the sirens were almost here. You must’ve just missed him. Anybody see a young guy running down the street, big mop of black hair?”
They shook their heads no.
I felt a trickle on my leg. Holy hell. I lifted my knee and sopped up the blood by forcing my pant leg taut.
A gruff voice came from the staircase. Lieutenant Rusedski. “What happened?” Spotting us, he stomped across the tar paper. “What the hell are you two doing here?”
Maggie kept cleaning her hands. “We were-”
He jabbed a finger at her. “I took you off the goddamned case!”
I squirmed in my pants, a blood spot showing right below the bulge.
Rusedski kept his ire on Maggie. “You are so fucking fired. I don’t care who your parents are. You went too far this time.”
She raised a hand, thumb and index finger almost touching. “We came this close to catching him. Where were you and your precious task force?”
Rusedski leaned in. “You’ve been holding out on me. Keeping evidence to yourself when you should’ve turned it over. You’re fucking finished, you hear me?”
“I’m not going to listen to this shit. C’mon, Juno, let’s go.”
I gladly took a step toward the staircase. Toward salvation.
Rusedski put up a hand. “Not so fast, dammit.” He motioned us past a pile of junk to where we could talk privately. “Tell me what happened, and you leave anything out, I swear to God I won’t just bounce your ass, I’ll bring charges.”
Maggie huffed, playing the wrongly accused to a T. She went into it, same story as before. This time with more detail, more embellishments.
Another day, another place, I would’ve appreciated her performance, but I had to get out of these pants. God, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t keep from checking the blood spot again. I could feel it resting on my leg. I could feel it.
Calm down. Pretend it’s not there. Concentrate.
The coroner arrived. Not Abdul, dammit. He’d picked a fine time to take a day off.
The forensics wouldn’t match. Wouldn’t be close. Bronson Carew didn’t shoot his victims. He stabbed them. His postmortem mutilations weren’t ragged, half-assed cuts. He didn’t leave chips of glass in the wounds. Probably wasn’t left-handed either.
But Carew was a psycho. An unstable, delusional psycho. Who could say that his MO couldn’t change? It wasn’t that big a stretch, was it? Rusedski would fall for it. The killer was in a rush. He got interrupted midway. The evidence couldn’t be expected to be a perfect match.
It was too big a leap for him to think I could’ve done this. That I shot two men in the back. That I pulled down Mota’s pants, picked up a piece of glass, and did what I did. Too outlandish. Even for me. I wasn’t that vicious. Or that desperate. I wasn’t that fucked in the head.
Except I was.
Med techs set up lights. The coroner got generous with the fly gel, gunky globs applied to the wounds.
“Who is that?” He pointed at Panama.
Maggie said, “Ask Juno.”
Great. Rusedski aimed eagle eyes at me. “Well?”
A fly landed on my pocket. I nervously swiped it away. I cleared my throat to make sure I still had a voice. “He’s a Yepala cop, a sheriff.”
“You shitting me?”
I shook my head and waved for him to come close, like I didn’t want the unis and med techs to overhear. He took an impatient step forward, and I beckoned him closer, hoping that I could bring him in near enough that he’d have no place to put his eyes except my face.
He stayed where he was, his pissed glare telling me I better talk.
“The YOP sheriff was in business with Wu, Froelich, and Mota.”
“What kind of business?”
I glanced down. Three flies on my leg. Fuck. I stuck my thumb in my pocket, let my fingers hang over the bulge. “They were dealing a new drug. The genie.”
“Genie? As in magic lamp?”
I nodded as I struggled to line up the words in my head. Concentrate. “It’s a date rape drug harvested from genetically engineered snails, but it doesn’t put anybody under. It gives you control over them, makes them do anything you want.”
He chewed his lip, processing.
I felt a fly on my knuckle, twitched a finger to make it take off. “You give somebody the genie and you get a helluva lot more than three wishes. It puts you in complete control until it wears off.”
“How long does that take?”
I gave him an unknowing smirk.
He was silent, gnawing on his lip, wheels turning inside his eyes.
I wiggled my fingers, flies launching and boomeranging straight back. I had to get out of here, needed to fast-forward to the end of this conversation. This charade wouldn’t last. Damn flies were going to give me away.
Words spilled out fast, nervous energy impossible to contain. “These assholes unleashed the ultimate rape drug. And the fucker who took my hand was one of its first victims. Bastard got raped, and then he got ignored when he came to the police.”
“He came to us?”
“Damn straight. But when Froelich and Wu found out, they swept it under to keep their operation going. They said he was a willing participant, told him he must’ve enjoyed it. Now he’s getting his revenge.”
Rusedski kept gnawing that lip. I kept spinning my yarn. “Mota was all over my ass because he was trying to cover his. He and this piece of shit from Yepala necktied Kripsen and Lumbela in an attempt to stop me.”
I saw a hint of fear creeping into his eyes. He was beginning to understand that he’d landed in the middle of a big-ass shit storm, and he was already trying to figure a way to keep himself clean. Classic low-level brass. First thought: containment.
I glanced down, my hand dotted with flies. My pants pocket too. I took a hurried step forward and bumped into him. I pulled my hand away from my pocket, put it on his shoulder, and whispered in his ear, “All these killings, it’s all about the genie. The public gets word that two of your detectives unleashed this devil, you’re going to fall.”
Check-fucking-mate. I had all the leverage I needed. You want containment, you stop riding Maggie. You give her whatever she wants. You make her a star.
I opened my mouth to drive the point home.
He pulled away from me. “Who is he?”
“Who?”
“Who the fuck do you think? The serial. What’s his name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t try that crap on me. He came to the police. He filed a report. What’s his name?”
Shit. Shit. Shit. My heart sank into my stomach, my stomach into my intestines, intestines dropping right out of me. My leverage was gone, evaporated. You said too much, you stupid shit.
I couldn’t let him find Carew. Not until I found him first. I had to plant my evidence. This case had to be closed up tight. And soon. I couldn’t let Rusedski’s task force mull over all the fucked forensics on this rooftop, couldn’t let them think too long or they might pull on one of a thousand loose threads and unravel the fabric of our story.
“You two are done holding out on me.” He turned to Maggie. “You think you can steal the glory? You think you can steal my job one day? Well, fuck you. You want to keep your job, you give me that name.”
I couldn’t tell him. I had to find Carew first. What were the odds we could outrace an entire task force? They’d post his pic on the news. Some do-gooder spots him and calls it in, we’re done for.
“Tell me,” he insisted.
