Tears of a Clone (Easytown Novels Book 2) Page 14

  “Thanks. I’m also going to pay for a DNA analysis once I make enough money.”

  “Are you sure you want to do that? I want you to be happy and all, but moving forward, don’t you just want to be you? Forget about everything that happened to that other person.”

  “It’s easier said than done,” Sadie answered. “I have all these little islands of memories and the only thing missing is personal information. Her name, where she lives, where she works—all of those connecting lines between the dots are gone. But if I can learn who she is, maybe it can help me become who I’m going to be.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” I admitted. “Maybe we’ll get some leads from Chris’ story.”

  “I hope so.”

  There was a slight pause that I took as a point to end the conversation. “I’m almost to the crime scene. I’m gonna go and quit bothering you.”

  “You’re not bothering me. Stay safe, I’ll see you when you get back.”

  As I hung up the phone I wasn’t entirely sure I liked having someone in my home, expecting me back at a certain hour and saying things like, “I’ll see you when you get home.” It seemed unnatural for me. I adored women, but I also enjoyed my space. The two seemed at odds with one another, did that mean I was destined to be alone? Was that even a bad thing?

  Sometimes I hated not being able to drive myself so I could just concentrate on the road instead of thinking about all of the shit that seemed to circle around me like a hurricane.

  The Jeep pulled up to a Synthaine house seven blocks from Jubilee Lane. Boarded up windows and heavy, soaking wet blankets across the door greeted visitors from the street. A large doghouse sat prominently near the structure with no sign of the animal that it housed. The lawn was a patchwork of mud and rock, transitioning to overgrown crabgrass beyond the limit of the dog’s chain.

  The smell of rotting garbage, feces and God knows what else hit me the moment I slid the blanket away from the doorway with my probe. The lighting was poor inside, barely lit from the streetlamp on the corner. From what I could tell, there were bags of garbage, piles of old clothes and food wrappers of every kind strewn about the inside.

  Peaking amongst the refuse were several children’s play toys. An infant swing. A baby walker. An overturned bassinet. Dirty diapers. All of it pointed to a ruined childhood—if the kid didn’t get sold off for a couple of hits of synthaine.

  I finally got sick of trying to pick my way along the “path” and stuck my hand inside the kit bag, searching for my flashlight.

  The light didn’t help at all. It made it worse. The garbage was piled higher than anything I’d ever seen outside of web vids. The walls, once painted a tan, or possibly white, were covered in bloody handprints and various messages that only made sense to a synth-head. I’d seen that a thousand times. There wasn’t anything left of their brain except what told them to eat every once in a while and to defecate once the stuff moved through their systems. Often it was a combination of both at the same time. Hence the smell.

  Flashes from a forensic cameraman’s camera helped guide me through the rubbish toward the back of the house.

  “Drake?” I called.

  “Back here, Detective. Watch your step coming into the back room.”

  I followed the sound of his voice and saw a body lying across the threshold. “Watch your step,” I muttered to myself as I lifted a leg over the bloody mess.

  My foot hovered in the air above the corpse. The thing that lay at my feet was half of the torso. Something had ripped the victim in half, except it wasn’t the easy way, at the waist. One side had been separated from the other.

  “Ah?”

  “The other half of her is over here,” Drake answered my question.

  “What the hell did this?”

  “The tweaker they found here said it was a giant human octopus, with glowing eyes and the hands of a crab.”

  “A droid?”

  “Probably. The dude was so high when they arrived, there’s no telling what he really saw versus an image that the synthaine produced in his mind.”

  “Sounds like the legend of Cthulhu to me,” the cameraman interrupted our conversation.

  I glanced at the man. It wasn’t Ben Roberts, our normal forensic photographer. “What’s that?”

  “The Cthulhu. It’s an old legend about the end of the world. The creature is the destroyer of worlds. He’s gigantic, man-shaped with an octopus face and the wings of a dragon.”

