Conscience of the Beagle (11 page)

THE CAB
drops
me in front of the neo-adobe. I look back, but can’t see the other cab. Better than I expected, the undercover God’s Warriors. More dangerous. And Vanderslice is more deadly than I’d ever believed.

The door opens. I limp into the darkened living room. Beagle’s standing by a lamp in the den. “You look like shit. Sit down, Dyle. I’ll get your pills.”

I collapse into an overstuffed chair. Beagle brings me iced water and a white tablet. He sits and watches me take it.

“I got the pattern,” he says. “And I was wrong. It’s all centered around Paulie Hendrix.”

I bobble the glass. My hand’s shaking too much to hold it. I set it on an end table.

“Solving this one was a real hard-on, Dyle. There were patterns within patterns like a Chinese puzzle box.”

A whir. Something lumbers at me
—
right at me
—
from the shadows. Beagle turns in surprise. The household bot. Just the bot. It rolls over, sets a doily under my glass, then moves to a parking place against the wall.

Beagle’s shoulders relax. “So. The pattern. Drs. Kenneth J. Battle and Valentin Popek, partners in quantum physics, were killed in blast number one. They had recently sold an article to
Godly Science.
Morgan Berstermann, part-time typist and full-time homemaker, was killed in blast two. She did a bit of freelance copy editing on the sly. Women aren’t supposed to have jobs here. But she was safe, I suppose, with Hendrix. Blast three got rid of Shulton Gaddis. Gaddis’s job was transferring data from computers to insertable Sheet tabs. And we can guess who one of his clients was.”

“Four was Paulie himself.”

“Yes. And five was one I’m particularly proud of. Lennie Brooksfielder was hard to track, but I finally nabbed him. Anything used was Lennie’s game. A bit of shuckster, a bit of shade-tree mechanic was Lennie.
Godly Science
worked on a shoestring budget, and when the magazine needed a new liquid crystal color plater, guess who they went to? Fortunately all IST equipment needs to be registered with the government or I never would have found him. Anyway, eight months before his death, Lennie sold Hendrix the equipment. Three weeks before his death the luckless Lennie was called in to fix it. The warranty was still good.”

“And six?”

“Six was tough. A computer artist by the name of Greel Iovinelli. He’d never done work for the magazine, but I found an electronic check. It wasn’t a chit from
Godly Science,
either, but a personal bank transfer from Hendrix. The
Godly Science
account was overdrawn by the time Iovinelli needed paying, and Hendrix paid him out of his home budget.” Beagle chuckles. “Great shit, huh? And seven was Dr. Thurgood Ezekiel Daws, physicist and part of the peer jury
Godly Science
used to determine the printability of its articles. Eight was Golden Thompson, no Ph.D., but so widely accepted as an expert in his field that he was part of the peer jury, too.”

Eight. The bomb blast we investigated. Was Thompson the hand in the rubble? The puddle of blood under the wall?

Beagle says, “And we were nine.”

I wipe my hands down my face. “What does it mean?”

“Don’t know yet. The missing article bothers me, but I still say our favorite boy spy is out to kill the Chosen and HF’s helping him. Remember, Vanderslice is also a scientist. He probably directed the bombings. He published in
Godly Science,
at least before he changed careers. So . . . jealousy?”

“There’s an article missing?”

“The article by Battle and Popek that
Godly Science
bought is nowhere to be found. I checked their DEEPs
—
the obvious place to hide something
—
but they were empty. I figure Vanderslice got into there and erased Battle and Popek’s work.”

“Why?”

“Goddamn it, Dyle!” His face twists in anger, and I realize I’ve pricked his vanity. “I told you I don’t know! From what I hear, Battle and Popek were brilliant. I know Daws and Thompson were. Vanderslice knew them well. Shit, he attended off-planet conferences where they were speakers.”

“Vanderslice cornered me tonight.”

Beagle’s startled. “What did he want?”

“Just to talk. It was all talk. Fed me a bunch of shit. Told me . . .” That she likes it. That she watches and laughs.

“Told you what, damn it?”

“That Paulie was working for him the whole time.” That she never loved him. Never. “Said he gave him names of people who were dissatisfied with the government. Vanderslice got rid of some of them.”

“He had you alone, then? No witnesses?”

