neighbors, so I fiddled with the lock on her front door and let myself in—if I knocked loud enough to wake her, I’d wake the neighbors as well, to say nothing of giving warning to any unfriendlies who might be listening. Her cat nearly gave me a heart attack, a flash of near-ultraviolet motion followed by a slapping noise from the next room, and I came maybe half a micron from squeezing the trigger into action before my brain translated the motion and screamed at me to lay off. I eased back the pressure, feeling a little shaky: lucky she didn’t have a Rottweiler.
I breathed in the air for a while, sniffing for any trace of death and blood and terror, but the house smelled good, like cooking and flowers. Like her, in fact. And only like her, which suggested that she lived alone.
So I cleared my throat and started talking in a low voice. “Ms. Savoy? Elizabeth? This is Mike Heller, the investigator you hired. Elizabeth, please, if you’re here I need you to wake up. This is Mike Heller, and I found out some things that make me think you’re not safe here. Sorry about breaking in like this, I sort of needed to. Um, Ms. Savoy? You there? This is Mike—”
The lights went on abruptly, dazzling my dark-adapted eyes. My right hand jerked again, and I blinked hard.
“Mr. Heller? What are you doing here?”
I blew out a breath. I was going to have to go someplace nice and quiet at the end of this damn case. Assuming I was still alive, of course. I let my gun drop to my side, although I didn’t put it away.
“Ms. Savoy, I’m afraid you may be in danger. I need you to throw a few things in a bag and come with me.”
“What, now? What time is it, anyway?”
“Time to go, if you want to live.”
Motion in the dark doorway resolved into a figure, dressed in slinky pajamas. Her hair was every which way, her face was bare of makeup, and she had a red pillow line across one cheek. She was absolutely gorgeous.
“It’s Harry, isn’t it? What did you find?”
“I’m leaving here in two minutes, with or without you. I can tell you about Harry later, once I’m sure we’re safe. You coming or not?”
“I can’t . . . How do you . . . You broke into my house!”
“I couldn’t be sure you weren’t being watched. Still can’t be sure.”
“Get out!”
I took a step back toward the door. “If that’s what you want, I’ll leave. But I won’t be able to keep you safe if you’re not with me.”
“I can’t just leave. And anyway, I have to be at work in a few hours!”
“Call in sick. Ms. Savoy, I really wish you would trust me on this. I swear, you’re honestly not safe here.” I could feel the seconds ticking away on the clock, but what could I do? Knock her out and carry her away? All I could do was try to look honest, and wait for her to make up her mind.
The way she did it shook me more than anything that had yet happened in that already busy twenty-four hours. She glanced at the gun dangling at the end of my arm, then undulated across the room in those slinky pajamas to stand in front of me, studying my face with her human-looking eyes. Then she reached up both hands to pull my face to hers, and kissed me.
Interesting fact: What’s unpredictable about genetic splicing is the distribution of each side’s characteristics. Salamanders have a whole lot of DNA packed into their cells—probably the reason they combine readily with others—but very few of us came out of our foster wombs looking like lizards (very few who lived, anyway). And only a handful of us have tails, or spots, or four fingers instead of five. And although I have heard of the occasional poor bastard whose tail insists on regenerating after that particular surgery, I’ve never believed that any of us actually shoot out our tongues or ooze poison from our skin.
But there’s no doubt, many of us do things differently from your average
Now, a major side effect of that Supreme Court victory was that we had as much right as anyone else to keep out of the hands of scientists (which is the reason you sometimes see ads on WeWeb and Facebook, begging for SalaMan volunteers). Science eyes us with a longing that verges on lust. It offers us considerable sums to participate in studies, then gleefully writes learned papers about our every oddity from pheromones and internal sex organs (science being as fascinated by our pre-Surgery organs as the tabloids are) to the ability to stretch the visible realm into the ultraviolet. Any of us who can prove that we’ve lost a scar or regenerated a finger, and don’t mind spending the rest of our lives under a microscope, would never have to work another day.
But one thing I’ve never read about in the literature, probably because the scientists never thought to ask about it, is the odd uses of some SalaMan mucous membranes.
Elizabeth Savoy was not kissing me, she was tasting the truth on me. She took her time about it, and for sure both of us enjoyed it, but we both knew what she was doing. And we both knew what she tasted.
Without a word, she walked back into the bedroom. I heard a drawer open.
I turned off the overhead light that she’d switched on with some kind of remote, and went into the room where the cat had disappeared. A neighbor’s outdoor light gave shape to kitchen cabinets, and I opened them until I found a bag of kibble, which I set on the floor with the top open. I took a big bowl and filled it with water, setting it next to the bag. My client’s feline responsibilities taken care of, I pressed my face to the windows, studying the possibilities. Wondering if what I’d found at Eileen Jacobs’s house was just brother Harry’s coffee having its way with my nerves. But I didn’t think so.
It was more than the two minutes I’d given her, but less than three, when I heard the toilet flush and feet wearing shoes coming across the room. My client fished a jacket out of the front-door closet, put it on, and picked up the small bag.
“Did you bring whatever cash you have?” I asked her. “Necessary pills, glasses, your ID?”
“Cash, a bit of jewelry, and my license and passport. No pills or glasses.”
“Turn off your cell phone. Better yet, take out the battery.”
She took out a pricey-looking slip of plastic, thumbing open the back and dropping the battery and the now- inert machine back into the bag’s pocket.
We went out her back door, around the tiny garden, through the gate, and up the winding stairway leading away from the water, to the place I had left the motorcycle I’d borrowed from an unwitting friend in Berkeley. On two wheels, and later four, I took my client out of the Bay Area, doubling back, going as invisibly as I knew how, spending all my attention on the rearview mirror and giving out just enough information to keep her with me. Finally, late that afternoon we went to ground in a middle-of-the-road motel in Sacramento, registering as a husband and wife, in a room with two beds.
She turned on me the instant the door was shut. “Okay, all day you’ve been putting me off about this because you needed to concentrate on our backs. So are we now, finally, safe enough that you can answer one or two damn questions?”
“Yes,” I said, “but—”
“Oh, Christ!”
“Look, Elizabeth. I’m tired and I’m cranky. Even you look like you could stomp a puppy. You go take a shower, I’ll rustle up some food, we’ll have a drink, and after that we’ll talk as long as you like.”
She wavered, but she was honest enough with herself that the call of the shower overcame her impatience.
I phoned a nearby Chinese place that delivered, and told the guy I’d add a hefty tip if he’d pick up a cold six- pack and something chocolate and girly on his way. The food and drink arrived as my client was finishing her long, steamy shower; I paid him cash, keeping my head a bit down in case someone out there flashed around a picture of my face. When she came out of the bathroom, I went in; as I closed the door, I heard the sound of a beer cap coming off.
I’ll admit it: I spend most of my life pretending I don’t feel the tightness of my skin and the sandpaper dryness of the air, but sometimes I can’t help reveling in the luxury of water. This was one of those.
I was only half dry when I heard her call my name, in a voice that had me out of there with the gun in one hand and the corners of the towel in the other.
She was staring at the television, tuned to the six o’clock news. The young reporter stood in front of a place I did not at first recognize, and only partly because I’d just seen it at night. The main reason was, the house that had been there, wasn’t.
