He saw Lewis up ahead, standing with her arms crossed, staring through a wall of glass into a large room marked NURSERY.
Jay approached, not speaking.
“Well-baby nursery,” Lewis said.
There were rows of plastic cribs with babies in them, all kinds, and it made Jay smile to see them. He remembered going to see his son in just such a place.
Not looking at him, Lewis said, “The road partially taken.”
Jay didn’t say anything.
“I was engaged once. My fiancé and I got started a little early on our family. I got pregnant, and we decided to wait until after the baby was born before we had the wedding.”
She kept watching the infants behind the glass.
“Sean was a seven-pound, healthy, pink boy. Or so we thought.”
Jay blinked. She had never mentioned having a child before.
“He had a rare condition, he was born with an aneurysm. A congenital defect. His aorta just . . . burst when he was two days old. He died in a few minutes. Right in the RW version of there.”
Jay was stunned by this news. “I’m so sorry.”
She shrugged. “Wasn’t anything that could be done. No way to tell until it was too late. Well. I found out later that this had happened several times in my fiancé’s family—apparently it was a genetic thing. One baby in four or five had it.”
“How awful.”
“What was awful was that the son of a bitch didn’t tell me about it. If I had known, I never would have allowed myself to become pregnant—I wouldn’t have risked my baby’s life with those kinds of odds.”
Jay stared at the floor.
“I come here from time to time,” she said. She looked grave for a second. Then she gave him a sad smile. “Well. No point in us standing here being morose. It was a long time ago. I can’t change it.”
Jay nodded. The thought of his little boy dying was beyond painful. His own experience when the baby had developed pneumonia and had to be rushed to the hospital would be with him until, he was sure, he died, even if he lived to be a hundred. He had thought he was smart and powerful—that incident had made him realize just how helpless he was when it came to such things. He couldn’t imagine how Rachel Lewis must feel. How terrible it must be. . . .
“So, what is the scenario you have on tap for us today?”
Distracted by his own thoughts, Jay said, “Uh, well, I thought we might take a run at the cowboy.”
“Cowboy?”
“Um, yeah, I didn’t have a chance to tell you about that yet. FBI came up with a ballistics match. The gun that killed the G.I. on the Kentucky base is the same one that was used to kill two Metro cops. A great big piece, shoots elephant-stopper bullets. There aren’t that many of them around, and I think I’ve got it narrowed down to the right guy.”
She looked surprised. “Really? That—that’s great.”
“Maybe. It might be a dead end—might be that the terrorist they found in the burning truck after Kentucky, Stark, is the guy who bought the gun, but it’s a place to start. The cowboy image is one I came up with once I got it winnowed.”
“Let’s go find him,” she said. “Lead on. The scenario is yours.”
Jay nodded.
Galactic Science Fiction Convention
Art Show Phoenix,
Arizona
Lewis was furious. The stupid son of a bitch Carruth had shot two Metro policemen and never said squat about it—she could understand that, because she would have dumped his ass in a hurry had she known that. But he had kept the fucking gun he used to do it, and shot somebody else! And between the FBI and Gridley, they were about to run the bastard down.
This was bad.
She didn’t know how stand-up Carruth would be if they pulled him in for murder. The District didn’t have the death penalty, though life without parole wasn’t a walk in the park. Kentucky still fried people, though, and if they caught Carruth, he’d have to answer for the soldier killed on the base there as well as the ones in the chase car he’d blown up, and it would be in a civilian court, not the Army’s. She couldn’t remember if they used lethal injection or the electric chair down there. Not that it would matter much.
If he knew he was going to be sent to ride ole Sparky or dance with the Needle, would Carruth give her up to save himself?
Maybe not, but she couldn’t take that chance.
Carruth was, all of a sudden, a liability. Maybe a fatal one.
She couldn’t let the authorities get to him.
And she definitely couldn’t let Jay here find him.
How lucky was it that he had come to her with this instead of nailing it on his own? It was his construct, but she had some control, since she was allowed into it. If she had to, she would use it.
Next to her, Jay said, “I could get you a costume, if you want.”
“I’ll pass. What are we looking for?”
Jay always like to have his basic research clean, so the displays in the sci-fi art show were taken from the real thing. He had also learned that true fans hated the term “sci-fi,” too, but that was too bad, ’cuz that’s what people in the real world called it.
Pieces ranged from pencil drawings to oil paintings to sculptures, some of the last kinetic or motorized. Much of it was first-class and professional work—book covers, trading cards, game or magazine illustrations. There was what appeared to be the skeleton of a gargoyle, cast in plaster or some kind of plastic that looked like old bone, and from what Jay could tell it certainly looked as if it could have been real. Next to that crouched a giant robotic frog that was amazing.
He saw Rachel taking it all in, and while she didn’t laugh or sneer, he didn’t get the impression she was all that hot on the scenario. She looked distracted. Probably remembering her baby son. He was still thinking about her revelation. So sad. It made him want to put his arm around her and comfort her. At the least.
But—they had work to do.
They cruised through the art show.
Jay saw an oil painting of a centaur with glowing red eyes that looked so creepy Jay couldn’t imagine living in the same house with it—those eyes did seem to watch every move you made. He stood next to the painting and watched people as they came upon it, and that was interesting in itself.
If it bothered Rachel, it didn’t show.
There was a quarter-size bronze sculpture of a gorgeous black woman in spandex who had some kind of high-tech guns mounted on the backs of her hands, the barrels extending in a line with her index fingers. It was a beautiful piece of work, and the ten-thousand-dollar price reflected that.
There were some funny drawings—covers for Stephen King books that he never wrote, with titles like Big Hairy Monsters! or Huge Yellow Fangs!
There were altogether too many unicorns and cute fantasy animals—tigers with butterfly wings, winged horses, even flying dogs—and a whole bunch of badly rendered fairies, sprites, Hobbits, and characters from Star Trek and Star Wars, some of them sans clothes. Some of the artists had great imaginations and talent, and some were obviously not folks you’d want to find yourself trapped with in close quarters. . . .
Some of the paintings, collages, assemblages, and sculptures were, in Jay’s view, flat-out, turn-away-and-make-a-face ugly.