Headcase, p.6
Headcase, page 6
I thought of Laurie and her room of fake blood. Maybe those beggars had the right idea.
‘I get why you want to take risks,’ Zara said. ‘To put yourself in more and more danger just so you’ll feel something. But we’ve got a good thing going here. Don’t fuck it up.’
I wasn’t convinced that her profile of me was accurate, and I was even less convinced that we had a good thing going. Our ‘thing’ seemed to be her gathering intelligence while I went hungry.
‘Slow down,’ I said. There were police cars up ahead.
It wasn’t a roadblock—just a cop in a windbreaker, gesturing for some cars to pull onto the shoulder and waving others on. Random breath testing, maybe. ‘Have you been drinking?’ I asked. It was three pm, but Zara never seemed constrained by social norms, or even the law, although the freewheeling side of her personality might have been a cover.
Zara gave me a withering look.
The cop checked Zara out through the windshield, then looked at me, and pointed to the side of the road.
Zara pressed the brakes and cruised into the queue. I got the insurance papers out of the glove compartment and gave them to her.
‘We’re backstopped, right?’ I tried to talk without moving my face, in case the cop could lip-read.
It was illegal for the CIA to conduct operations on US soil. This was Homeland’s turf. If the police worked out that Zara’s ID was fake, we were in deep shit.
‘Shut up.’ She buzzed the window down and turned off the stereo. The sudden silence was suffocating.
We eased forwards and soon came level with a second cop. Hooded eyes, very short hair, Latina. She didn’t look as bored as I would have expected, or hoped.
‘Licence and proof of insurance?’ she said.
Zara handed over the papers, dug a wallet out of her bag and produced an ID. Today she was Cassandra Holcroft. I didn’t get a false name, because I was an asset, not an agent. This meant I had more to lose.
The cop took the documents but kept her eyes trained on me. ‘Sir, I’ll need your licence, too.’
‘Okay.’ I squirmed in the seat and pulled out my wallet with my good arm. ‘But I’m not the one driving the car.’
The cop didn’t smile. ‘I see that.’ She looked down at the photo, then back at me. ‘Been to California lately?’
We had, but it seemed like a bad idea to say so.
Apparently Zara was thinking along the same lines. ‘No,’ she said.
‘How about you, sir?’ the cop asked.
I shook my head. ‘Why?’
The cop didn’t take her eyes off my face. ‘You may be aware of a recent homicide in Los Angeles.’
‘One a day, probably.’
She ignored this. ‘A man fitting your description was spotted at the scene.’
‘Why are you looking for him in Texas?’
‘We have evidence that he crossed the border.’
‘I’m sitting down,’ I said. ‘So I take it your description doesn’t include height. And the first thing a killer would do is change his hair. So what’s your description? White male, thirties, average weight?’
‘Can’t be many of those around,’ Zara said.
In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a good idea for either of us to play smart-ass.
‘Step out of the vehicle please, sir,’ the cop said.
I did, wondering if I was about to get shot. The cop looked me up and down. Perhaps height was part of the description.
I couldn’t afford to get arrested. My cover story wouldn’t withstand much scrutiny. I needed to convince this woman I was innocent, but I didn’t even know what I was suspected of.
Zara was quicker on the uptake. ‘If you’re looking for the Reaper, I think it’s safe to assume he has two arms.’
The cop glanced at my prosthesis.
‘Pretty hard to strangle someone one-handed,’ Zara added. ‘I’m not sure it’s even possible without thumbs.’
I waved my mutilated hand. ‘But I’m happy to discuss my movements down at the precinct, officer. I kept all my receipts for the IRS.’
The cop chewed her lip. Then she said, ‘You folks can move along. Sorry for the inconvenience.’
I shrugged. ‘No problem.’
She watched me carefully as I got back into the car. Zara pulled off the shoulder. I watched in the side mirror as the cop and her car shrank behind us. She made no move to follow us. Didn’t touch her radio. We were okay, for now.
