No Dogs in Philly (14 page)

There was a tremor, a shower of bricks and the
dog looked at her. She got the odd sense that this was not the
memory dog, that the dog couldn’t exist in a memory like this, that
it could only exist in the Now and this was her dog, acting in the
Now within her memory. The dummies, the fake hips she’d tried so
hard to forget shuffled to their feet and ran down the corridor.
She was almost certain they had died now, because that’s what she
believed and so had tried to forget them. Another
tremor.

“
How curious,” Dr. Alloche
said.

It was curious, what would happen? What would
the memory show without the dog making her invisible? And then she
heard it, the slithering vinyl sound, the whimpering of men and
women and then the creature, the ball of human flesh and the long
centipede body of twisted metal legs scrabbling into the floor and
walls and ceiling and then rearing up onto the platform. She heard
a gasp and saw the doctor step back. The look on his face was of
sheer terror, like he’d forgotten he was in a memory. And then she
felt it too, her own terror, reaching up and playing the fiddle
with her nerves, making the hair on her skin poke up. It’s not
real; it’s a memory. It can’t hurt me.

The head drew closer and closer, the whimpering
as real as it had been, the eyes all closed, and the hands and
fingers with the naked bone fluttering out, probing like the
antennae on a cockroach. And then she saw, amidst the bodies, the
nameless unknown dead, four faces that she recognized, vaguely,
from a chance meeting—a young girl, an androgynous woman, an old
man with a beard and no teeth, and his friend, their clothing
hanging in scraps, arms out fluttering with the rest, eyes closed,
moaning, she could hear their voices! And then the eyes all shot
open at once and fixated on her, and the mouths twisted open,
whispering in their dead-leaf voices:
“Come…come…come…come…come…”

Footsteps, and the doctor walked past her,
jerking like a puppet tugged by strings, reaching out his arms to
embrace his loved ones, and then his finger touched theirs and the
arms reached and clamped around him, the mouths now screeching in
glee, baring their teeth, dragging him in and ripping at his flesh,
licking his blood and devouring him. A scream, his own scream, loud
and cutting through the sounds of tearing flesh, loud, overwhelming
everything, her vision blurring and swimming back into focus, the
light of the operating room glaring in her eyes, the sweet, sterile
smell, and still the scream and claws on her skin, the doctor
grabbing at her, and blood pouring from his mouth and ears and nose
and the two black holes where his eyes had been.

Chapter 11

Saru watched the rec again, watched the woman
open the door, saw the figure standing in the doorway, the figure
without a face, just a swirling black where his head should have
been. There were viz jammers available, bitchy things that didn’t
work half the time and drained calories like a motherfucker—that’s
why she didn’t bother—but they always left a mark. The
sophisticated ones could give you a whole new face, even someone
else’s face so you could stroll into a bank and shoot the place up
as your boss or your neighbor. The dollar store variety just turned
you into a bunch of pixels or a blur. None of them did this;
nothing she knew turned your face into a tiny black hole. Even with
the recording paused it seemed to move. Maybe it was a custom
job.

“
Do you remember what he looked
like?” she asked the woman now sitting across from her on the tatty
(like everything else in this rat-hole apartment) sofa just visible
in the recording. Her name was Terry and she should have bought a
lottery ticket because she was the luckiest woman in the world
right now. Her ex was a jealous psycho twat, hence the cameras, the
reinforced door, and the tiny six-shooter she was massaging on her
lap. He’d decided to come pay her a visit the same time as this
mysterious gentleman and had forced a confrontation. He was in the
hospital with a throat zipped open like a suitcase, but he’d
managed to shoot a few holes into the stranger before he bolted.
McCully was shifting around the doorway collecting
samples.

“
Yeah,” Terry said. “And no. No,
It’s hard to say. He was good looking, that I remember, had skin
like, well…” she flushed. “He was very attractive.”

“
Did he say anything to
you?”

“
No. Well yeah, actually. I don’t
think he really said it. But he opened the door and he was kind of
talking to me.”

