I nodded.
“Well, she'd make me use it on her. I'd give her a few whacks, the kind that'd sting, but wouldn't break the skin. And then we'd… you know… do it. We did it that way at least five or six times. It wasn't rape. It was all her idea.”
“We believe you,” I said reassuringly. “Then what happened?”
“Her brother came home early one day. We didn't even hear him come in. He must've peeked in on us, and there I was whipping his naked sister who was all tied up.”
“What did he do?”
“He brained me with a frying pan, one of those cast-iron ones. I never saw it coming.”
“How bad?”
“I didn't wake up for seven months. That's how bad.”
Sumari leaned forward and turned his head around. He took Maggie's hand and ran her fingers under his hair. “Feel that?”
“Yeah,” she said.
He took my good hand and ran it into the greasy hair at the base of his skull. From the corner of my eye, I saw Maggie wipe her fingers on her pant leg. My fingers ran up from his neck and into a dent, a big dent, a dent that made me want to yank my hand away. Ian, Sr., had been telling the truth-for once.
“Feel it?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“I still get headaches. Bad ones.”
“I can imagine.”
“They should've locked that kid up, but her father came up with this rape bullshit to save his kid. You want to know the worst part? Michelle showed up at my home a few weeks after they let me out of the hospital. She'd run away, and she begged my parents to let her stay with us.”
“What did they say?”
“No.”
“Where did she go?”
“Last I heard, she was living on the street.”
I let Maggie cross first and then I stepped across the wood-beam bridge, the black water of the Koba running underneath.
“Do you think Ian really thought she was being raped?” I asked when my feet hit the walkway.
“I don't know. Could be he was just jealous. But if Liz is right that he was once a sweet kid, he could've been just trying to protect her. What does a young kid know about kinky sex? Her all tied up and getting whipped, it could easily look like a rape to a kid, even to an adult.
I nodded. Bastard of a father. Runaway mother. A too-early introduction to sex and violence. Almost made me fell bad for him. Almost.
“Ian killed Adela's parents, Juno. The fact that they were whipped to death is too big a coincidence. He's probably had thing for whips ever since he walked in on her and her boyfriend. And Liz figured it out. She's always known what we just learned. When it was revealed during Adela's trial that the murder weapon was a whip, she knew it was Ian. She knows her brother way better than most sisters do.”
“You can say that again,” I said with a shiver. Ian and Liz's incestuous relationship was giving me a case of the heebie-jeebies.
“Liz was my anonymous caller. She's the one who called me at the beginning of all this and told me Adela didn't do it.”
I nodded. Maggie's reasoning was flawless. It tracked.
She said, “She told me she knew who the real killer was. I wish she'd called sooner, before the conviction.”
“I'm sure she didn't want to call at all. She didn't want her brother to go to jail. She was probably just hoping they'd find Adela innocent.”
“I always knew Ian was an asshole,” she said, “but I had no idea he was so…”
“Fucked up.”
“Yeah.”
We turned onto a wider walkway that led back toward the shore. Every time you come to an intersection, take the wider walkway, and you'll be on the shore in no time. That was what they'd always tell the offworld tourists who were afraid of getting lost in Floodbank's never-ending maze of convoluted walkways. It didn't always work, but it was as good a system as any.
“So the question is why. Why did Ian kill them?”
Maggie stopped short. I picked up an alarmed vibe from her. I felt it reverb right through me. I looked straight ahead, and there was Hoshi, already reaching for his piece. Shit!
Maggie spun around and bolted a half step ahead of my own panicked footfalls. Standing and fighting was the wrong move. He was already reaching. He'd fry us both before we could draw a bead on him, and with my left hand, I doubted I could hit him with all the time in the world. We sped back the way we came, our arms spread wide for balance. The slatted walkways pitched and lurched as we slammed one foot down after another. Water splashed up as our feet made contact with the platforms and drove them down into the water. Entire homes began to rock from the disturbance. We wound left and right through the haphazard warren of strung-together homes, the lack of any kind of straightaway our only saving grace. Hoshi would have to get close, very close in order to get off a clear burn.
Maggie was gaining distance ahead of me, which was a bad sign. It meant Hoshi was likely gaining ground behind me. People were clearing out of our way; our rope-stretching, wood-scraping, water-slapping approach had the locals grabbing ropes and leaning out over the edge, some of them pulling their feet up off the walkway until we safely passed underneath. We hit an intersection, and Maggie wisely took the wider path. We were near the outer edge of Floodbank, and a narrow walkway was likely to dead end.
She took another turn, and I went the opposite way, knowing Hoshi would stay with me. Maggie would get away clean. I was losing sight of her anyway. My guess was Hoshi's eyes were glimpsing my fleeing back on and off, and at this point, likely more on than off. He'd be opening fire soon.
I cranked up my speed for one final lung-burning push. I could hear him behind me. He sounded so close. I kept my eyes scanning the edges, looking for a gap that was big enough…
There! I dove. The platform under my feet gave way, and I lost my balance, my dive turning into more of a slide. I skidded across the walkway, splinters digging into my stomach. I scrabbled forward, my head already underwater. I lunged down, my feet the last to feel the cool water. I kicked straight down, knowing lase-fire couldn't penetrate deep into the water. I swam deeper, my feet tingling with the anticipation of being fried off. Flashes of diffused light went off all around me as Hoshi took potshots into the water. I needed air, and I needed it bad. I spun my body around and swam in the opposite direction of my dive. I stroked, once, twice, wanting to put distance between me and my entry point. Shit! I need air! I kicked straight up. My head cracked into an oil drum. River slime oozed across my face. My legs kept driving me up as I slid around to the side and found a pocket of air under somebody's floor.
I sucked air, my lungs struggling to keep up with demand. I could hear somebody's feet dancing across the floor above me. I couldn't control my breathing. I was being too loud.
“Officer! Officer! I can hear him! He's under there!”
The house rocked as Hoshi jumped onboard. I sucked a last breath and went back under. I swam down until my ears hurt, then aimed my body in the same direction as the current. I propelled myself with long strokes, my clothes dragging my pace down to one that just barely outran the current.
I needed to surface. I looked up and targeted a patch of light. My right hand smacked a rope that stung my broken fingers. My foot kicked that same rope a second later as I slipped past and approached the light. I broke the surface and launched into a gulping, choking, and panting fit. Again, I was being too loud, but I couldn't stop my painful wheezing.
I listened intently, but I didn't hear anything outside of the Floodbank norm. I looked up at the source of the light, a round hole maybe a meter over my head. Recognizing the oval shape, I noticed the flies and the smell for the first time. Son of a bitch. I decided to move on before the light was eclipsed by some wide-mouthed brown bomber.
I let myself float with the current, leaving the shitter behind. I ducked and dipped under ropes and oil drums, moving from home to home, neighborhood to neighborhood, glad that the filth and garbage I was passing through was obscured by the darkness. Progress was slow as I kept hitting impassible thickets of crisscrossed rope that forced me to backtrack and choose another path.