Sucker Punch (2 page)

Vi pulled the door open and recoiled. “Holy
crapeau
on who knows what?” No question curiosity was her biggest problem. She put a hand over her nose and blinked rapidly. “Can't un-see that.” Or un-smell it.

When she got close enough, Joe murmured, “Lurch did attempt to warn you.”

Vi hoped she wouldn't need to use one of those things. Might be better to wet her pants. At least then she'd know whose pee she was sitting in. She had no idea the past was that primitive.

There was a roar and brief air movement as several emergency transports lifted off, making room for others to land. Whole setup kinda reminded her of a beehive. She'd seen vids of them in school. Lots of buzzing. Lots of movement. No clear sense of why. She glanced around again. No hope of producing any “honey” here. She repressed a shudder.

There was a muted, but different roar behind her. She looked back, saw one of the big tugs pulling in another tent platform. At this rate most of NON would be living in tents. Curious, they paused to watch technicians connect the platform and then the surface of the platform seemed to shudder. With a ripple tent after tent gradually rose toward the midday sun. It was kinda of impressive. She opened her mouth to ask if Joe thought they were air conditioned when a woman emerged from a tent on an already populated platform. No, no conditioning there. The white surfaces of the tents quivered in the wind caused by the tug, a reminder that they were, in the end, just tents. Affixed to a very hard platform.

Joe said, “Curious.”

“Do Garradians have emergency procedures?” Vi asked, not because she was that curious but because it gave her a good reason to look at him. Instead of tents and latrines—as fascinating as those were.

“We try not to have them.” He looked at her and added, “Emergencies.”

“That's…good.” She blinked a couple of times, not sure she believed him. Being stuck in NON post-hurricane on account of losing an evil something or other kinda looked like an emergency to her. She gestured toward the sea of occupied tents. “I'm guessing our vic is in there somewhere. Let's get done here before…” She jerked her chin toward the latrines and made a face.

“Indeed,” Joe said.

The caller had given their location by platform number, then in tent rows. Sort of. Ten in, then five to the right. Of course, that location depended on where the caller had begun their calculations. She could tell Joe was doing some figuring—or Lurch was—and followed him into the gridded pathway between two tent lines. It felt a bit
deja vu
of their last adventure with a body, only without the wind, rain, crypts and tombstones. And this one had a lot more people watching. But still, heading into a weird place looking for a body. Okay, that wasn't
deja vu
. It was SOP for a homicide detective. But this was something new in weird, even by her usual and necessary, very low standards.

Vi didn't think she'd ever seen tents quite like these. She touched one, gave Joe an awed look. “Fabric?” Everything old was, well, it was still old, but suddenly necessary in a new way.

Sweaty, dispirited denizens watched them move past. Even the kids looked subdued, though everyone stared at Joe and stirred restively. It wasn't that aliens were so unfamiliar, but until Joe, Vi hadn't seen one up close and personal. Just on news vids and such. So chances are none of them had either—at least none with purple skin. Who knew if other-skinned aliens walked among them?

A few looked away when they saw her looking, making her wonder if she'd questioned or arrested them sometime. She was too tired to attempt any mental matching. It was hard enough to put one foot in front of the other, with the heavy, soaking heat giving some serious pushback, like it thought it was gravity or something. Guess air could get uppity when it was, well, up. The ones who did look at her, their eyes bothered her. Took her the length of the row to realize why. They looked like those vids of refugees. This was NON, not some third world, well, world. Things like this happened on other planets, backwards ones. This wasn't supposed to happen here. Despite overwhelming evidence of the incompetence of government, people had believed the city would come through the storm almost unscathed. Even if government let them down there was always their voodoo queen, Marie Laveau, protecting them from the grave. Maybe she'd rolled over or something.

At least the looting had been minimal. Early looters had been unable to find their way home and gave themselves up. One of them, so she'd heard, asked to be shot. Wasn't sure she believed that. Unless he'd seen one of those latrine things.

She stopped. “It doesn't smell right.”

Joe gave her a puzzled look.