“Just his own guards.”

“Why didn’t he kill you?”

Kill me? I’m stunned. I shouldn’t be.

“This has me worried.” Beagle shakes his head. “With what I’ve found out, I’m not sure we can turn him. Still, it looks like Boy Wonder and HFCS had a little falling out. He knows the plant here is out of control. Wants us to find him. Maybe he wants out of the contract. By the way. I have a line-up for you to look at. The HFCS guy was tall. He had reddish hair. That’s all I could see before he ran off. I gathered all the males fitting that description who were approached by the infamous holo bimbo this year. There are fifty-two. Want to take a look, or are you ready for bed?”

“I’ll look.”

Beagle goes to his workstation and hits the power button. “It’s all set up. I’ll get you a cup of coffee.”

I change chairs slowly. My body’s sore.

By the time Beagle comes back I’m at number thirty-three and my eyes are tired. Beagle pulls up a chair, sets a cup near me. “You’re almost through. Nothing yet?”

“No.” I tap the space bar. Picture of a middle-aged man with a receding hairline, wild disgust on his face. “Remember Reece Wallace?”

“Of course. You made him famous, didn’t you? Everyone remembers Reece.”

“That’s who he looks like.” I scroll up a laughing teenager. Beagle doesn’t speak. “I don’t know what he looked like before the doctors changed him. But now he has Reece Wallace’s face.”

I scroll up another man. Another. Then another. Won’t he say something?

“Your pulse rate shoots up every time you hear his name. I know it was a bitch of a case, but what . . . Hold it. You think Reece Wallace killed your wife, don’t you?”

Cold. So cold my spine goes taut. “No.”

“But you link them somehow. I can tell. Is that because they never solved her homicide? You play her murder over and over in your mind. You relive it. And you have to give the villain a face.”

I pound the space bar hard. END OF ENTRIES flashes across the screen.

“Isn’t that right?”

“The HFCS guy. They planted an EPAT on him. That’s why the holo never took his picture.”

“Dyle? Is it?”

I shut my eyes.

“Does HF know about this? They have to, don’t they? It would come up in your annual psychological test. And that’s why they MedAltered this guy.”

Deaf to it. Blind.

“You tried to solve her homicide yourself, didn’t you. Tried to find the murderer, but
—”

“No damned clues! Goddamn it! What do you expect from me? There weren’t any clues!”

“I know. I know that.”

“What do you know? Fuck you. You don’t have any idea. My own friends tried to make . . . told me to forget about it. Forget? Oh, Jesus Christ! Forget? They could handle it. Take care of everything. Oh, sure. Sure.” The room blurs. I’m blind.

“Dyle . . .”

“Shut up. How can you know? You don’t know.” Loved her. For a year and a half I’ve grieved more than laughed. So pathetic.

“Listen to me. He was dead long before Lila was murdered. You looked for Reece six years. One hundred and seventy-five murders. A hundred and seventy-five autopsies. Bloody murder scenes. Six years. Finding Reece must have obsessed you. Difficult cases do that. Dyle? Don’t you see what HF’s doing?”

Shut the hell up! Did I get the words out? I blunder to my feet. Can’t see the room. Just streaks of light and dark.

“HF knows Reece scares you.”

Knock over a chair. A table. Where’s the door? The goddamned door? Hand on my arm. Grip so tight it hurts. “Dyle? Reece couldn’t have killed Lila.”

My groping fingers touch a wall. Cool. Smooth. Simple to understand. I lean my hot cheek against it. “I know.”

IN A MAGSTATION.
Where
was I headed? The destination board is a blur. And I’ve lost my ticket. Can’t have. Damn it. Stranded if I can’t find that ticket. Can’t go anywhere if . . .

Touch on my shoulder. Someone behind me. Lila. No one else would dare . . . Oh. That’s stupid. I was so worried about being stranded, but I was holding the oranges, after all.

She tries to put her hands over my eyes. I push them away. The bag drops from my arms and oranges roll every direction. See what she made me do? Now I’ll never get them back in the bag. Have to find . . . But why? Not all the oranges are important.

Playing that game again. I slap her hands from my eyes and turn. Not Lila. John Vanderslice behind me.

Blood gushes from his nose. Spills over the front of his suit. His hands are red with it. “You’re so funny,” he says and he laughs. “You’re just so funny, Major.”

