Splicer (19 page)

The blond, who looked Russian or Swedish, had his hand tucked under his suit. Otter felt naked without a gun and the silent treatment was pissing him off.

"One or all of you assholes want to tell me where we're headed? After all, this ride’s on my nickel."

"You'll be reimbursed, Detective Otter. Just relax and enjoy the scenery." This came from the black man. His voice was free of any accent that Otter could detect.

"Do I have to remind you that this is kidnapping which carries a minimum penalty of 25 years to a maximum of 40?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Otter, but this is our cab you stole. You're free to leave at any time."

"Fine. Driver - stop this fucking cab NOW!"

The driver braked carefully until the cab came to a stop in the middle of the street. Horns began honking behind them.

"But if you want to learn all about X-Tech and its connection with
GeneFab
, you might want to join us for a quiet lunch." The black man stared straight ahead.

"Lunch eh? You paying?" The black man nodded slowly.

"Driver? What's the most expensive restaurant within 15 minutes?"

The skinny Puerto Rican rubbed his chin. His eyes were jumping in his head.

The blond offered a suggestion. "Le Coco Vin. It’s close and we know the owner."

"Let's go then,” said Otter. "I hope you guys have reservations."

Le Coco Vin was wide, thickly carpeted, a tribute to brass, crystal and lace.  Despite its size Otter was surprised to see not a single customers in evidence. He sat uncomfortably at a large table near the rear; the two goons with their backs to the wall beside him looking out of place as well -like sumo wrestlers in a china shop.

"Are we waiting for someone or are you guys just shy?" he asked.

"Hey,
Captain Canuck
. Be polite on your first date," snarled Swede. That was what the black man called him. Swede. He had the callused knuckles of a street brawler and his nose had been broken at least twice. The two agents barely spoke. The black one had made one call on a new Blackberry just out of hearing distance. The way they were looking at him made Otter feel like the fatted calf.
Fine, they want to play the silent treatment, I can play too.
A waiter brought coffees and they waited.

At 12:00 o'clock Otter felt a draft ripple the tablecloths. An older man in green Dockers and a beige Lands End sweater joined them. He was tall, thin, deeply tanned, longish silver hair. He could have been anywhere between fifty-five to seventy-five with eyes that told a story of years in the field. But his actions were quick and deliberate. He shook Otter's hand firmly. A shiver ran up the cop's arm.

"Sorry for the delay, Mr. Otter. I rushed here as soon as I heard."

"Heard what?"

"Sir," said the Swede. "We'll be in the corner by the window." They left with their coffees. The older man smiled. "New York is a city of surprises."

"No shit."

"As for Toronto, several years ago I lost a hundred dollar bet to a man I knew who believed in the Blue Jays when no one else did. Are you a baseball fan, Mr. Otter?"  Otter picked up a butter knife from the table and fingered it casually.

"I need three things and if I don't get them in two minutes, I'm out of here." Otter tapped the knife handle on the tabletop with each demand. "I need your name, who you people are, and lunch. We've been in this restaurant for an hour and I'm starving."

The older man waved one of his well-dressed deputies over. "Get us a menu, Ben.  And get something for yourself." Ben wandered into the kitchen. "You can call me Mike."

"Why should I call you Mike if that's not your name?"

"Indulge me." Otter shrugged. "As for your job here today, we're traders."

"Traders?"

"I want to trade information with you."

"I'm not in the info business, Mike. But while we're at it, tell me, if this is such a great restaurant how come you and I and the two heavies over there are the only ones having lunch?"

Mike looked around casually. "We're closed for repairs."

"Whoever you guys are, you've got a budget." Otter shook his big head. "Whatever happened to times of restraint?"

"This is not a time for restraint, Mr. Otter.  It's a time for vigilance."

"With you fellows, it's always a time for vigilance." The waiter came, looked nervously from Otter to the older man and back again. Otter ordered his lunch. New York strip rare, two baked potatoes and a side of garlic toast. Mike declined. Otter asked.  "So you want to trade. You go first - age before beauty."

"I would like to help you solve your murder case. We have considerable resources, which we can place at your disposal."

"And assuming I even need your help, what do you want?"

"You can help make this world a safer place to live in."

"I thought that was my job, Mike. Y'know? Everyday - a little safer." He sipped New York tap water from a crystal glass and made a face. "Just there, you know, you started to sound a little nutty. Like you were Batman, and I was Robin."

"You're out of your territory here, Detective. We could plant you in a Bronx dustbin and no one would be the wiser. And instead of a free lunch you'd get a ruined suit and a bitch of a headache. You'll get nowhere on XTech without me, unless you want to spend months plowing through a mountain of red tape. You've got that much time?"

