Bambi Castro did not look very Countess-like in thick-soled moccasins, a black baggy sweater, and jeans, with her long black hair pinned up close. She looked more like what she had been fourteen months before, a young Fed, the liaison from an obscure agency, when Carlucci had welcomed her to his office. Now she was welcoming him to her fief, which was about a third of pre-Daybreak California.
They shook hands with Quattro; Bambi greeted them with quick, hard hugs. “This will not get any easier with delay,” she said. “Donald, you and your party stay here. If we come this way running, cover us.”
“In your own house?” Donald muttered.
“Maybe. It’s bad.”
“Is this about Mister Castro’s murder?”
“It is.”
“Then go get’em, Miss Castro.”
She nodded her thanks. To Carlucci, she said, “Officially it’s your murder bust.”
Carlucci said, “I have warrants from Judge Thanh. We’re as legal as we’re going to get.”
Nathan Signor’s apartment was in the senior department heads wing. Terry Bolton, Montez, and two of Bambi’s men took a ram and went around to the back entrance; with no radio or phone to coordinate, they had to rely on synchronized watches.
After they had gone, Carlucci said, “It’s good that they’ll have to be silent, so Bolton can’t crack the same bad joke over and over just before going into action, like he usually does. Four minutes. Let’s go.”
At the main door to Signor’s apartment, Carlucci took the knob side, and raised his arm over his head, eyes fixed on his watch. Quattro tried to take the hinge side, but Bambi shoved him aside and took it herself. The second hand swept up to the twelve; Carlucci dropped his arm, and drew his pistol. The ram smashed against the lock.
Frightened shrieks—besides Nathan, his wife Ingrid and daughters Molly and Nellie were inside. The ram hit again and the door swung wide. Carlucci shoved through, Bambi just behind him. Bolton’s ram was booming on the back door.
Nathan Signor was standing just inside. Carlucci backhanded him with the flail, knocking Signor to his hands and knees, brought it around to scissor the man’s neck, and pressed Signor’s face to the floor, making him lie flat. “Nathan Signor, you are under—”
Signor shrieked and curled into a ball, even against the force of the flail on his neck. Carlucci held against it with a foot planted on Signor’s back, until Bichsler could wrap the man’s neck in a choke collar. Bambi reached under, felt around and pulled out a knife. “This doesn’t look like a real Daybreak seizure to me.”
They cuffed Signor’s hands behind him and rolled him onto his belly. He kicked, sending some still-wrapped packages flying and threatening to knock over a candleholder; they bound his feet to his wrists.
Other deputies had been hog-tying Ingrid and the two girls; they lay along the wall.
“Friendly coming in,” Terry Bolton said.
“We hear you,” Carlucci responded.
Bolton emerged from the back. “Books and papers behind the headboard. We’ll search the kids’ room next—”
Quattro raised Ingrid’s head to try to look her in the face. “If you can assure us that the kids didn’t know—hunh.” She had bucked hard against him, and he pushed her back down. “Daybreak seizure, this one’s real.”
Bambi rolled Molly over; the girl was kicking like a poisoned grasshopper, indifferent to the agony it must be causing in her wrists and shoulders. “The kids are having them too. Catellano, get the doc.”
A few minutes later, the girls had been drugged and carried out. “I suppose they won’t get to say goodbye, then,” Bolton said, sadly.
Carlucci said, “Yeah, I don’t see any way we can let them. Terry, you don’t have to see what—”
“I can deal with it.”
“I know you can. If I needed you to, I’d order you to. But I don’t need you to. And somebody has to go through those papers you found behind the headboard.” When Bolton had gone into the back bedroom, Carlucci said, very softly, “All right, let’s get this over with.”
The doctor said Nathan Signor had a broken collarbone and cracked teeth. “Also, even though he was faking it before, this is one of the worst cases of Daybreak seizure I’ve ever—”
“Sorry,” Ingrid gasped.
Carlucci squatted beside her. “Talk to us. You had a Daybreak seizure. You’ll be free to talk, freer anyway, for a few minutes now.”
“Sorry. Sorry. Nate was… Nate was…”
“It’s okay, just let it out,” Carlucci said, wiping the tears and mucus from her raw red face.
“I’m not even his wife, never met him till the mission. Mollie and Nellie are not our kids, ’ot ’r kids. Don’t pun pun pun—” Her neck spasmed, yanking her head far back, in a fresh seizure.
“Dad hired Signor the January before Daybreak,” Bambi said. “As an HVAC engineer. So he had go-anywhere keys and people looked right at him without seeing him, the way they do anyone in a service uniform. That’s how Daybreak could slip someone in to attack Daddy twice, even with the whole Castle on alert.” She stared at something far beyond the walls of the room. “Crap. Ingrid did preschool supervision. I guess we’ll have to review the Jamesgram about blocking Daybreak in young children. And their girls—”
“Not ours. Mollie and Nellie were fosters,” Ingrid said. She gasped. “Real parents are named Green, they… were… in… Reno. Violent abuse don’t… send. The. Girls. Back.” She drew a deep breath, and her face cleared for a moment. “It it it wants to give me another seizure, but it can’t quite yet-et. Those girls liked me, they thought I’d be their mom, and Nate made me fee, feed, feed, fee fi fo fum, feed them to Daybreak ache ache. Our whole affinity group’s records are behind that bed and we’re all there were were were—”
Her back arched in a savage, almost audible jerk; then she went limp.
“All right,” Bambi said. “Officially she’s a POW, since she was trying to resist Daybreak. Sedate her, doctor, and let’s get her out of here.”
“I’ll go arrange getting her and the kids into the Gooney Express,” Quattro said. He would fly them to their main holding and interrogation area at Castle Larsen, his home base far to the north. “Tell Terry maybe they can be a family if the doctors can get them all cured.”
“I heard.” Bolton was in the doorway with a couple of rag dolls and a teddy bear. “The kids might want these.”
“Thanks, Terry!” Quattro sounded too appreciative, but he bundled up the toys and hurried off, obviously intent on getting into the air and away from this.
When he had gone, Carlucci asked Bolton, “How many were in the affinity group?”
“Just five—the Signors, a guard that was killed in the fighting last June, and another married couple—a kitchen helper and a gardener. Round’em up?”
“Do that.”
Bolton dashed out, at least as fast as Quattro had.
Now it was just Carlucci, Bambi, and the doctor. Carlucci said, “All right. We need to start,” and silently prayed If we’re doing the wrong thing, please remember You didn’t make me smart enough to think of the right thing.
The doctor said, “We have to do this?”
“That’s what the orders are from RRC,” Carlucci said.
Bambi added, “Which we all follow.”
“And me a Catholic,” the doctor muttered. “All right, just hold him down while I do this.” He injected something into Signor’s neck.
“What’s that?” Bambi asked.
“Wood alcohol, angel dust, and some meth, he probably won’t wake up but the facial contractions’ll make him look like he died crazy and terrified, and the convulsions will add some bruises and broken bones for anyone who looks at the body.” He pulled an old-style straight razor from his bag, lifted Signor’s head by the hair, and slashed across the man’s face. “Roll him over. Don’t lose your grip.”