Blood covers the floor. It’s slippery. Hard to keep my balance, but still, I laugh with him. Laugh until I’m weak.

* * *

I wake with a vague feeling of contentment, and look at the time twice before I believe. I slept until four in the afternoon.

Yawning, I walk to the bathroom. I stretch. Take off my pajamas. The Slimcast is beginning to turn color. Tomorrow I’ll be able to remove it. Odd how good I feel. By the time I shower and shave, I’m hungry. No. I’m starved.

Szabo’s door is closed. Beagle’s at his workstation. I put on coffee and look through the pantry. Pizza. Fat baroque cherubs on the package. Nearly full-frontal cherub nudity, if not for the red letters over each crotch. Mushroom. Green pepper. And
—
unintentionally funny?
—
Italian sausage.

I read the instructions. Put it in the oven. Jesus. Sausage.

“Cosmology.”

Beagle’s standing in the kitchen doorway.

“Cosmology?”

“Well, well. Aren’t we in a good mood today? Golden Thompson was an expert in cosmology. Why would he be peer-reviewing Battle and Popek’s work? They were quantum physicists. The immense passes judgment on the incomprehensibly tiny?”

The oven blats. I reach inside. The package is cool. The pizza inside burns my fingers. Thick crisp crust. Lots of cheese.

“Maybe the article’s not important, but I loathe missing puzzle pieces,” Beagle says. Before I can separate the slices, he’s plucked a mushroom and popped it in his mouth. “What do you think?”

“I’m wondering if you can taste that.”

A nod. “You bet. Great shit. Put some of that parmesan and red pepper on it. Don’t look at me like that. I don’t digest it, for Christ’s sake. And water’ll flush it out. Anyway, Popek was separated from his wife. Battle, the child genius, dated like a buck rabbit but never the same woman twice. I’ve talked to Golden Thompson’s wife on the phone. Nice lady, but I sense she adds and subtracts the house budget on her fingers. Her only impression of her late husband’s prize-winning work was that he seemed somewhat interested in stars. She did, however, remember seeing a delivery with Battle’s return address on it. A manuscript-sized delivery. You do see the importance of that.”

“Odd.” I pry away a triangle and lift it, trailing strings of mozzarella to my mouth. Steam rises. Oregano and garlic. That little restaurant we used to . . . What was the name? Lila always got the lasagna. Always the lasagna. I ordered something different each time, and she’d steal forkfuls of mine.

The pizza isn’t as good as I hoped. Not as good as in that restaurant.

“Intriguing, right?” Beagle asks.

“Have the rest of that.” I rummage through the cabinet again. Tuna. Albacore tuna? Is it the same fish? Artichoke hearts? What do they mean, artichoke hearts?

“Sure you don’t want it?”

“Not as good as restaurant pizza.”

“Bullshit. This is restaurant pizza. What sort of restaurants do they have on M-4, anyway? This is real Italian sausage. Loaded with anise.”

“Fennel. Italians put fennel in their sausage.”

“I’m talking about the stuff that tastes like licorice.”

“Right. Fennel.”

He makes a disgruntled, maybe a dubious sound. “You get a load of the painting on the box?”

“Baroque. Probably Titian.”

“Giotto. You don’t have taste buds for shit, Dyle,” he says through a full mouth. “I think the trank packs they prescribed for Szabo are too strong.”

“Why?” Fried shrimp. Wonder what it tastes like? Breading so light it looks like gold clouds. And cocktail sauce. The red stuff. Interesting, but . . .

“He’s sleeping too much. Never gets out of bed. Christ. Since the bombing, he hasn’t even taken a goddamned shower.”

“Oh
. . .
”
Maybe a steak? “That’s what you do.”

“What the hell kind of response is that? What the hell do you mean ‘that’s what you do’?”

“You know. Trying to get through things. When Lila . . .” My hand freezes on a Chinese dinner. General Tso’s chicken with shrimp spring roll. I’ve never talked about this. Not with anyone. And then somehow, it’s so easy. “When Lila died,” I say and my voice doesn’t waver, “they gave me the standard two weeks off. Stayed in bed. Don’t think I even brushed my teeth. It’s what you do.”

I hear him chewing.

