. Right attitude. If she somehow runs into someone she knows while she’s letting Dominguez down her pants, nobody’s going to really say anything, because she’s already got a rep. Right or wrong, the interviews paint her as something of a slut, just like our boy Dominguez. Match made in hell, if you wanna look at it that way.”
“You think she’s that simple, Leigh?” Rachel’s tone took on an edge that made him glance over sharply. “That any woman is?”
“Most of the time, no,” he replied curtly. “But I’ve read the report you typed up. The interviews with her boss and a couple of her girlfriends. You honestly think that woman was deeper than a half-dry mud puddle, Rachel? Her whole life reads as one long party, interrupted by the need to go to work enough that she could afford prettier clothes to maybe attract a sugar daddy. Too bad she didn’t meet Dominguez for real. She might have been shallow enough for him. He certainly was rich enough for her to want to latch onto.”
“A cop?” Rachel laughed. “Rich? You gotta be kidding me.”
“Follow. And learn,” Greyson suddenly cracked the whip sharply on the young hunter, walking into that closet that was almost a quarter the size of Greyson’s current studio apartment, all by itself.
“What do you see?” he asked from the deepest part, gesturing at the holographic rows of suits and shoes and life that were all in boxes downtown right now.
“Man liked to dress snazzy,” Rachel replied carefully, aware that there was a trap lurking, but unable to see it yet.
Greyson nodded at his own realization. She’d grown up lower middle class, like him, so she had never really had a chance to appreciate money, always scrambling for it her whole life, and trying to live the kind of exemplary monastic existence that would get her a job in London in a few years. Never had so much spare that she could just blow it on anything, let alone clothes.
Greyson pointed to one of the suits, carefully not putting his hand through it.
“Handmade,” he said. “Hong Kong or Rome. Don’t know without actually looking at the tailor’s label inside. Bespoke. Silk or wool, rather than polyester or something newer or cheaper. Stylish. Really nice suits that look good, even on a guy like Dominguez.”
He waited for her to nod, acknowledging that much information, but still missing context. Obviously never bought a suit with or for a man. If they were going to be partners, he’d have to introduce her to a couple of tailors he knew.
Hadn’t bought anything more than a shirt from either of them, but they made excellent contacts for understanding the finer details of clothing, which was something every cop needed in her repertoire.
Greyson went ahead and told Rachel how much just one of those suits would cost. Watched her eyes bug out for just the briefest moment. Observed as she silently counted the suits in the image and did the math in her head.
“Detective/Hunter makes about a third again more than you do, Patrolman,” Greyson said darkly. “Throw in Universal Basic Income just because, and you go buy yourself this closet of fancy clothes. Yes?”
“Not without a sugar daddy who really loved me,” she said in a tiny voice. “But Dominguez was always the sugar daddy to good time girls and rent boys.”
Her voice kind of just trailed off, like it did when a cop suddenly had a flash of insight that leapt them over a logical chasm.
“So they weren’t just rumors?” she asked after a moment. “He was that bent?”
Greyson shrugged most eloquently. The man was dead, and his cop sugar daddy had been sent to Florida to keep his mouth shut.
One of them, anyway. Greyson’s old investigation had only just started getting to the interesting bits, back in the day. Lot of people had probably started getting twitchy when the Metropolitan brought him back.
“He might have had a fabulously wealthy aunt,” Greyson said in a tone that mocked the very idea. “The kind that liked to make sure her favorite nephew always dressed well.”
“Thirty was too old for Carlos,” Rachel sneered. “Don’t ever see him going after cougars.”
“You didn’t know the punk when he was barely older than you are now,” Greyson said. “Let us just suggest that he grew more discerning and selective about age when he could afford to say no at a later date.”
“When he was on the take.”
Rachel had discovered anger.
Probably at herself for believing the stories Dominguez had told her privately, to deflect personal questions.
Cops recognize the need to keep a private life where police work doesn’t intrude. Greyson had his synth whiskey and his classical music. Emelina when she had an itch nobody else could scratch.