  I snorted in derision. “Where’s Ben?”

  “Ben’s sick, so they had me come over from the Lower Ninth for the evening. I’m Teddy.”

  I shook the photographer’s hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Teddy. Were you drinking a little bit before you came to work?”

  “I’m not saying I believe in it,” he defended. “I had to learn about it in college. There are a lot of people who prescribe to a supernatural being of some kind that will destroy the world. In fact, all major religions do. This one is just one of many of the pantheon of gods who’s supposed to do it.”

  “I can’t put that stupid shit in my report. Thanks anyways,” I stated, glancing back at Drake. “So this was a female?”

  “Yeah. Hard to tell until you look at both parts. Whoever—whatever—did this ripped off her arms and legs while she was alive according to the tweaker, then her head, and finally it ripped her right up the middle.”

  “That’s a gruesome way to die,” I said, eyeing the blood splatters on the ceiling. “Wonder what she did to deserve it.”

  “Mmm hmm,” Drake mumbled. We had differing opinions about violence. I prescribed to the belief that truly random acts of violence were far and few between. There was usually some type of connection between the perpetrator and the victim, or at least a motive as to why the perp did what they did. My partner, on the other hand, believed that random violence was the majority of humanity’s problem. I was right in about seventy-five percent of our solved cases, whereas his theory took up the rest. We still had a metric shit ton of unsolved cases.

  “So, there was a kid that lived here. Any word where they are?”

  “No sign of them.” Drake pointed at the garbage. “But he could be right here and we wouldn’t know.”

  “The tweaker give any motive for why someone would’ve done this?”

  “Nope. He kept screaming about the octopus demon until they shot him up with tranquilizers and he passed out.”

  “They take him to New Orleans East?” I asked, referring to the nearest hospital.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Hey, fellas,” Teddy the photographer interrupted. “What do you take this for?”

  I pushed my way through the garbage, wishing I’d taken the time to put the thick leather armor on my lower legs. I didn’t need to get tetanus, or worse.

  Teddy used the blue laser pointer on his camera to circle a spot on the wall. The spot became clearer as I got closer and I realized it was some type of metal imbedded in the wall, only allowing me to see less than half of it.

  “What the—hey, Teddy, make sure you take pictures of this before I contaminate the scene.”

  The camera flashed repeatedly as I dug in my bag for a pair of needle-nosed pliers and an evidence baggie.

  “Alright. I got it,” Teddy said.

  I switched the flashlight and baggie to one hand and used the pliers to dig the metal out of the wall. When I had it free, I held it up in the glow from the light to examine.

  It looked like a miniature circular saw blade. The thing was less than a half an inch across from tooth to tooth and solid metal of some kind. I twisted my wrist a few times, turning it over, and then dropped it into the baggie. It was much heavier than I’d thought when it was clasped in the pliers.

  “What is that thing?” Drake asked over my shoulder, startling me.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it.” I paused, thinking for a moment. “Hey, Teddy, are you done photographing the torso halves?
”

  “Yeah. I’m basically finished here, Detective.”

  “Help me out for a second, Drake.”

  I knelt beside the half of the body I’d stepped over earlier and had Drake hold the light. Four small rectangular wounds ran up one side and I held the baggie with the miniature saw blade next to each of them.

  “Son of a bitch. This is a weapon of some kind.”

  I pulled on a pair of gloves quickly and pried open the top wound. I wasn’t exactly shocked to see the dirty carpet underneath the corpse; the wound went completely through the body.

  “Let’s go to the other half,” I suggested.

  There weren’t any exit wounds where the blades came out. I flipped the meat over and checked inside where they would likely be, but there wasn’t anything inside.

  “The killer tore her body apart to collect the blades,” Drake said.

  It made sense. If I had some new type of ammunition or weapon that gave me an edge over the competition, I’d probably try to keep it hidden for as long as I could as well.

  I held up the baggie and looked at the disc inside. “Why were you left behind?”