“Come on, Beagle. It’s what you do.”

“Okay. But he’s not eating, either.”

“You don’t eat.” I put a package of lobster down. Sauce looks too rich. Strawberry jam. Maybe just toast and strawberry Jam.

“Send him home, Dyle.”

Jar in hand, I turn. “Why?”

The pizza is gone. Crumbs cover the plate. Clot of tomato sauce. Mushroom in a pale shroud of cheese. “He’s an impediment.”

“For Christ’s sake. Give him time.”

“We don’t have time. Besides, I’m worried about him.”

“So you’d send him back? What would he go home to? M-0 Level housing. An M-0 Level of a life.”

“I think he’s going crazy. I think he’s going to commit suicide. And then what? What do we do about that?”

“Oh.” No. Not toast. Back to my rummaging again. Something in here should look good. Something . . . “You know how it is.”

Silence.

“Everybody thinks about killing themselves sometimes. You know what it’s like.”

I look around. He doesn’t know. Never once contemplated it.

“I’m afraid to leave him alone.”

“Why? Thinking about something is different than doing it. You just think about it, okay, Beagle? That’s all you do. After Lila died,” I say and the words slip through my lips as though they had no meaning, no history, no warmth, “walking across the room was a major event. Getting up in the morning was a big fucking deal. Everything was hard. Steps were higher. Silverware was heavier. You don’t kill yourself because it would take too much energy. You don’t kill yourself because you’d have to make a decision. All you can do is . . .” Tears in my eyes. Shit. Didn’t realize I was about to cry. I turn away quickly before he sees.

Tiredly. “Yeah, I know. You go over and over what happened.”

What a shame. He doesn’t know. Never loved. A shame. “No, Beagle. You don’t. You spend every bit of energy not thinking about it.”

A sound in the hall. Szabo shuffles into the kitchen, a terry-cloth robe flapping around him.

“How you feeling?” Beagle asks with such forced heartiness that I wince.

Szabo’s gaze wanders from the wall to the table. To the counter. To the empty plate.

“Szabo? Hey? Szabo? Want something to eat?”

Dull eyes. To the refrigerator. To the floor. To the salt shaker.

“Well, okay. That’s fine. Go ahead and sit down. I’ll fix something. A steak? Want a steak?”

Beagle walks around him. Szabo stands there, deaf and blind. I remember how huge grief used to be. How confusing. A littered monochrome world, like the subway after the blast.

“Hey, look! A New York strip steak. You like steaks. I remember that. Comes with a spinach salad and garlic bread and a baked potato.” Beagle puts the package in the oven. “This rental’s a wet dream. You should see how the cabinets are stocked. Lobster. Caviar. For Christ’s sake. Can you imagine? Caviar. Had it once. Hated it.”

Szabo pulls his bathrobe tighter. It’s too hard to look at him. I move my attention to the counter. To the brewed coffee. To the strawberry jam. I’m not hungry anymore.

The oven blats. It startles me. When I look around, Szabo’s gone.

“I’ve been thinking,” I tell Beagle. A lie. Haven’t thought about it until this second. “The drunk I told you about in the bar
—”

“Yeah. Why’d he walk away like that? Crap. Who’s going to eat all this?” He takes the package from the oven. Opens it.

I pick up the garlic bread. Suddenly I have the urge to do something. Go somewhere. It’s impossible to stand still. “Listen to me. Listen, Beagle. The drunk in the bar. Know what he said?”

“No, Dyle. I don’t fucking know what he said.”

Go somewhere. Do something. I take a bite of bread. Butter runs down my fingers. Parsley. Parmesan. Crisp on the outside, soft within. Mixture of opposites like . . .

Exasperated. “You have my complete and utter attention. What the hell did he say?”

. . . like Lila used to be. “He said Earth was a bright place.”

“He was a goddamned drunk, Dyle. Probably everything looked bright.”

I put the bread down. “But he got the patch from somewhere, didn’t he. And we know he didn’t go to Earth.” If he’d seen Earth, he’d know. He’d know. Not even a drunk could make it radiant. “We have to talk to him. Don’t you see
—”

“Oh, Christ in a handbasket.” Beagle’s eyes widen and I’m glad for him. He’s back to familiar territory, back to something he can understand. “Colonial Security has to have a command center here.”