Zara signalled, then merged onto the Interstate 610, which encircles Houston—locals call it the Loop. Soon we were hurtling west at fifty miles an hour. I watched for signs of pursuit. There were none.
‘How did you know she was looking for the Reaper?’ I asked.
Zara kept her eyes on the road. ‘He strangled someone in California last week.’
‘How do they know it’s the same guy?’
‘Are you still looking for cases to solve? Jesus.’
‘Just curious.’
‘Well, I haven’t been following the story closely. Google it.’
I got out my phone. It seemed like the police hadn’t released much information, but intrepid crime reporters were serving up the frightening details for a titillated public. The victims were all divorcees, killed in their homes and found just inside the front door. No forced entry. All left to rot for at least a few days before they were discovered. There had been four victims in Houston, one in New Mexico and one in California.
‘The killer used a stun gun,’ I said. ‘And a garrotte.’
Zara grunted, bored.
‘So I could have murdered those people, as far as that cop knew.’
She patted my knee. ‘Of course you could. I believe in you.’
•
We entered the theatre just as the trailers started. Explosions, bass synth and shouted dialogue hit us from all directions via Dolby Atmos. It felt like being in a plane during turbulence, especially with the strip lighting on either side of the aisle.
As instructed, Zara had bought a dainty chocolate ice-cream cone, and I was carrying a bucket of popcorn roughly the size of an oil drum. We found our row and started shuffling along it.
The only other person in the theatre was a prim-looking woman in her forties with shoulder-length chestnut hair, deep-set eyes and a double chin. She wore a purple V-neck sweater with a gold brooch glittering just under her collarbone. She didn’t seem to notice us as we sat in front of her. But after a minute, she said, ‘Excuse me, what’s this picture rated?’
‘PG-13,’ Zara said. ‘They cut the sex to avoid an R-rating.’
The woman dropped the act. ‘Okay, what have you got?’
Zara crossed her legs. ‘Only two staff saw the body before the cops took it. A communications engineer saw a lo-res photo with no identifying details, and an atmospheric composition analyst saw it in person.’
‘The engineer is Sam Garcia?’
‘Right. Blake used his criminal record to lean on him.’
Zara phrased this as though it were my criminal record rather than Garcia’s, possibly for her own amusement.
‘And the other witness?’ The woman talked in a cowgirl drawl. I’d been told to call her Ariel Wilcox, though I was sure that wasn’t her real name. She was on the CIA black-ops team, like us.
‘Franklin Anders, forty-three years old, born and bred in Texas,’ Zara said. ‘He saw the body up close. According to his healthcare records, he has a sick daughter. Could be a pressure point we can use to keep him quiet. The police will be much harder.’
‘I’ll handle the police,’ Wilcox said. ‘You steer clear of them. Understood?’
‘Copy that.’
‘Who talked to the media?’
‘We don’t know,’ Zara said.
‘It was Garcia,’ I said.
Zara gave me a sharp look. I heard Wilcox shift in her seat. ‘Explain.’
I’d been watching Garcia’s body language as he showed me his phone’s call log. But I thought Wilcox would want more evidence than that.
‘The MSNBC producer asked me if I knew anything about a dead Chinese astronaut,’ I said. ‘He can’t have talked to Anders, because Anders thought the writing on the suit was Japanese.’
‘It could have been the dispatcher who took the 911 call,’ Zara said. ‘Or anyone she talked to.’
‘Nope. She mixed up the address. The police went to the wrong place—I saw them hanging around the museum rather than the Martian training area. Whereas the news van went to exactly the right spot.’
A thought distracted me: What about Detective Jones? How had he found the body so quickly, if the dispatcher got the location wrong?
‘Was there anything unusually high-tech about the space suit?’ Wilcox was asking. ‘Something that might explain why it didn’t burn up on re-entry?’
‘No. The suit looked old, if anything. But I can help you figure out why he didn’t burn up, if you get me the body.’
Zara rolled her eyes at me.
‘I’ll arrange for you to meet with the pathologist,’ Wilcox said. ‘He can tell you anything you need to know about the corpse.’
