“Will they help us?”
The blonde nodded. “No prob — I’ll get ’em headed there right away.”
“Thanks,” Max said, bestowing her sometime rival a smile.
Thompson — seated at the kitchen table now — shook his head, obviously bewildered. “You’re... helping me?”
“Mr. Thompson, you may be a uniformed, bigoted asshole, fresh from service with a government agency devoted to making my life miserable... but you are also the victim of Ames White... which means you and I desire the same damn thing.”
“Stopping White,” he said softly.
“Stopping White... and whatever it takes to make that happen, and soon, is fine by me. If that means helping a transgenic-hating scumbag like you, so be it.”
Logan leaned over to Sketchy. “Hey, Jimmy Olsen — you taking notes on this?”
Sketchy’s eyes widenend and brightened with something very much like thought. “Pictures too, right?”
Max spun in Sketch’s direction. “But no shots with Original Cindy... and we need to protect Thompson, and Otto, here.”
Gottlieb, who’d stayed quiet on the sidelines, just taking it all in, smirked humorlessly and said, “Hell — go ahead and take my picture. My career’s over, anyway.”
“Me too,” Thompson said. “Fire away, kid — maybe by going public we can keep ourselves alive. Killing us only validates our position.”
“Hell of a way to make a point,” Gottlieb said wryly.
Sketchy needed no more encouragement, and the flashbulbs started popping.
“Can we get Otto and Thompson on tape telling their stories?” Max asked Logan.
He nodded, and fetched a small minirecorder from his nearby office area, calling back to her, “You talked to Clemente lately? You making any progress?”
“No,” she admitted. “Somebody — White maybe — has frozen Clemente out. The feds’re jamming all the signals in and out of Terminal City.”
“Well, you’re outside now,” he said. “And if Alec’s right, you’ve got the skinner serial killer in custody.”
Original Cindy stepped forward, her complexion pale, sweat running down her face. For a moment Max thought her friend might have caught the virus, too.
“You know, come to think of it,” Cindy said. “I think I saw the evidence... and I know where Bobby left it.”
That surprised Max. “You do?”
And Cindy described the patchwork garment. Joshua, returning from the bathroom, reported that he’d also seen it — on a mannequin at Kelpy’s apartment, with a picture of Logan attached to the face.
“I think he wanted to have human skin,” Joshua said.
The seated Thompson said, “And he would’ve cut off your boyfriend’s face, if he hadn’t been stopped.”
Max frowned at him and pointed a threatening finger. “Didn’t I tell you to shut up? That’s your only job. Work hard at it.”
“It’s not my only job,” Thompson said, lower lip trembling, as he summoned some courage and indignation. “You want me to tell my story, and I’m ready to tell it — but don’t lie to yourselves. That’s a transgenic beast taking that soak in there... a monster capable of skinning people and putting their skin on like a suit. Explain that away!”
Original Cindy said, “The dude is right, to a point — and I ain’t goin’ back for that thing alone. I ain’t touchin’ the motherfucker, you dig?”
Gottlieb stepped forward. “I’ll go with her, and collect the evidence.”
Max signaled her assent by tilting her head toward the door, and the pair left.
Thompson stood and Max shot him a look; but the agent was just getting his cell phone out, to hand her. “They won’t be able to trace this one,” he said. “You need to talk to your police contact? Make your call.”
She nodded a curt thanks and dialed Clemente’s cell number, catching him in the car. She explained the situation in broad strokes.
“You have the skinner,” he said. “And the evidence?”
“It’s being secured.”
“Where do you have this Bobby Kawasaki?”
“Ready for the address?”
“Born ready.”
She gave it to him. “Come alone.”
“That’s outside Terminal City, Max — what happened to our deal?”
“Our deal went on the back burner when the feds took your ass off the front line. You want to wrap this case up and be a hero to both sides? Then you’ll just have to trust me... and hurry.”
Fifteen minutes later Clemente arrived. They gave him a quick overview of the situation, and Max led him into the bathroom.
Kelpy had taken a turn for the worse.
His clothes stripped from him, the sores covered his whole body; he still bore a strong resemblance to Logan — something in the virus seemed to have locked him into the form he’d blended with last. His temperature remained on the rise, though the icy water had slowed its ascent.
Logan sat on the edge of the tub, tending (but careful not to touch) Kelpy. Clemente stood, hovering over the tub, Max framed in the doorway.
Looking down at the pitiful creature, Clemente read him his rights, then asked simply, “Why?”
“To be with Max,” Kelpy said with a little cough. “She loved an ordinary — a human... Logan. I needed to be Logan.”
The detective turned to Max. She kept her face stony, though emotion welled within her, unbidden.
“He worked with us at Jam Pony,” Max said. “No one ever paid him much attention. But I guess he was like everybody else — he wanted to be noticed.”
Behind her, just outside the bathroom, Joshua said, “Noticed by you, Max. You saved him when Manticore burned. Max... he loved you. Not like Joshua loves Max, but like... like I loved Annie.”
Max felt tears forming — goddamnit!
Clemente was shaking his head. “This is not going to win the people of Seattle over to the side of the Terminal City residents. I mean... a transgenic killing people so he can make a human suit... to woo another transgenic.”
Max nodded glumly, glancing at the feverish Kelpy, naked in the tub. He didn’t appear to hear any of this, much less understand the trouble he’d caused. The promised Army invasion was less than three hours away, and there was nothing she could do to stop it — they would have to do what Manticore had trained them for, only fighting the country that created them had never been in the plans.
“This couldn’t be worse,” Clemente was saying, “if Ames White himself designed the scenario.”
“Maybe he did!” someone yelled.
Alec.
Popping up next to Joshua just behind Max in the doorway, the handsome X5 said, “Suppose somebody pushed our Chameleon Boy over the edge?”
They all turned, and Joshua stepped back to allow Alec to take center stage in the bathroom doorway.
“Dix just ran a chemical analysis of the pills Kelpy’s been popping. They contained Tryptophan, all right... but mostly they were a drug Dix had never seen before.”
“Shit,” Max said. “We have to identify it!”
“Oh, but we have. Dix hacked into one of Uncle Sam’s computers and found a reference to the same chemical compound. Seems it’s a drug called Cullinasec.”
Gottlieb’s voice chimed in from the living room: “That’s classified information!”
Max and Clemente followed the voice into the living room, where Gottlieb and Original Cindy were back. Cindy was seated at the kitchen table, looking shell-shocked.
Clemente said, “Where’s the, uh...?”
“The ‘skin suit’ is in a big plastic garment bag in my trunk,” Gottlieb said, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t think I compromised the evidence by moving it from my backseat to my trunk. Better to secure it, considering some of the... unusual circumstances surrounding this case.”