“
Did he say what he
wanted?”

“
No he didn’t say
anything.”

You can’t have it both ways lady, make up your
mind. “You mean you can’t remember.”

“
No, I remember,” Terry said
crossly. “Well, not
everything
. I mean, I heard the
doorbell, and I thought it was Henry because we had plans, you
know, to go see the Black Jaws tonight—they’re in town—but he was
early. So I went and I looked through the camera first, because
Josh right, my ex, but it wasn’t Josh or Henry, it was this man.
And when I looked at him through the screen I couldn’t see his
face—you can see it on the screen, all blacked out—but I felt
like…well, I opened the door and it seemed to take a long time, you
know? Like hours to open the door, and it felt like I was looking
at him for hours but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.
And then Josh showed up and started yelling and pushed the guy and
then the next thing I know the bastard was shooting—coulda hit me,
I was right there—shooting with one hand and grabbing his neck with
the other and there was all this blood…”

This woman was no help. A handsome man shows up
at her door and she lets him in and gets rescued by her shitty
past. Because it was a rescue. There was no doubt, none—every
instinct Saru had earned from every hard knock and fuckup on the
job told her this was the guy, or one of the guys. That alone was
valuable. They didn’t have infinite resources; they were splitting
up, working alone. They could be hurt and chased away—of course she
knew that, anything could die with the right incentive, but it was
refreshing to get a reminder. This whole case was spiraling into
the hopeless, like these clowns were a step ahead of her in every
way, shapeless supernatural beings with freaky powers. But this
proved what she’d known all along—they were men, assholes, and they
were just as vulnerable to a trigger-happy ex as the next guy.
Bullets, the great indiscriminate equalizer.

“
You’re gonna catch this guy,
right?” Terry said.

“
Huh? Oh, no. I’m not a
cop.”

“
What? But—”

“
No, I’m private justice.” Saru
stood up. The whole place smelled like a litter box and she wanted
to be scarce.

“
But when I called…”

“
Yeah, I know. It’s confusing. You
called the cops and they called me.” Of course they’d called her.
Any dispatch officer who wanted a bit of nice in his life made a
side business selling cases to the PIs. Saru had put out a standing
order of $1,000 for any calls from names on that fabulous list
Jojran had discovered. Terry Hatcher, domestic disturbance, 4:47
p.m., 1137 Christian Street.

“
You see your case falls into what
we call ‘the gap’ in the justice system. Don’t feel too special;
it’s a pretty large gap. Most people fall into ‘the gap.’ You don’t
make enough to afford private justice, me, and you’re not dealing
with people who have anything worth seizing—drugs, money, illegal
hardware, guns—so the cops don’t really care. You can make a stink
about it or take out a justice loan, but here’s a free piece of
advice—forget about it.”

“
But what if he comes
back?”

“
Doubtful. Here, watch the
recording.” She unpaused it and the scene played out more or less
as Terry had described it—Josh, her ex, a big man, balding,
hustling his lard up the stairs, pushing the tall figure and not
moving him an inch. Terry screaming and trying to smack at Josh
with a baseball bat, swinging around the figure. The gun appearing
in Josh’s meaty hand, the knife—was it a knife?—a blur from the
figure and then the white flares of gunshots overloading the camera
sensors and Josh tumbling down the stairs clutching his throat. For
two seconds the stranger and Terry stood alone on the top of the
stoop. He could have turned her into a sieve in those two seconds
but he didn’t. He just stood there, staring at her maybe? Talking
about the weather? Then he left, walking almost casually down the
steps and out of view, leaving a wonderful clue-filled trail of
blood, Hallelujah.

“
See, right there, he could have
killed you but he didn’t. I think you’re fine.”

“
But he came to my house; he knows
where I live!” Terry was freaking out now, and in the whiniest way
possible. Saru couldn’t stand whiners.

“
Yes, but he’s not after you. He
wants to kill someone else but he’s not sure who it is so he’s just
killing everyone that looks like it could be her. Here, take this.”
She poked Terry in the forehead and through the contact plates in
her finger she transferred a standard victim kit into Terry’s
address-book program—not even protected. Come on Terry; smarten
up.