‘I have to examine it myself,’ I insisted.
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
I stuffed some more popcorn into my mouth. It tasted like human sweat.
‘I’ll need the name of your asset in Shanghai,’ Wilcox told Zara.
‘I can’t give you that,’ Zara said.
‘Do I need to emphasise the seriousness of this situation? We need to find out if there’s a crewed Chinese spacecraft over the continental United States—’
‘I’ll reach out to confirm. My source only trusts me.’
‘What if something happened to you? The Company can’t protect your source if we don’t know who they are.’
I doubted very much that Zara cared.
‘You can pressure headquarters to fire me,’ she said. ‘But you’ll lose your best-placed source of intelligence inside the PRC.’
There was a pause, long enough for the actress on screen to slap the actor playing opposite her. Zara licked her ice-cream while she waited.
‘I’ve heard some troubling gossip,’ Wilcox said finally.
‘Oh?’
‘Rumour has it that the Company has accidentally hired a serial killer.’
My breath hitched, and a piece of popcorn got lodged in my throat. I didn’t dare make a sound. Luckily, I have good control over my gag reflex. I just held my breath, waiting for a less suspicious time to cough.
‘The Company doesn’t do anything by accident,’ Zara said. ‘Maybe someone decided this killer would be useful.’
‘Hmm.’ I could feel Wilcox’s eyes drilling through the back of my seat. ‘Sounds like the kind of mistake that could cost a person her job.’
I wondered if it would help to explain that I wasn’t technically a serial killer, just a scavenger. Sure, I’d killed people, but only in self-defence.
I finally coughed, freeing the popcorn from my windpipe. Then I turned around to look at Wilcox, not wanting her to think she’d rattled me.
‘Remind me,’ I said.‘Is it our job to gather real intelligence, or will the bigwigs be satisfied with rumours and gossip?’
Wilcox smiled thinly.
‘Because if it’s the latter, I’ve got all sorts of stories,’ I continued. ‘Did you hear the Russian defence minister is actually a lizard?’
‘I don’t have time for this,’ Wilcox said. ‘There’s a USB modem under your seat. I need you to plug it into one of the terminals at Space City so we can monitor their communications remotely. You’ll need to get a staff login to install the spyware—someone with administrator privileges. Either the head of cybersecurity, the deputy, or the sysadmin. Use a well-hidden port. If anyone unplugs it, we’ll lose access.’
I remembered Garcia telling me that the Space City network was secure because there was no connection to the internet. Not for much longer, it seemed.
Zara reached under her seat as though scratching her leg. ‘Got it.’
‘I’ll also need you to overwrite all the security footage from yesterday. Use the files from the day before—if anyone notices, they’ll think it’s a malfunction. Whatever the hell happened, we don’t want anyone else figuring it out before we do. Understood?’
‘Copy that,’ Zara said.
‘Afterwards, go to the safe house and wait for instructions. Keep a low profile. The political climate being what it is, I don’t want to invite any attention.’
Wilcox wasn’t just talking about China. Two years ago, a CIA drone strike in Pakistan had killed fourteen civilians, three of whom were children. It had been hushed up. But just yesterday, details about the strike had surfaced in the French media. The director had been given a dressing-down by the president. Now would be a very bad time for anyone to find out that the CIA was illegally spying on US institutions like NASA.
I bit down on an unpopped corn kernel, which crunched like a small tooth in my mouth.
‘Do we know yet what happened last week?’ Zara asked.
A team of analysts was trying to identify the person who had spiked her absinthe in LA. I didn’t envy them. The description I’d offered—white, twenties, slight build—seemed to describe every male in the club that night.
‘We’ve background-checked everyone who was there at the time,’ Wilcox said. ‘No flags. Looks like would-be date rape rather than an assassination attempt.’
Zara didn’t look convinced. ‘Was anyone else targeted?’
‘As a matter of fact, a young woman died after her drink was spiked that same night.’
‘She died? Doesn’t sound like a roofie to me.’
‘No one is disputing that you were in real danger, and we commend Mr Blake on his quick thinking.’