  “Probably ran out of time to find it,” Drake answered. “It’d take a while to tear that body apart searching for all of the blades. The police showed up and ruined the killer’s search. He had to go.”

  “I need to talk to that tweaker.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem. Depending on how much of that shit he used, it could be a couple of days until he comes down.”

  “I can wait,” I murmured while I sealed the baggie and placed it in a lined evidence box.

  Not much else of interest came out of the site, except for a few bottles of a liquid that field-tested positive as synthaine and several eyedroppers that they used to administer the shit. Everything went into the box with the disc. Add a shredded corpse and an odd tweaker sighting of an ancient mythical god and this scene was a wrap.

  I wondered what the part about the creature meant. It was likely a mask of some kind, but without talking to the guy, I could only imagine what he thought he saw. As I packed up my kit and Drake finished securing the back door from the inside, my eyes wandered over to the discarded children’s toys.

  Where was that kid?

  FIFTEEN: THURSDAY

  It was another night on The Lane, walking slowly, trying to lure the Paladin out of hiding or be lucky enough to be in close proximity to him when he made his move. The uneven sidewalks were unusually crowded due to a break in the rain. The lines outside of the thumper clubs stretched for hundreds of feet, while men, and the occasional woman, stood in gaggles waiting for their turn in the pleasure clubs.

  Nearby, a shout of alarm rose from several throats as a hovering police drone electrocuted a pickpocket in the middle of a crowd. Men and women edged as far away from the writhing kid as they could. The drones were good for killing and subduing, but not at arresting, so it gave a small jolt every few seconds to keep the suspect down while a call went out to any uniformed cops in the area.

  I sighed and pushed my way through the crowd until I stood on the inside of the circle. Thin wires snaked down from above and imbedded into the youth’s pale skin. Two blossoms of red marred the back of the brown coat he wore where the barbs disappeared into the fabric.

  “Citizen, please stand back so you are not harmed,” the drone stated.

  I took off my hat and pulled my badge out of my coat. “Detective Zach Forrest,” I answered. “I’ll cuff the suspect and wait for transport.”

  “Detective Zachary Forrest, you have been cleared to arrest the suspect on the charge of larceny. I am ordered to assist as necessary. Do you require assistance at this time?”

  “Stop juicing him and let me put the handcuffs on,” I ordered.

  I waited until the hair on my arms stopped tingling and knelt on the kid’s back while I wrenched one arm up to slap the cuffs on his wrist. Once he was cuffed, I pulled the barbs out of his back and the drone retracted the wires back into its body, causing more gasps from the crowd.

  “What were you thinking, kid?” I asked.

  “That I’m hungry and all these rich bastards waiting to spend their money to fuck a tin can had enough cash to go around.”

  “There are programs—”

  “Don’t, man. Just don’t. You don’t know what it’s like down here on the streets. Fucking creepy things are happening.”

  “Creepy things are always going on in Easytown,” I scoffed as I pulled the perp roughly to his feet. “Now you don’t have to worry about it. You’ll be nice and warm on Sabatier Island before the sun comes up tomorrow.”

  “They’re probably already there.”

  “What are you on?”

  “Nothing. I’m clean. I don’t use that shit,” he protested. “There are machines hunting the alleys for the Paladin. They turned people into machines to find that guy, except their brains can’t handle it and they’re going fucking crazy, man.”

  “What? Who’s turning people into machines?”

  “The dealers. They dumped a ton of tech into their top soldiers, now the damned things have gone nuts.”

  “Humans with tech? Do you mean cyborgs?”

  “I don’t know what they’re called.” The boy shrugged and then winced when the cuffs cut into his wrists. “They kill whatever comes across their path.”

  The tweaker’s words from the night before came back to me. “What do they look like?”

  “They’re all different. They got outfitted with whatever tech was sitting around.”

  “Do any of them look like an octopus?”

  “Octopus? Nah, man. Hey, since I’m helping you, are you gonna let me go?”