"You run XTech?"

"XTech is owned by a man who believes, as I do, in the good fight."

Otter smiled. "Mr. Ford. The patriot."

"This goes beyond borders."

"I can see that." Otter's lunch came and he wasted no time attacking it. Mike seemed surprised by the cop's appetite. "So you and Mr. Ford want to buy
GeneFab
so you can make hundreds of millions of dollars to send to orphans in struggling new Russian states? A blow against Communism?"

"Do you know what the
Splicer
is?" asked Mike.

Otter almost rolled his eyes but thought better of it. "I've heard about it."

"Dostoevsky, a Russian writer once said ‘
Without God, anything is possible
’. That pretty much describes the
Splicer
.
Anything
is possible with it. If we had one here, right now, within hours we could literally create a disease. Just type something on the screen and a few hours later hold in our hand the mass extinction of ... of what?  Blacks?  Women?  Children?  People with blue eyes? Anyone with an IQ under 85? And anyone could buy it. Al-Qaeda. Hammas. Organized Crime. Chinese fundamentalists.  Anyone with the money could suddenly be a player."

"And you think that owning
GeneFab
will stop that?"

"No one else is even close. Not even a parsec away.
GeneFab
stumbled onto it, they didn't invent it. A genius, a kid with an IQ so high Stanford-Binet couldn't chart it, developed the idea. I helped Ludd
borrow
it. You let us finish buying
GeneFab
and I will obliterate the technology from the face of the earth."

"What about this kid?"

"He died years ago."

"You better not be telling me you iced Ludd?"

Mike shook his head.  "Ludd was perfect for us. He wasn't a scientist; he was just a cowboy with a big moneymaking idea. He could be bought – at first. We were this close to a deal when it all went wrong. We're not murderers, Mr. Otter. We need that investigation by your government to go away. They’ve told us that closure on Ludd’s murder will go a long way towards making that happen. And the suspect’s wife. We can fight this through diplomatic channels but it will take time. Probably too much time. Once the
Splicer
is out on the street, it's too late."

"And what's in it for me?" asked Otter.

"You need hard evidence to convict the murderer. I'll deliver that – and more."

"You don't look like a
dick
to me?" scoffed Otter, his mouth full of potato and butter sauce.

"I have made a life of collecting information. What I give you will be everything you need to make your trip here worthwhile. And protect the taxpayers investment."

"Just remember that Blue Jays wager you made, Mike. Sometimes your team will let you down." Otter stood, finished. "I take it, you know where I'm staying?" Mike nodded gravely. Otter turned and walked out of the restaurant and stepped into the waiting cab.

Fools Dancing Before God
was the name of the print hanging on the wall, an ugly gothic scene of tiny naked humans posturing before a large red skinned monster. Kozak couldn't imagine anyone wanting to hang such a gruesome image in their living room; they might as well display full-color glossies of autopsy evidence.

Near the center of the room was the corpse. Kozak paced around the human heap lying in a dark pool on the trackless carpet. Shay Redfield, in death, was faceless. Her straight blond hair draped over her twisted head and neck like a shroud. One naked arm lay across the floor, her other limbs were gathered up under and against her partially clothed body. One of the inspectors had called it a 'fetal position'.
What an absurd idea?
 
It was a shitty way to die.
What was baby-like about it?
  He turned away scanning the room, feeling mortal and stupid.

She had let someone into her apartment after midnight. That would usually indicate a friend or a relative. Single women with double lock chains on their doors don't let strangers in. She was wearing nightclothes too.
Sleep wear
his wife would call it.  She must have known the killer.

Greg and himself, a week earlier, would have immediately gone to a judge and arrested Redfield on a second murder charge. No questions asked. As automatic as nausea after chemotherapy. But now, the public defender's office was stalling. No one heard a noise - a scream or a cry - even a hushed greeting. These high rental units had thick insulated sound dampening walls. Too bad. A neighbor with
nose problems
could have saved her life. Then again, she was likely dead the minute someone pulled the cable around her unlined throat. But this wasn't a clean kill. From what Kozak gathered, garroting usually meant one deep constricting cut into the victim's air passage. Hold for two minutes. Death follows quickly but it doesn't matter in a clinical sense - the brain was dead after about 90 seconds without oxygen anyway. In Ludd's case there were two cut lines. Shay Redfield there were at least four. This wasn't an assassination - it was an information-gathering mission that ended in death.

The condition of the rooms seemed to confirm this for Kozak. The apartment had been methodically searched. Had the killer found what he was looking for? What was he searching for that was so valuable that murder fit the equation? Money?