Zara clenched her fists and crushed them between her knees. ‘Understood.’
On the screen, Chris Somebody—Pine or Pratt, I wasn’t sure—tapped his earpiece, growled some tough-guy dialogue and then leapt off a skyscraper in a wingsuit. We watched him soar between buildings for a while, helicopters shooting at him, bullets shattering windows all around. Real-life spying didn’t seem to be like that, but then again, I’d only been with the CIA for three months.
‘Speaking of poison,’ I said, ‘will you ask the pathologist not to pump the body full of toxic chemicals? I’m concerned about the evidence being tainted.’
Wilcox said nothing for so long that I thought she was seriously considering this. But when I turned around, she was gone.
CHAPTER 9
What do you call a doorman with hay fever?
From the outside, it looked like an ordinary deli, next to a doughnut store on a quiet road. The windows had so many words painted on them—Prime Beef, Buffalo, Cajun Stuffed Chicken, Boudin, Deer Processing—that I couldn’t see the interior.
‘You sure this is the place?’ I tried not to sound desperate.
Unexpectedly, Zara reached over and squeezed my good hand. Her fingers were cool. ‘Relax.’
We crossed the threshold and were immediately surrounded by the smell of butchery. Long glass sneeze guards protected every kind of meat imaginable, bar one. The cuts were decorated—ruined, in my opinion—with sprigs of parsley. The floor was chequered red and white. Only half of it would show blood. Maybe that reduced the mopping time.
Zara nodded to the butcher, a hulking man with wide-set eyes and a bulge under his apron that I suspected was a gun.
‘Help you?’ he asked.
‘I’m having a barbecue,’ she said. ‘Six people—have you got anything that won’t taste too gamey?’
He looked around, checking the store was otherwise empty, then unlocked a steel door and rolled it aside, revealing the back room. He didn’t follow us in.
Zara and I walked past the pigs hanging from hooks and the bundled-up turkeys, went down some stairs and found ourselves in a room filled with knives, weighing trays and stainless steel drawers. I’d known that the CIA had black-ops sites around the world where they interrogated suspects, but I hadn’t known they ran black-ops morgues. In the centre, under a spotlight, was a slab draped in a sheet. I could make out a human shape underneath. A man in scrubs stood next to it, holding one corner of the sheet, like a magician about to make something disappear.
In reality, the trick was already over. The police had loaded the body into a transport van for a post-mortem, but the doctor never received it. Instead she got some paperwork which said that a different doctor would be performing the autopsy, at a different hospital. This doctor had a phone, an email address, and a co-worker who would swear he existed.
I stared at the shape under the sheet. Too much saliva had built up in my mouth, and I had to swallow it.
The pathologist was a gaunt, pale man with dark hollows around his eyes. I wondered how often he got mistaken for one of his charges. He wore a butcher’s apron rather than a lab coat. He had no name badge, but Zara had told me to call him Holstein.
He shook her hand, ignoring mine, then pulled back the sheet with a flourish.
Without the space suit, the dead astronaut looked smaller. Sadder. Less heroic. With no blood pressure, his muscles had deflated. His skin had wrinkled too, and his shrunken penis flopped sideways. The mole under his eye, previously black, had faded to brown.
‘Male, thirties,’ Holstein said. ‘Five foot ten, a hundred and eighty pounds.’
I reached for the dead man’s thigh, to squeeze some of those pounds. Zara slapped my hand away and peered at the bloated face of the corpse. ‘Cause of death?’ she asked.
‘You want the short version or the long version?’ Holstein asked.
‘Short,’ Zara said.
‘Long,’ I said at the same moment.
‘Alveolar haemorrhage consistent with explosive decompression,’ he said, apparently deciding Zara outranked me.
‘Like, hypothetically, he went into space without a helmet?’ she prompted.
‘I’ve never had the opportunity to examine anyone who died that way. But if I had, this is what I’d have expected to see. The bruising is the clearest indicator. Notice how it covers the whole body, even parts that aren’t vulnerable to blunt force trauma.’