  “Nice try…” I thought about how a cyborg would appear to someone high on a drug that is administered by dropping liquid chemicals onto their eyeball and came up with a question. “Do they have wires and things like that sticking out of their heads?”

  “I guess so? I’ve only seen one of them closer than a block away. Most people avoid them because they are so messed up.”

  It was the first I’d heard that the crime lords were building some type of cybernetic-enhanced hunter to take out the Paladin. Maybe the guy was doing more good than we gave him credit for.

  The circle of the crowd around us had collapsed, so I pulled him hard through the people until we stood on the outside.

  “Hey! My wallet!” a man shouted.

  I reached inside the kid’s jacket and produced two wallets and a nice watch. Inside one of the wallets was an ID of the man who’d called out. “Over here, Mr. Stensen.”

  He rushed over, thanking me profusely and talking about pressing charges.

  “He’ll be booked within the hour, sir. You can go down to the NOPD Easytown Precinct station and file a complaint against him.”

  Mr. Stensen mumbled something about being in town for business and faded back into the crowd. He obviously didn’t want it documented that he was in line at a pleasure club.

  “How long have these hunters been around down here?” I asked the kid.

  “I saw the first one a couple of days ago— Maybe Monday or Tuesday?”

  “Where have you seen them?”

  “They’re all over the alleys at night looking for that Paladin guy. He’s been cutting into the profits and making a lot of drug runners scared to go out at night.”

  A cop car pulled up to the curve and the officer flipped on his lights. The red and blue strobes added to the garish scene as the lights from the clubs shone brightly in the rare clear night.

  “This the larceny perp, Detective?” the uniformed officer asked.

  “Yeah. The drone, uh…” I glanced up and read the service number. “Zero Eight One deployed electroshock wires and apprehended the suspect. I happened to be the nearest officer on The Lane.”

  “Got it. I’ll take him off your hands, sir.”

  “Thanks.” I released the pickpocket and waited while the other cop put new handcu
ffs on him so I could get mine back. “Hey, kid. Stay safe out here once they release you. Alright?”

  “Man, as long as it’s outside of Easytown, I’m staying wherever they drop me off.”

  The uniformed cop handed me my cuffs and I watched him put the kid in the car with disinterest. He’d given me a lot of information and I wished there was a way I could assist him, but the drone camera footage was all the evidence they’d need to put the kid away for at least a year.

  Come to think of it, maybe that was best for him. I had the feeling that Easytown was about to become a war zone.

  After the pickpocket was safely in the car and gone, I began the steady, meandering walk that I’d developed over the years as a plain-clothes detective. It helped me to get a feel for the population and customers of Easytown. More times than I could count, I’d gleaned information just from walking around. Sometimes, it was the clarity of being outdoors, other times it was the human interaction and overhearing people say things when they thought nobody was listening.

  Lieutenant Cruz, the second homicide detective in the Easytown Precinct, thought I was crazy to walk around like I did. The residents knew who I was—or at least the ones who were up to no good did. He said it was a pointless endeavor and stuck to informants coming to him in the safety of the police station or what the forensics lab told him. There was a reason my arrest rate was higher than his, by a wide margin.

  I stayed close to the lines of people, avoiding the street side when possible. An enterprising ganger could do a snatch and go on a cop paying more attention to the people than the rest of his surroundings. The murder rate for officers was already high enough, no sense in making myself an easy target.

  Of course, having an increased presence of police drones hovering twenty feet off the ground helped to ease my fears of a kidnapping. I’d be more likely to die in the drone’s gunfire as it attempted to stop the vehicle than by the gangers in the van. The drones were both a godsend and a problem for officers. The fear of getting completely obliterated by the guns had helped to drive the crime further away from the parts of the city where the drones patrolled, but any time those guns spun up, we were almost guaranteed to have collateral damage and sometimes innocent deaths. Each casualty resulted in more paperwork and less trust in the police force.