I lean closer to read the lettering on the plastic. Fifty percent solution, five milliliters each. A bribe with some bite to it, if the markings are accurate; well more than my take will be from the corpses. I glare at the doctor, who stares back at me with the cold professionalism of someone who has done this before.
“Ten thousand units,” he says, “What’s that, like a year’s salary for a Collections Agent?”
I pull the calcium test kit from the pouch in my belt and toss it onto the table. “You know what that is, don’t you?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“Use it.”
“These are each—”
“I don’t care what they’re worth,” I cut him off. “If you want a deal, use it.”
He shrugs and reluctantly plucks one of the syringes from the briefcase, snaps the cap off the needle, and squeezes some liquid onto the surface of the table, then opens my testing kit, takes one of the thin, blue strips, and swabs it over the liquid.
It turns pink.
So he’s not selling fakes. But I have no intention of taking a bribe from this man, and I’m left with the feeling that something is wrong here. Something more than a doctor buying or selling bodies on the black market.
“Satisfied?” he asks, anxious.
It’s legit calcium, so why was that little girl in such terrible shape? What happened to her brother? “Take the rest,” I tell the doctor.
He blinks. “And do what with it?”
“Inject it. As one does.”
He stares at me for a long, silent moment, the dose resting in his pudgy fingers. He finally places it down on the cold metal surface. “No,” he says, staring at me with a cold gaze that cuts through the damp air between us, even as his right hand still hovers over the syringe.
“Take it. Now.”
Growing more and more nervous, his eyes dart for a fraction of a second to the twin pistols resting on the table. “I said no.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t say you had to use them,” he pleads, glancing again at his weapons. “They’re marketable. You’ve seen that they’ll test.” He adds, “I’ll up my offer, even. Forty-five doses.”
“Pick them up,” I whisper, challenging him.
He stutters. “Ss-sorry?”
“The guns. I can see you itching to get your hands around the grips. Why not pick ’em up?”
“I’m trying to negotiate. Trying to be reasonable.”
“Those stiffs,” I answer, motioning to the four black rubberized bags stacked against the wall, “they all die from whatever’s in these?”
“Payment. You can understand that.”
I’m not sure what he means by that, other than the jab at my profession, but at this point I care little. “Pick them up,” I say again, nodding toward his guns, my voice soft and syrupy with false reassurance. “Just put your hand on one of them.”
His stare stays frozen on me, and for a long, icy moment, only hate and resentment pass in the silence between us. His eyes waver, coming to rest again on the twin pistols on the table, which are begging to be lifted and fired. Slowly, he moves his hands upward. “Easy,” he says. “You win.”
But then he lunges for the guns.
In a blur of motion, he grabs them and spins, raising them to shoot. Quick reports clap like thunder as we both fire.
Thrown by the impact of my bullets, the doctor’s shots are wild, ricocheting off the metal walls. They leave only muffled, tinny echoes behind, dissipating into the mist along with the gun smoke wisping from the end of my sidearm.
He staggers and falls, landing hard on his side. One of the guns slips from his hand and clatters across the floor, but I keep my aim trained on him, cautious. As blood spreads out in a dark pool on the cement floor underneath him, he rolls onto his back. Arms trembling, he struggles to raise the other weapon to shoot.
“Nope.”
That’s the last word he’ll hear. I feel nothing but focus as I sight him down and pull the trigger. My gun flashes and kicks to the crack of the shot. The doctor deflates into a limp sprawl, a neat hole punched in the middle of his forehead above his still-open eyes.
I hold my aim for a second, still alert, but then the shock and horror of this place and what just happened hit me. As I holster my weapon, I suddenly feel trapped here in this tight, hot, humid chamber. The danger is gone, but now the silence grabs at my lungs, suffocating. I try to calm myself, try to remind myself of the proper procedure for this situation. But my eyes come to rest on the other briefcase. The one the doctor didn’t open. I realize that I should call Dispatch, wait for forensics to get here, play it by the book, but I want to know what’s in there. Son of a bitch, I need to know.
I step over the pool of blood beneath the doctor, lift the unopened briefcase off the table, and place it beside the body. Gently lifting the slack right hand of the dead man, I press his thumb to the lock. The mechanism issues a mechanical click, and the case eases open.
I recoil at the sight of its contents. I can’t be sure what I’m looking at, but the implication of it clutches me somewhere deep inside and twists. Neatly packed in the case, alongside the empty syringes marked with their gold stripes and the clean closed vials of calcium serum, is a bottle of fine, dark powder. A powder I recognize from only one place. A powder that cannot possibly be here.
Chalk weevil eggs.
Maybe it’s not. It’s got to be something else. A poison, maybe.
Standing up and stepping back, I see the stack of body bags in the corner. Again, I know I should exit the room, secure the crime scene, call in backup and forensics and wait like a good little soldier. But my curiosity pulls me toward that stack of bodies like the dark bottom of a well.
A knot forming in my gut, I pull down the airtight zipper on one of them, just far enough to see inside. Expecting the horror doesn’t prepare me for it. Inside the bag is a decaying corpse, flesh eaten away, down to and through the bone in some spots, the remains being picked over by thousands of tiny black insects.
I close the zipper quickly before any of them can escape. Backing away, reeling and nauseous, I rush out of the room, into the hallway, then outside into the open air.
The setting sun streaks the sky overhead with red and orange, striping through air thick with dust wafting in with the plains winds. I sit down on the pavement for a minute and focus on breathing normally, trying to calm myself. Emotions press up in my chest like steam in a boiling kettle, searing and urgent. How can I do what I do? How can I profit from what’s happened here? So many years and nothing has changed, at least not for the better. Never for the better.
Stop, Taryn. Breathe. You’re a professional. If you let this world and what it’s done to you get a grip on you, it will swallow you whole. You can still get away. You’ve got to work so you can get away.
Deep breaths, in and out. Slowly I open my eyes, squinting against the dry breeze. When I feel stable enough, I pull out my phone and dial Dispatch.
“Tar?” Myra’s voice, scratchy from the jammer’s interference. “I was about twenty seconds from sending in the heavies.”
“Myra, I—”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” It feels like a lie. “You hear back from that medical team?”
A pause on the other end, then, “They’re still working.”
I close my eyes, fearful for the little girl from the mine. “Keep me updated.”
“What’s your status?”
“All clear. I need a forensics team and a truck.”
“A truck? What have you got?”
“Corpses. Six. Human.”
“Six stiffs? Damn, what happened out there?”
“It’s bad, Myra.” I turn away from the wind, which is getting cold as dusk sweeps in across the mountains. “Just… just send the truck.”