“
That has the names and numbers
for your friendly neighborhood cops, as well as information on some
good mercenary services I recommend, and a nifty pamphlet on
keeping your home safe.”

Saru’s head buzzed. McCully had finished taking
his samples. She patted Terry on the head and left before she had
the chance to voice any more fears. Out in the open air she took a
breath and exhaled. God that place stank. McCully studied the vial
of blood he’d collected in the gray light of day. She wasn’t an
expert but it seemed oddly black and thick.

“
That was cold,” McCully said,
pocketing the vial. “You could reassure the poor woman.”

“
I did,” Saru said, nonchalant.
What more did he expect? The Gaespora were paying her ten million
bucks to find a girl, not hunt down psychopaths. What did Terry
have to offer? Microwave lasagna? Sixty bucks out of her monthly
assistance check? A carton of smokes? Get real.

“
Do you really think she’s safe in
there? Shouldn’t she move?”

“
You saw the tape. The man could
have killed her but he didn’t. If he didn’t kill her then, why
would he come back and kill her later?” QED.

“
Do you want my
opinion?”

“
No.” She started walking to the
Caddy. McCully shuffled after her, breaking into a half-skip jog to
keep up.

“
I was there, there for all six
bodies. I looked them over. That took time to do what they did.
These guys don’t kill casually.”

“
What about the ex? Cut him up
without a thought.”

“
He wasn’t a target; he was just
in the way. I’m saying that woman, back there—they came for her and
they’re going to try again.”

“
Who’s the detective
here?”

“
Neither of us right
now.”

He jumped in front of her and blocked her path,
glaring through his nutty wrinkles. How old was he? Had he never
heard of moisturizer?

“
I’m not going to analyze this
sample until—”

Saru punched him in the gut, hard, and threw
him to the ground. He landed with an
oomph
and then she
crouched over him with a knee in his chest that she could drop to
crush his sternum. She rifled through his coat until she found the
vial and then pocketed it. He stared up at her wild-eyed. His fear
felt good.

“
Don’t ever tell me how to do my
job,” she hissed, and then got up and walked away.

She hated herself a little, back in the Caddy,
stuck still in rush-hour traffic, with nowhere to go except her own
head. That was a mistake—why couldn’t she control herself? McCully
was her lead on this case, had been her go-to vulture for three
years now, and finding a quality vulture wasn’t a lark—the
profession was cluttered with creeps and freaks, people who liked
being around the dead, got off on horror, could soak up the misery
and eat it with relish. She’d never wondered what got McCully into
the business, never thought to ask him, but looking back on today
it seemed likely he was that rare man, a sympathetic man—not to the
dead, he’d tossed his share of bodies to the elzi—but to the
living. He believed in his supposed mission, really thought he was
helping to solve crimes, that each body he found meant one less
body he’d have to find in the future. Fuck.

She slammed on the horn, beat it like a bongo,
and told the Caddy to go on without her. She hopped out and then
wove her way through the frozen river of vehicles, clamored over a
few hoods, and shot every lewd sign and expletive she knew until
she made it to the sidewalk. The first bar she came to was a
basement dive with puke on the stairs—perfect. Three shots and a
lager later she started to feel better. She’d find McCully,
apologize, blame it on the period she couldn’t get any more, or a
hangover, or maybe a bad dose of sky. A few crisp Reagans would
smooth it all over and he’d analyze the sample for her and get a
match. Jojran would work his magic and then she’d have a perp.
Beautiful.

It wasn’t her fault, really, that she was
twitchy, but she couldn’t tell him the real reason, tell him about
the flickering, the glitches, the lost time and the hallucinations
of her dead colleague and alien worlds. She hadn’t been back to
that place, thank God, but she could still hear that song, whenever
she wasn’t expecting it, that droning, noteless, toneless melody
that seemed to be woven into her consciousness. How did it go
again…?