“It doesn't smell like New Orleans. It's wrong….” New Orleans smelled like a lot of things, bad things, yes, but good things, too. Spicy and flowery and…New Orleans. Bad enough to get wrenched from their homes, but this—she shook her head. For some reason it made the unfamiliar feel more so. And wrong. “No wonder everyone looks depressed.”

They wanted to go home. She saw it in their eyes. It was probably in hers, too. Home. Even if she found it, would it be home? Or something that looked like home, only different?
The more things changed…
change wasn't that popular in the city that care forgot. Only it forgot to forget the city this time. Karma—with the help of Maw Maw Nature—had given them a total smack-down.

“Are you unwell, Vi?”

She looked up, meeting the concern in his eyes with a wry smile. “I'm okay. Thanks.” She glanced around. “This is all a bit…messed up. Hard to wrap my brain around.”

His hands twitched, probably with a desire to help her, but they'd decided touching was a bad idea at the moment. She didn't know about him, but she needed every ounce of energy to stay on her feet. When—if she kissed him again, would that make them a threesome? Bad enough she had the hots for a slightly purple alien. But with another alien in his brain? Did that make her kinky or something? Because she didn't mind as much as she felt like she should. She looked up to find Joe looking at her. Had she said that out loud?

“Shall we proceed?”

Didn't seem to have, though Joe could be splendidly oblivious. “Yeah, let's find our vic and get out of here.” She let him go first. At least studying his backside—which was as great as his front side—distracted her from thinking about Lurch.

In the end, it was easy to spot the tent with their suspicious death. A small crowd had gathered, one somewhat contained by a couple of uniforms. It was comforting in a way. At least that hadn't changed, though it was missing the Lucky Dog cart. A pity that. A Lucky Dog would have erased some of her homesickness for what had been. Put off a better smell. The crowd parted at their approach, with some encouragement from the two uniforms. Vi grabbed their CSI tech off the bag, then activated the bag's controls. She set the parameters as narrow as it would let her, since the scene had probably already been compromised. The corpse was still in the shadow of the tent, which was a mercy that wouldn't last forever, though the smell had definitely breached containment. Even in the brave new future, corpses smelled bad.

The bag “taped” the scene first, a red grid taking shape to seal off the area, but the tent was small enough that parts of the grid protruded from the top and sides of the tent. It flashed red, releasing a swarm of collection probes. Mostly they buzzed futilely around the space. It was a tent. On a platform. That had probably been picked clean prior to the call to report the body.

Vi arched a brow at the uniforms, caught the shorter one studying her as if she were interesting. She gave Vi a tentative smile.

Since she was too tired to answer questions, Vi asked one, “Got an ID yet?”

The gal cop looked at her companion.

He frowned down at his tech. “Seems he's a squatter, a dirt sider—”

Vi felt a chill and
deja vu
. Didn't mind the chill. It was stinking hot, but could have done without the
deja vu
. Her
deja
had not liked the
vu
lately.

“—name of Jimbo.”

Vi knew it was coming, but was still a struggle not to do the sharp inhale. Couldn't do anything about hands curling into tight fists at her sides. She hoped the probes took their time. She was in no hurry to see how he'd died—the grid turned gold, indicating they could go in. Oh great, if the ‘it' Joe was hunting had killed again, this was something else she wouldn't be able to un-see.

I
t wasn't that bad
. Not the thought Vi expected to have about a dead body. Certainly not the thought she expected to have about Jimbo. But after her recent schooling from WTF, she'd had to revise her definition of “the worst” up by quite a bit. Or was that down? She was never sure about that.

She had been sure ‘it' had got him just like it got the others. Had expected to see that look of horror from being torched from the inside out. Only Jimbo looked surprised, not cooked. He looked a bit simmered, but that was probably from the humidity.

“Maybe his heart conked out,” she murmured, keeping her voice low. Usually they just bagged and tagged, but the circumstances weren't usual. They needed to do a bit more assessing so the body could get in line at the right morgue. For some weird reason, the morgues hadn't shifted position that much. It was kinda wrong, while being helpful.