He hadn’t pried on Rachel, because she needed that same place, a white room in your mind where you could go strip naked and not be a cop for a while.
And she’d taken Dominguez’s facile lies at face value. Until she had to put her cop back on and peel the layers of that onion back, crying angry tears all the while.
“When he was on the take,” Greyson agreed with her.
Before another cop started sniffing around from the far end of things and accidentally got close enough to make Zielinski—and Greyson’s fellow officer—a little too nervous. Enough so that they’d framed him and gotten him fired to protect their house of lies.
Until Dominguez was dead, and couldn’t be embarrassed anymore. And Zielinski was taking the fall but getting away clean. Commissioner Owens was currently walking a ledge on a very tall building.
“So how does all that impact our case?” Rachel asked after a moment to contain her rage.
Greyson grinned at her. Rachel had the makings of a fantastic cop. Just needed some seasoning and she’d be better than him in a couple of years.
“We’re chasing a Phrenic killer,” he said. “Simple thing. Straight-forward. If they stay put in somebody else’s life, eventually they get tripped up by something. Usually they panic when we come sniffing around. Half the time, they run like hell and the lucky ones manage to get away, usually off-world where we don’t have the authority to chase them.”
“And the other half?” Rachel asked.
“Those are the ones Hunters like us kill,” Greyson smiled.
“You think he’s still around?” she asked.
“Let’s go find out.”
8
Good Time Girl
Because it was still an active case being followed at high enough political levels to make people involved nervous, the girl’s apartment was closed off when Greyson got there to see it with his own eyes.
Kelly Anne Nazarian’s roommate had been allowed to tell a female officer in uniform what clothing to stuff in a bag, given a stipend, and put up in a hotel until the Bureau allowed her back into her flat. Maybe another week, depending on Greyson’s call.
Like with Dominguez, there was a uniform here at all times. Easy duty until Greyson decided that he didn’t need the place locked down and isolated. The woman officer let them in and Greyson had another moment of déjà vu, but at least this wasn’t as bad.
Ethen had stalked her, taken her, and used her to get to the cop, because those had been Zaborra’s orders. When that failed, the freak had ordered him to go after Greyson. Take out the one cop that his memories from Dominguez said might be good enough to catch them. If the authorities didn’t come, then he could at least hide out there for a while until Zaborra came up with a better plan.
Ethen growled inside when he realized that he had always been the follower, hanging on Zaborra’s words and doing whatever the being ordered. And always taking the deadlier risks. Nothing he had ever done had ever been good enough for Zaborra.
Maybe it was Greyson talking, but he was suddenly sick of being the patsy all the time. In Greyson, he had maybe finally found a role model for how he could have lived.
Self-contained, rather than existing as a projection of someone else. Just being, instead of hurting people.
Phrenic weren’t supposed to have mid-life crises, but Greyson suddenly looked back over a mental shoulder at him with those hard, gray-blue eyes, as if to say Are you kidding me? while shaking his head.
But Ethen was a cow in the abattoir chute now, being driven towards the big human with the bigger hammer. Taking all the serious risks while Zaborra was hiding as a food delivery driver, scoping out more interesting next targets he could go after while Ethen had to hold off the entire Hunter Bureau by himself.
About now, a man might get mad at that sort of treatment, Greyson seemed to say to him. Maybe it was Ethen’s overactive imagination. And his fear.
He stepped into the apartment and looked around. Other than emptying out the almost vacant refrigerator unit, the officers hadn’t done much to the place. Kelly Anne Nazarian wasn’t important enough for Zielinski to take it all into evidence downtown so he could make things disappear before they came into the public record. Boxes that magically fell off trucks between here and there.
Shallow and flouncy. That had been the image of the woman that the interviews had painted. Tall and pretty and buxom, but didn’t look all that much smarter than a houseplant.
Her and the roommate didn’t have any pets. Greyson got the impression that Little Miss Kelly wasn’t organized enough for someone else to rely on her. Harsh, he knew, but that was years of soldier and cop speaking. He had never had a dog because he had always kept such strange hours and didn’t have someone else around that could give a mutt the love and attention they deserved.
