Maggie was disbelieving. “So you're trying to tell us that instead of putting the death row inmates into the gas chamber, you sell them off so the highest bidder can execute them?”
“Right.”
“But that's impossible,” she said. “All the gassings are authenticated by witnesses.”
“Those witnesses aren't in the same room, though,” he said. “We bring in the judge and the families, and they watch it from the visitor's center, on a vid screen. That photographer guy, the one that took pics of the Juarez girl, I let him come in one time to film the gas chamber. That guy can work some magic, I tell you. He just puts holos overtop the gas chamber background, and it looks real. He does the whole thing, the executioner doing the strap down, the cloud of gas that keeps getting thicker. Hell, I couldn't tell the vids weren't real, and I knew they weren't real. All I have to do is run the vids on the vid screen in the visitors center.”
I let go of his head, the constant bailing having finally lowered the water level enough that his face could stay above the surface without my help. My brain blossomed with understanding. So many things suddenly made sense, starting with why nobody ever missed the barge murder victims. They were all going to die anyway. And then there were the offworlders who were checking out the nudie pics of Adela Juarez, the whole lot of them preparing to outbid each other for the right to execute her. Or how about the realization that there was no serial killer, just a string of rich offworlders playing dress-up, which explained why it was so hard for Maggie to match up murder dates to a single offworlder.
“How do you get them out?” Maggie asked.
“They get moved into solitary two days before they get gassed. I just go back there and walk them out through the kitchen. I bring their bodies back in the same way.”
“Then what do you do with the bodies?”
“We bake 'em until they're nothing but ashes.”
“You handle this whole operation by yourself?”
“No. The executioner who runs the gas chamber is in on it. And so are two other guards.”
Maggie pulled out her digital pad. “Names.”
“Jay Reedy, Karim Fahd, Hideki Saito.”
“And that's it?”
“That's it. Pretty sweet deal, huh?”
Maggie was staring at him. She looked like she wanted to spit in his face.
“I don't know why you two are getting so worked up,” he said. “You guys are cops, right? You know that getting gassed is way too humane for these animals. They don't deserve that kind of respect. They never showed that kind of respect to their victims, you can be sure of that.”
“What about Adela? Has she been moved into solitary yet?”
“Yes. And I led her out and gave her to Ian a couple hours ago.”
Maggie's voice took on an alarmed tone. “But she's not scheduled until tomorrow.”
He tried to shrug his shoulders.
TWENTY-SIX
Maggie and I raced from block to block, our splashing feet splattering angry pedestrians. We'd dropped off the skiff back at the dock we'd rented it from. When the owner saw the giant upended bug jammed between the seats, I paid him a little extra and told him he might want to get some butter. I wasn't worried about the guard calling Ian. He wouldn't want anybody knowing he was a rat.
Unfortunately, George didn't know where Ian had taken Adela. Ian had no reason to tell him. We'd have to find her ourselves, and fast.
Maggie entered the restaurant a step ahead of me. Dinnertime was at its peak. We crossed the main floor, pausing multiple times to let the hustling wait staff through. We sped through the kitchen, the steam clinging to my lungs. We took the steps up, the duffel bag bouncing on my shoulder. I banged on the door, then when there was no immediate answer, banged again.
The door opened to an alarmed Liz, who, upon seeing Maggie and me, soured her face into a pucker. “What do you want?”
My heart was racing, and not just because we'd run up the stairs. I shoved my emotions down and tried to lock them up, “We need to talk, Liz.”
She didn't hold the door for us. Instead, she just let it hang open and stepped away, letting us in but making sure we felt unwelcome.
She took a seat on the sofa. She was wearing a black robe that was tied short of snug. Half her hair was up in curlers while the other half rolled down the left side of her face. She was somehow prettier in this disheveled state, yet her sex appeal was now completely lost on me. Knowing her history, the emotional wounds she'd suffered at the hands of her father, she was no longer the stuff of erotic fantasy. Instead of wanting that robe to fall the rest of the way open, I wanted to find a blanket to cover her up. Where I'd once had flashes of holding her down under my bucking, sweating body, all I wanted to do now was hold her like a bird with a broken wing. It was like Niki all over again.
“What do you want?” she said as she pulled a curler free.
Maggie said, “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes.”
“We need your help. We need you to tell us where Ian is.”
“Why would I do that?” She winced as the second curler got hung up on a knot.
“Because an innocent girl is going to die if you don't.”
“That's not my problem.”
“Yes, it is,” I said.
“I'm not responsible for Ian.”
“Yes, you are. You're his big sister, aren't you?” I could have punched her in the face, and she still would've looked less stunned than she did now. “We know who you are, Michelle.”
She looked away and pulled out another curler, dropping it into a growing pile on her lap. She pulled at the coil of hair she'd unleashed, stretching it down past her chin before letting it spring back up. She met my eyes as she spoke, somehow mustering up some fragile dignity. “So the two of you are better detectives than my brother gave you credit for.”
“You called me,” Maggie said. “You knew Ian was responsible for the deaths of Hector and Margarita Juarez. When you saw that their daughter was convicted, you called me and told me you knew who the real killer was.”
“That wasn't me,” she said.
“You called because you knew your brother did it.”
“No. That doesn't make sense. Why would Ian kill them?”
Maggie laid it out as simply as she could. “He and Horst are in the snuff trade. They sell the executions of death row inmates to offworlders. Ian killed the girl's parents and framed her so she'd get the death penalty. He wanted to sell her.”
“Ian wouldn't do that.”
“You know that's not true, Liz,” I said. “As soon as you heard that they were whipped to death, you knew. You knew. Just like we knew when we talked to Sumari. He told us about the whipping games you liked to play. He showed us the dent in his head, the dent he got when your brother brained him.”
She stayed silent for a long minute, her eyes taking on a faraway look. When she finally spoke, her tone was less than convincing. “That wasn't Ian's fault. He didn't understand,” she said. “He was too young. He thought he needed to save me. He felt bad afterward. He was a good kid. Really, he was. It's not his fault he turned out this way.”
“How can you be so sure he was trying to save you? Maybe he was just jealous.”
She ignored me. She kept working the curlers, her eyes staring off into nothingness. Maggie reached across and took her hand, forcing her to snap out of her trance. “You called me because you wanted to save Adela. Help