One of the other officers had turned up only a single clue. Just after twelve, one of the neighbors, an older woman, received a call from downstairs, from the front foyer.  She hadn't answered out of fear. He made a note of this in his notebook.

Before he got the call from the chief of detectives around 10:00 that morning, he was preparing to tackle the subject of Otter’s impromptu lunch in New York. Otter was convinced his dinner partners were some flavor of Fed. He was meeting them again in a few hours and the instructions from Braintree were clear.
Find out who these people were.
Immediately after Otter's call, he contacted the prosecuting attorney in the Ludd case and filled him in on the Shay Redfield murder. Dimbrowsky thought the murder was relevant to his case.
Of course you idiot
thought Kozak,
but why?

Bereft of another good idea, he cruised down to the scene of the murder. He gathered what he could, biting back the
conclusion-jump
his hormones were pressuring him to make. He wanted to get this right but for all the wrong reasons. His instincts told him someone was making him the chump.

When Kozak turned, anxious to leave the scene, a familiar face caught his attention near the front entrance. A handsome man, about 5'7", wearing a pricey leather original and beige slacks. He stood forlornly out of the way of a half-dozen crime experts plying their gruesome trade. Kozak's stomach churned.

"David Quinn," he said.  "You the lawyer for the victim?"  There was unveiled anger in his voice.

Quinn grimaced, his eyes hard focused on the living room floor. He nodded slowly.

"Not a pretty sight,” added the cop, almost as a warning.

"Any idea? Any leads?" asked the attorney.

"You knew this woman?"

"She was a friend," Quinn swallowed hard.

"How about the ex? Was he a friend too?”

"You're not still sticking to that story are you?" snapped Quinn, his eyes hard again. Kozak shrugged, then turned to leave.

"Koz! Before you go." The policeman crossed his arms and turned impatiently.

"Shay - Redfield's wife - he told me she saw someone last week. Someone you should know about."

"Why wait until now to tell me?"

"Christ, don't play officer Goodwrench with me now. This was personal."

Kozak turned again. "So it's personal. Leave me out of it then." He walked out of Shay's apartment into the hallway. Quinn followed.

"Why would Malcolm Grieves be in town?" shouted Quinn to Kozak’s back.

"Who did you say?" asked the cop, who swung around, eyes narrowed to slits.

"Grieves. She ran into him - two Wednesday's ago. He was dirty, transient-looking, longhair, beard, smelled.  Rusty's old partner!"

Something was ticking behind Kozak’s yellowed forehead. "I know who he is," he answered flatly. "But what's your interest in this case?"

"I'm just trying to help. Grieves is somewhere he shouldn't be. He's violating his parole. He hates Redfield. Why wouldn't he go after his wife?"

Kozak, his shoulders slouched, shirt collar frayed from too many washings, clicking over the facts in his mind. He had talked to Grieves' wife early last week but only because Grieves used to be an associate of the suspect. That interview was mostly procedure. They had checked with Grieves' parole officer in British Columbia. On the day of Ludd's death he had checked in. Kozak left it at that. Then the call from McEwan's legal aid with the phone number to track. They checked out some old deteriorated warehouse that hadn't been used for a decade. Kozak thought it was a waste of time. If Grieves was here, and he was involved, he had worked very hard to cover his tracks. What the hell was going on here? They searched the apartment thinking the botched garroting of the victim could just be a diversion. Someone like Grieves might want to make it look like corporate espionage gone wrong. And she probably knew Grieves, which accounted for the fact that she voluntarily let the murderer in her apartment.

"Where did she see him? asked Kozak.

"Just south of Bond. Near the exchange building and towards the docks."

Near the warehouse district.
"And he looked like a vagrant?"

"Like he'd been sleeping in the park."

"Could that have been a disguise? Faked?"

"She recognized him. He was definitely hiding. I don't think he was wearing a costume."

"We have nothing on this Grieves. We have a sighting. You say he's broken his parole? I'll check on it."

"Meanwhile if I can be of any help ..."

"I doubt it," grunted the detective already halfway to the elevator.

Now
Quinn
was involved. The same man who had defended that lawyer who charged Koz years ago for false arrest, had dug up the Mooring connection, had turned his life into a media nightmare. And what the hell was he doing here looking like a grieving widower?
Screw Quinn
he thought.
Screw him to hell.
But he knew, even as he spit out this invective, that he would use the data offered. They were crumbs, but Kozak was beginning to sense that there might be a path in the forest. He'd looked over the even ground a thousand times seeing nothing. But then just for a brief second he thought he detected the slightest impression, the faintest footprint in the grass. But it wasn't Grieves that he saw. 
Now let's take the next step
he thought, pushing the down button.