doin' things to me, Juno. Things I never seen before. You wouldn't believe the shit she's into. I'm tellin' you, that was a night to remember-fuckin' A! You gotta meet her. You won't regret it.”
I looked over at Liz as Ian suddenly stepped out from her circle of admirers. A holo appeared in front of him, Lieutenant Rusedski of homicide.
“Somethin's up,” said Josephs.
My phone rang. A holographic Maggie materialized in an empty chair. “I can't make it,” she said. “I have to go down to the South Docks. There's been a murder.”
THREE
The hommy dicks all cleared out, Liz trailing out with Ian. Must be a big case to warrant the whole squad going down to the docks. It was too bad. I'd been looking forward to seeing Maggie. We hadn't been seeing much of each other since Niki's “accident.” That was what I'd tell people it was. An accident.
My glass was drained. I dropped a couple bills on the table and hit the street. My almost dry whites soaked through in seconds. City lights reflected off the smothering low-hanging clouds, adding a smidge of gray to the black sky.
I headed down the block, my feet taking it slow. It was time I went to the hospital for my nightly visit. My stomach roiled at the thought. I hated that place. Niki didn't belong there with the invalids and the cripples. I'd get her out soon, I told myself. She'd be good as new. It would be like turning back the clock.
I began planning the best way to get there from here. Knowing roads were useless during the rains, I tried to imagine a map of the city's canal system, but I couldn't think straight; instead of canals, all my mind could see was hospital corridors and plastic tubes.
A rare flyer skimmed the rooftops. On its underbelly, a neon sign flashed the tour company's name. You didn't see many tourists during rainy season. As the Koba River's water level steadily rose, the tide of offworld tourists would do the opposite. Constant rain kept all but the most hardy offworlders happily floating in space. Thinking of the boxy camera tucked under my arm, I bet there was one more offworlder who wished he'd stayed in his climate-controlled orbital home.
I found that my feet had stopped at a doorway. They'd stopped on their own, without any conscious orders from my brain. I looked up through the fishnet, to the window above the restaurant. Liz's window. Warm, yellow light beamed out into the rain. I took a minute to stare at the window, ignoring the rain that splattered my face. Then I crossed the street, stopping and turning around when I reached the other side. Now I could see the utilitarian drapes… a tilting lamp, but nothing else. I saw shadows shifting on the ceiling. I liked to think they were cast by her, moving through her apartment in that clingy open-backed number, but I knew that the bucketing rain was probably just fucking with my vision.
The hospital loomed in my mind, its smell, its sterility. I started walking again, but in the opposite direction.
I baby-stepped my way down the moss-slick steps to the pier, where a pair of uniforms stopped me. I reflexively reached for my badge, finding an empty shirt pocket. “I'm here to see Maggie Orzo,” I said.
One of the cops recognized me. “She know you're coming, Juno?”
“Yeah. She knows.”
“Where can I find her?”
“She's probably where they found the body, somewhere inside that barge over there.”
At least a dozen uniforms were on the pier, most of them scanning the ground with bobbing flashlights. They wandered aimlessly around, as disorganized as flies, looking for clues, but not having the sense to form into proper grid-search lines.
I stepped up to the antique vessel. Back during the brandy boom, it was part of a fleet of barges that ran on the river. It was hard to picture it in its heyday: its engines chugging, its deck bustling with river rats, its spider-leg robotic arms swinging pallets of fruit containers on and off deck. Those days were long gone. Now it was just one more abandoned hulk, another reminder of this world's once proud past.
I slip-slided up the algae-coated gangway and made my way sternward, across the waterlogged deck, careful to avoid tripping over cleats and lizard nests. Once inside, I shook off the excess water and climbed a set of narrow metallic stairs that led to the bridge. Electronics were scattered about the floor. Ruptured control panels sprouted entire gardens of wires that stretched out from round holes where gauges used to be. Rain sprayed through broken-out windows. I looked out, down onto the broad deck. Robotic arms stood tall around the eye-shaped deck, reaching up and out like eyelashes.
Flatfoots hovered around a doorway, peeking in on what had to be the crime scene. I tapped a couple shoulders to move them aside. Battery-powered lights sat on the floor, giving the cabin a strange bottom-up lighting pattern that my eyes took a few secs to adjust to. Just inside the cabin was a body, nothing more than a bloated gray sack of skin wearing police blues. In the middle of the cabin was a blood-spattered block of wood surrounded by a pool of watery blood. The floor was littered with small gray sacks-former lizards. One was still alive, its front half trying to walk, its back half a gray blob acting as deadweight.
Ian stomped the half-dead gecko into the decking then turned to face me. “Get out.”
I disregarded the order. “Hey, Maggie.”
Detective Magda Orzo tiptoed from dry spot to dry spot until she stood by my side. She was overdressed as always-a pressed blouse, pleated pants, and matching pumps-expensive duds, probably offworld manufacture. The ensemble looked snappy despite its saturated state. She spoke to me in a serious voice. “So far, it's just like the first one I told you about.”
I had no clue what Maggie was talking about, but thought it best to play along. “Sure looks like it, doesn't it.”
Ian confronted his partner. “What's he doing here?” He was pointing at me.
Maggie responded without pause. “I asked Juno to come. I thought we could use another opinion.”
Maggie was lying. She hadn't asked me to come. She'd cancelled our appointment, and she'd never told me about the “first one” or any other one. Whatever the job was that she wanted me to do, she didn't want Ian knowing about it. To keep up Maggie's charade, I'd have to play the part of the wise old detective-which itself was a lie. After a long pause, I asked, “What have you got so far?”
Ian turned his back on us without answering.
Maggie rolled her eyes at her partner. “About two hours ago, Officer Ramos called in. He said he was walking the pier, and he saw some suspicious activity on this boat.”
“What kind of suspicious activity?”
“He didn't say. He just said he was going to investigate.”
I looked at the bulging body. “I assume that's Officer Ramos?”
Maggie nodded affirmative. “I figure the killer was at the tail end of the cleanup stage by the time he came investigating. Ramos must've walked in when the gene eaters were in full force.”
No doubt about that, I thought as I looked at Officer Ramos's overly swollen form. He looked ready to pop. Gene eaters were some scary offworld shit, a strain of microbacteria that attacked DNA. They'd invade cells and reproduce at an absurd rate, destroying every DNA molecule they'd find and ravaging the cells in the process.
The killer had treated the entire cabin, probably with a fogger. Gene eaters were gaining popularity as a way to destroy blood evidence and any hair or skin cells that may have been left behind. We were only safe now because gene eaters were genetically wired to be sterile at the twentieth generation. Having rendered all DNA evidence ineffective, they naturally died off inside an hour. Otherwise they could wipe out a whole planet. Like I said-scary shit.
I moved to the center of the cabin, stepping over the unlucky lizards that had come looking for a free meal and wound up becoming the free meal. I leaned over the knee-high wood block in the middle of the floor and studied the blood pooled all around it. The blood looked runny instead of its usual syrupy consistency, a surefire sign that the gene eaters had done their job.
Maggie said, “Check out the scorch marks on top.”
I examined the set of centimeter-deep blackened gouges burned into the wood. I tried to count them, but my