She worked her way into where she could kneel next to the body and started the CSI scan. This tech also released tiny probes, like a hundred pinpricks they descended on the body. Data flashed on the screen. Joe's hands flexed once, but he didn't breach this field either. Those little dudes stung like a son of a gun. Curiosity was a detective's friend, except when it wasn't.

“He appears surprised,” Joe finally said, waiting for her all clear signal so he could ease the body up just enough to examine the underside. After a long look, he lowered the body again, giving a slight, very slight shake of the head.

Her device beeped as it delivered the first scan results. “Look at his hands,” she directed, trying to make sense of what it was spitting out. She paused the auto-scroll and flipped back, a frown gathering between her brows. Maybe the CSI techs did earn their little bucks.

“Vi.” Joe's soft tone pulled her gaze back to where he had one of the vic's hands turned palm up.

Bingo. Well, half of one. As exit sites went, it wasn't its best work. Or its worst. But at least they knew ‘it' had left the building, er, body.

The question was, who was the new host of the awful whatever? Vi looked back, scanning the crowd visible through the tent opening. According to the tech, Jimbo had died approximately twelve to fifteen hours ago. That was odd, too. It wasn't like the tech to be that approximate. Usually it was, like,
death occurred between 0125 and 0128. Will attempt to refine with further data
. She tapped the screen, but it didn't offer even the hope of a more precise time of death. It didn't shrug and go, “whatever,” so it was weird she felt like it did. There were those in the department who felt the tech trended toward AI-ness. Sometimes she was one of them.

“Detective Baker?” The female cop crouched by the opening, angled to see past Joe, though she did flick him a look that was on the curious side. That the look lacked appreciation was both odd and a relief—since said detective was younger and prettier than Vi.

They hadn't introduced themselves upon arrival—she'd been too tired—but her name might be visible on uniform. And if it wasn't, well, the odds were always high that at least one Baker would be at any given scene at any given time. Vi considered saying what, but the output of energy felt too high. Couldn't even manage an arched brow. Settled for an inquiring look and that was almost a bridge too far.

“One of the witnesses says she might have seen something.”

Vi was mildly impressed. Most witnesses wouldn't even admit to seeing nothing. Before Joe could offer to talk to the witness—who probably wouldn't talk to him—Vi handed him the tech and crawled out of the tent. Straightened herself in stages. Painful stages. Neither of the uniforms offered to help her up. She might be glad about that because she might have taken the help. Probably against regs to get helped in front of the general public. Regs were full of stupid stuff like that.

“Are you all right?”

The question and the concern appeared genuine, so Vi twitched the sides of her lips. “I'm fine, Officer—” She peered at her lapel, but it wouldn't quite come into focus.

“Benson, ma'am.”

“Benson.” Vi repeated it in hopes of slotting it into her short-term memory until the end of this encounter. “Thanks,” she tacked on, a bit belatedly, but Benson smiled so the time lag might be less belated than it felt. She studied Benson with some interest, mostly because it required less energy than meeting the witness. She was young, pretty. Apparently not related. Looked the type to interest a lot of her cousins. Dark hair, dark eyes, suspiciously well-pressed uniform. Eyes held a bit of hero worship that made Vi's heart sink.

She leaned in and said softly, “I hear you were dirt side during the storm.”

Vi gave a sort of shrug. “It wasn't as fun as it sounds.”

Benson laughed, even though it wasn't meant to be funny, and if anything the hero worship increased. “What was it like?”

“Wet.” Vi thought a minute. “Windy. Hope to never do it again.” To head off more questions, she asked one of her own, “What was it like up here?”

Benson looked startled, then chuckled. “Wet. Windy. Hope to never do it again.”

It was Vi's turn to chuckle, though she didn't go overboard with it.

Benson turned slightly, gazing toward the city. “New Orleans New really is new now, isn't it?”

“That it is.” The horizon blurred slightly. She rubbed her face. She gave a shake. “So where's this witness who might have seen something?”