"Somebody who's DMI."
"Is," Eddi said. "Or was."
“You wouldn't believe that someone who could reduce himself to the size of a microbe would be all that dangerous. Wagner didn't. Course, Wagner never thought anything was dangerous. He was such a roughneck. Was that way straight out of the academy. And let me tell you, when I was in the academy-"
"You were talking about-"
"One of those freaks with molecular-reduction abilities. Wouldn't think one of those was particularly dangerous. Wouldn't think that."
Eddi could hardly think at all anymore. More than an hour, almost an hour and a half of stories. Stories from Blake about Blake's days with MTac and Blake with his element going after this kind of freak and that kind of freak, and. following that Eddi and Raddatz got a recounting of Blake's exploits on DMI-though Raddatz could hardly recall Blake at DM! when their service overlapped. Blake was an older guy. No legs. Like Vin with an exponent. Good for little but sitting and talking. And talking.
That's how they differed, Blake and Vin. Vin hardly said a word. Blake wouldn't shut up.
" 'You go in,' Wagner says," Blake said, " 'and you step on the thing.' And that's what Wagner tried to do."
"Detective Blake…" Eddi tried to put a stop to things.
Didn't work. "So we're inside the building, Wagner steps on the freak… only, the freak shrinks even smaller, gets inside Warner's leg-"
"Detective…»
"Then expands again. Expands inside Wagner's leg. Can you imagine having a man pop out of your leg?"
Nardi-Frank Nardi, the ex-DMI cop they'd talked to before Blake-had been an easier interview. No nonsense. To the point. Helpful. Jack MacKay had been the easiest. MacKay was dead. Suicide. And there was Ed Blake and there were interviews yet to come with Houris Tynes and Marty Carlin. Raddatz and Eddi had profiled their suspect: ex-DMI cop. Ex allowed him a free hand to do his dirty chores and ex because the vies could all be cross-referenced with a DMI watch list that was four years stale. The suspect had no access to new intel-with a background in or knowledge of special weapons. That meant cops who'd worked A or D platoons or HIT.
Five guys fit the profile. Nardi, MacKay, Blake. Tynes and Carlin.
Wasn't MacKay.
Nardi had been easy, but maybe he was too easy. Too prepped. A guy with all the answers and ready to give 'em. To Eddi that made him hinky.
Blake wasn't hinky. Blake wasn't their guy. Unless he was out boring freaks to death.
Tynes was a strong possible, but if she had to take bets, Eddi was ready to bet on Carlin. Carlin's package… it was… well, it was interesting.
"I'll tell you what it was like having a guy pop out of his leg."
"Hold on one second." Raddatz did a hand-to-pocket, pulled out his cell. "Hello?" He listened, listened… "Jesus…" To Eddi: 'It's Donatell."
Donatell? Donatell was dead.
Raddatz was up and moving as he repocketed his phone. "Gotta go." A couple of pats to Blake's shoulder.
Blake: "Bad one?"
"Metal morpher in Carson."
"Plastic." Blake said. "Come at it loaded up with plastic and the thing'll run from you like a politician runs from responsibility."
Raddatz, Eddi headed out. Thanked Blake for the tip. Left Blake with a smile. The knowledge there were still cops out there kicking superass.
Outside the house, walking to their car, Eddi to Raddatz: "Donatell?"
"First name I thought of."
"Could've just told Blake we had to go."
"Guy's got nobody. He wants to tell stories."
"So you take a fake phone call. You're a softy."
"Not about being soft. When I get to be like Blake, stuck on a shelf and forgotten, I hope somebody leaves me with the illusion that what I did mattered."
“Now you fucking come? Now you're here? Where were you when I needed you? Where were you when he was pounding on me?"
Ramona Carlin sneered, bit at the thumb of the hand that held her cigarette that drifted smoke into her eyes. Red. Bleary. The redness, the bleariness were the cume effect of all the cigarettes she'd used methodically since turning fifteen. Twenty-seven hard years ago. She waited for Raddatz and Eddi to say something, defend themselves. She waited for them to open their mouths so she could take their words and shove them right back down their throats.
And they were hip to that. Same as any other wronged citizen who couldn't understand why they got such crappy police work for their tax dollars, Raddatz and Eddi got that Ramona was just warming up her rant. They didn't bother saying anything. And their passive-aggressiveness just got Ramona all the hotter.
"How many times did I call the cops, how many times did I try to get you involved? What'd you do?"
Nothing from Raddatz and Eddi.
Eddi figured Ramona to be in her early forties. Her looks offered up the proposition that she was years older. The smoking didn't help the texture of her skin. But the wrinkles her face displayed were more like stress fractures. Hard to tell in the two and a half minutes Eddi had been acquainted with Ramona if she had been born a touch high-strung. What "was clear was that her years with her husband had done nothing to help her become any less anxious.
His package: Carl in had been with a Harbor MTac element that served a warrant on a firestarter. Had attempted to serve a warrant on a firestarter. Two of the element ended up a slick of ash. One of the operator's legs was charred up like an overroasted chicken leg. And Carlin, most of the right side of his body between neck and torso looked like some kind of sick joke of nature. A patch of something that wasn't flesh, wasn't human. It was a scarred, twisted, nasty, barren wasteland. His arm was the limb of a tree burned and burned and burned but was, in the end, too stubborn to fall away.
After that, Marty Carlin was useless for MTac.
He was good for DMI. For a while. Then there was an incident. Eddi and Raddatz didn't know what the incident was. The facts were left out of Carlin's package. As a rule when shit goes down, suspendable shit, and the cops who are doing the suspending think it's best even sealed records shouldn't reflect the shit, the shit was serious. Seriously bad. Potentially damaging to the department image-wise. Legal-wise.
However it was, whatever he'd done, the PD didn't think Carlin was fit for duty.
To Eddi's way of thinking, unfit equaled unbalanced.
An assumption affirmed by poor Ramona. Hard enough being married to a cop. Hard enough being married to a cop who decides to go MTac. But being married to one who barely survives serving a warrant on a freak. Then he apparently goes nuts. Then he, again apparently, decides he wants to use you to work off some misplaced aggression… can't beat the freaks, might as well beat the missus.
Eddi could forgive Ramona for her nature. Forgive, yeah, but that still didn't make the woman any easier to deal with.
Ramona: "You didn't do anything, that's what you did. You didn't do anything because he was a cop. I can't even… " Hands shaking as she tried to take a drag on her smoke. She'd worked herself into a state. "He detached the retina in my left eye. Can't even see out of it. Can barely see out of it," she modified. "That's how hard he used to hit me. One goddamn arm, and he could still… And I call the police, and they're all 'You two just work it out. You don't want any trouble.' You're the ones who didn't want trouble. You were supposed to arrest him! That's what you're supposed to do, a man beats his wife. But he was a cop, so you all didn't do shit!"
Nothing from Raddatz and Eddi.
Ramona stared, stared at them. Kept her anger to do some aikido: redirect Raddatz's and Eddi's compassion against them. But they gave her nothing.
Ramona gave to them: "Hell with you."