The voice said, “The last time we spoke we were interrupted.”
Clemente.
“Yes,” she said. “We were.”
Why was he calling now, and why all the secretiveness?
“Our mutual acquaintance supplied what looks like irrefutable information.”
White had given him evidence that a transgenic was the killer.
“You do understand?” the altered voice asked.
“Yes. But that information...”
“Initially, damned near absolute. I’ve seen it. We’ll talk later. Like I said we would.”
The phone went dead in her ear.
“What is it?” Joshua asked.
“I think it was very bad news,” Max said.
She thought about what Clemente had said last. Initially, damned near absolute. What the hell did that mean? Was that strange phrasing some kind of code? Initially...
But it wouldn’t come.
Max looked at Joshua. “We better get back.”
They stepped outside into the purplish light of breaking morning. The sun had barely dented the horizon, and she could already tell this was going to be another long day. They walked up the street in silence, Joshua lost in his thoughts, Max trying to figure out what Clemente had been talking about...
Initially, damned near absolute.
Finally, as if coming toward her out of a heavy fog, she put together the detective’s little code. Initially Damned Near Absolute. D-N-A. White had provided DNA evidence that the killer was a transgenic.
Now the next question was, why was Clemente telling her this?
There seemed to be only one reason for him to trust her at alclass="underline" he didn’t trust White any more than she did.
So maybe they did have an ally on the other side. She felt she had connected with Clemente, and that he had believed her, even including the absurd — but true — snake cult story.
Even so, that good news was heavily outweighed by the bad. Either White was manipulating evidence to make it look like a transgenic was killing cops or, even worse, there really was a dangerous transgenic loose in the city.
A serial-killer transgenic, at that.
Chapter six
Land of the free
Sitting in Dix’s room to one side of his work station, finally getting some time to herself, Max sorted through mental files filled with the things she and Joshua had talked about. Even though it had been just this morning, that conversation in the tunnel seemed so long ago — perhaps because these facts, new to her, summoned old memories... of Manticore.
Even as Max had dealt with the daily task of just trying to hold the fragile truce together, what Joshua had shared with her weighed heavily. She sifted through everything again and again, over and over... and the conclusion never seemed to change.
These grotesque, terrible killings were — partially, at least — her fault.
After all, wasn’t she the one who had turned the transgenics loose in the world in the first place?
She would have preferred not to feel responsible for the killings, to be able to rationalize them away; but the guilt, the responsibility, was hers. It had been her decision not to leave anyone behind at Manticore. Now, while hundreds, maybe thousands, of transgenics lived free and happy, a few failed living experiments were loose who would have been better off in captivity — better off for themselves, better off for the populace.
Max wanted to think White was behind these killings, and she knew him to be heartless enough to do such deeds, or have them done in the pursuit of the conclave’s twisted agenda; but something deep in her gut told her that the evidence he’d presented to Clemente just might be real...
A quick knock was followed by handsome, hazel-eyed Alec — in a blue T-shirt, Levi’s and running shoes — filling the frame of the doorway. “You might want to take a look at what’s going on outside,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the hallway.
So much for some time to herself.
“What now?” she asked, not bothering to hide her weariness.
“Hey, I’m sorry to bother you — I know you’re carrying the weight... But you better come look.”
With a deep sigh, Max rose and moved out to the media center. “Something good on?”
Luke, Mole, Dix, and the various monitor monitors all seemed tense.
“Not my favorite show,” Dix said, and pointed at one of the security camera screens. “Some drunks on the west side are lobbing Molotov cocktails over the fence.”
Max knew the nearest building was a good thirty yards in from the fence on that side, but as she moved to the monitor, she saw that the drunks were getting closer with each shot. And the building was a wooden structure, a two-story glorified shed that would not resist flames well at all.
Pointing at another monitor, Luke said, “And it looks like a TV crew’s trying to get in, around the corner from the drunks.”
Smirking, Alec said, “Is that the gentle whiff of a conspiracy I detect?”
“Where’s the damn National Guard?” Mole asked, half a cigar bobbing in one corner of his reptile mouth. “They got the whole goddamn place locked down... and a buncha street-rabble drunks make their way through?”
Looking at Alec, Max said, “You take care of the incendiary substance abusers, and I’ll take care of the media.”
“Publicity hound.”
“Why not? I’m almost as pretty as you are.”
“Ouch,” Alec said, joining her as she headed outside.
Soon they were behind the building that was serving as a target for the drunks and their firebombs.
“Stop them,” Max said firmly, “but don’t mess them up.”
“Would I do that? Gentle soul like me.”
“I’m serious, Alec. There’s enough of the public against us already.”
He shook his head as if he could hardly believe he was hearing this. “That’s not John Q. Public out there, Max — that’s some lowlife drunks who were probably paid to cause a distraction for that media crew.”
“We don’t know that. The news crew might just be taking advantage of—”
“Even so, do you really think I’m going to convert a bunch of drunks by talking to them?”
“Just don’t mess them up, okay? That media crew would love to see you going transgenic on a bunch of ordinary asses.”
“Fine!” Disgustedly, he took off into the shadows between two buildings.
Max waited two beats, then took off herself, in the other direction, to cut off the television team.
From twenty feet away, she watched the television crew fumbling on the other side of the fence. A short pudgy guy in a T-shirt and jeans hefted the camera while the obvious “talent,” a too-tanned himbo in an off-the-rack suit, tried to look like a network anchor. In the meantime, a skinny guy in a windbreaker with the station’s call letters and channel number emblazoned on the back tried to keep the wires from tangling.
Max eased forward, stopping at the corner of the building, staying in the shadows as she peeked around to see if Alec was talking to the drunks yet. As she watched, Alec sauntered out from between the buildings and approached the four inebriated men throwing firebombs. There still didn’t seem to be any sign of the National Guard or the cops moving in from their barricade position.
“Gonna have to ask you fellas to stop doing that,” Alec said to their guests.
The biggest of the drunks — a scruffy-bearded guy in frayed jeans and a MUTANTS GO HOME T-shirt, which included a bad, monster-movie-type image of dog-boy Joshua — stepped forward and yelled through the mesh: “Get stuffed, freak!”
The potbellied guy then heaved another bottle with a burning rag stuffed in its neck, this one in Alec’s general direction. But the guy was so drunk though that Alec never moved and the thing still missed him by ten feet, shattering to spread a pool of fire that threw orange shadows on the blandly handsome planes of Alec’s face, revealing a hood-eyed sinister quality that few ever had noticed.