“Go on.”
“Well, from time to time he'd get these S amp;Mers who were into snuff. They'd never come out and say it, but they'd hint around, see? They'd ask questions like, ‘You ever wonder what it would be like to kill a person?’ So Ian's offworld partner took the hint. He saw a big money opportunity and started checking into how to go about it. He scoped out the barges and found some good isolated sites. Then he hit the streets and started befriending some opium heads and orphans, looking for good candidates. You know, the kind that don't have any friends or family that would miss them. He got it all together, but when it actually came time for his clients to pay up, none of them came through.”
“Why not?”
“At first he thought they were just trying to get him to cut the price. So he made it clear that price was negotiable, but he still didn't get any takers. None of them had the guts to go through with it. He almost let the whole idea go, thinking they were all talk.”
“Were they scared of getting caught?”
“That's what I thought, but Ian's partner was smart. It occurred to him that the problem might be that these people actually had a conscience, you know what I'm saying? These offworlders aren't used to seeing O addicts and orphans where they're from, and they feel sorry for them.”
It was beginning to make sense to me. “So he figures that if he can find victims who deserve to die, it might help sales.”
“Right. He dropped all that snuff talk and started marketing it as your chance to be an executioner. Shit, that's when it took off. He had enough customers lining up that he was able to auction off the first RIP. We're talking serious money.”
“How many did he do?”
“I don't know. I didn't count. At least twenty.”
“And he auctioned every one of them off.”
“Like I said, big money.”
Maggie was disbelieving. “So you're trying to tell us that instead of putting the death row inmates into the gas chamber, you sell them off so the highest bidder can execute them?”
“Right.”
“But that's impossible,” she said. “All the gassings are authenticated by witnesses.”
“Those witnesses aren't in the same room, though,” he said. “We bring in the judge and the families, and they watch it from the visitor's center, on a vid screen. That photographer guy, the one that took pics of the Juarez girl, I let him come in one time to film the gas chamber. That guy can work some magic, I tell you. He just puts holos overtop the gas chamber background, and it looks real. He does the whole thing, the executioner doing the strap down, the cloud of gas that keeps getting thicker. Hell, I couldn't tell the vids weren't real, and I knew they weren't real. All I have to do is run the vids on the vid screen in the visitors center.”
I let go of his head, the constant bailing having finally lowered the water level enough that his face could stay above the surface without my help. My brain blossomed with understanding. So many things suddenly made sense, starting with why nobody ever missed the barge murder victims. They were all going to die anyway. And then there were the offworlders who were checking out the nudie pics of Adela Juarez, the whole lot of them preparing to outbid each other for the right to execute her. Or how about the realization that there was no serial killer, just a string of rich offworlders playing dress-up, which explained why it was so hard for Maggie to match up murder dates to a single offworlder.
“How do you get them out?” Maggie asked.
“They get moved into solitary two days before they get gassed. I just go back there and walk them out through the kitchen. I bring their bodies back in the same way.”
“Then what do you do with the bodies?”
“We bake 'em until they're nothing but ashes.”
“You handle this whole operation by yourself?”
“No. The executioner who runs the gas chamber is in on it. And so are two other guards.”
Maggie pulled out her digital pad. “Names.”
“Jay Reedy, Karim Fahd, Hideki Saito.”
“And that's it?”
“That's it. Pretty sweet deal, huh?”
Maggie was staring at him. She looked like she wanted to spit in his face.
“I don't know why you two are getting so worked up,” he said. “You guys are cops, right? You know that getting gassed is way too humane for these animals. They don't deserve that kind of respect. They never showed that kind of respect to their victims, you can be sure of that.”
“What about Adela? Has she been moved into solitary yet?”
“Yes. And I led her out and gave her to Ian a couple hours ago.”
Maggie's voice took on an alarmed tone. “But she's not scheduled until tomorrow.”
He tried to shrug his shoulders.
Maggie and I raced from block to block, our splashing feet splattering angry pedestrians. We'd dropped off the skiff back at the dock we'd rented it from. When the owner saw the giant upended bug jammed between the seats, I paid him a little extra and told him he might want to get some butter. I wasn't worried about the guard calling Ian. He wouldn't want anybody knowing he was a rat.
Unfortunately, George didn't know where Ian had taken Adela. Ian had no reason to tell him. We'd have to find her ourselves, and fast.
Maggie entered the restaurant a step ahead of me. Dinnertime was at its peak. We crossed the main floor, pausing multiple times to let the hustling wait staff through. We sped through the kitchen, the steam clinging to my lungs. We took the steps up, the duffel bag bouncing on my shoulder. I banged on the door, then when there was no immediate answer, banged again.
The door opened to an alarmed Liz, who, upon seeing Maggie and me, soured her face into a pucker. “What do you want?”
My heart was racing, and not just because we'd run up the stairs. I shoved my emotions down and tried to lock them up, “We need to talk, Liz.”
She didn't hold the door for us. Instead, she just let it hang open and stepped away, letting us in but making sure we felt unwelcome.
She took a seat on the sofa. She was wearing a black robe that was tied short of snug. Half her hair was up in curlers while the other half rolled down the left side of her face. She was somehow prettier in this disheveled state, yet her sex appeal was now completely lost on me. Knowing her history, the emotional wounds she'd suffered at the hands of her father, she was no longer the stuff of erotic fantasy. Instead of wanting that robe to fall the rest of the way open, I wanted to find a blanket to cover her up. Where I'd once had flashes of holding her down under my bucking, sweating body, all I wanted to do now was hold her like a bird with a broken wing. It was like Niki all over again.
“What do you want?” she said as she pulled a curler free.
Maggie said, “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes.”
“We need your help. We need you to tell us where Ian is.”
“Why would I do that?” She winced as the second curler got hung up on a knot.
“Because an innocent girl is going to die if you don't.”
“That's not my problem.”
“Yes, it is,” I said.
“I'm not responsible for Ian.”
“Yes, you are. You're his big sister, aren't you?” I could have punched her in the face, and she still would've looked less stunned than she did now. “We know who you are, Michelle.”
She looked away and pulled out another curler, dropping it into a growing pile on her lap. She pulled at the coil of hair she'd unleashed, stretching it down past her chin before letting it spring back up. She met my eyes as she spoke, somehow mustering up some fragile dignity. “So the two of you are better detectives than my brother gave you credit for.”