Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent (34 page)

Kirby’s shoulders sagged. She was jostled by the other students streaming past her. But she clearly realized that there was no escape.

Sikes slid back down in his seat as Kirby said something to the two other students at her side—both girls, Sikes was glad to see—then trudged over to her father’s car.

“Da
-deee,
” Kirby said with a hugely exaggerated sigh, “why don’t you just make me wear a T-shirt that says ‘geek’ on it?”

“They still use the word ‘geek’?” Sikes asked. He smiled up at her and was surprised by how easy it was despite the long day. “At least I’m not in uniform like the last time, right?”

“Don’t remind me,” Kirby said, rolling her eyes again.

Sikes leaned across the passenger seat and opened the car door. “Get in,” he said.

Kirby’s mouth hung dramatically open. “But I’m going with my friends.”

“Not today, kid. Something’s come up.”

“Really?”

Sikes shook his head. “Remember our deal,” he said. “I’ll never lie to you.”

Kirby dropped her resistance. For all that she complained about Sikes’s job, for all that he moaned about her clothing and jewelry, the bottom line was that there was a bond of mutual respect between them. How much longer that could last Sikes didn’t know. But it was working today.

“Can I say good-bye to my friends?”

“Just be fast.”

Kirby dropped her school bag into the backseat. She paused a moment. “Nothing’s happened to Mom, has it?”

“This is nothing to do with Mom.”

“Are you okay?” Kirby began to look worried.

“I’m fine,” Sikes reassured her. “But I have to get you home.” He stopped her from asking any more questions by adding, “I’ll tell you all about it when you’re in the car.”

Kirby didn’t lose her worried expression, but she nodded, then hurried back to the steps to speak with the two girls who waited for her, clutching their own schoolbooks to their chests. Kirby was back in under a minute, buckling her seat belt and staring expectantly at Sikes.

Sikes made a U-turn and got into line for the turn onto Highland. “Are you in trouble or something, Dad?” Kirby asked

“Not really,” Sikes said. “But I’m working on this big case now, and . . . well, I’m going to have to put in some long hours.” Go to the mattresses is more like it, Sikes thought.

“How long?” Kirby asked.

“A couple of days, maybe. But they’ll be long days.”

Kirby thumped back in her seat. “So you’re, like, just dumping me at your place until Mom gets back.”

Sikes gripped the steering wheel. “I just want to make sure you’re inside and out of trouble while I’m at work tonight.”

As soon as Kirby realized that her father was telling her that she wasn’t going to be able to go out with her friends because he wanted her safely sidelined for the evening, she went over the top. The argument lasted until they reached Ventura. By then Sikes had punched the steering wheel twice, and Kirby, not to be outdone, had punched the glove compartment once, hard.

“You know what really sucks about this?” Kirby said angrily as she came to understand that there was nothing she was going to be able to say to make Sikes change his mind.

Sikes waited for her to tell him.

“You’re lying to me.” She leaned forward and turned to look at him so he couldn’t avoid her. “So much for all this father-daughter honesty crap. You’re not telling me the real reason why you’re . . . you’re locking me up. ’Cause that’s what it is, you know. You’re locking me up without a trial.” She rocked back in her seat and folded her arms. “Locking me up for something
you’ve
done. Not me. Isn’t fair. No way.”

Sikes tried to keep his mind on driving. But Kirby had a point. He was locking her up for something he had done. And he
was
lying to her. But he really had no idea how he could tell his thirteen-year-old daughter that her father might be in danger of being tagged by a government-trained assassin. At least that’s what Theo Miles had said was the worst-possible-cause scenario they faced. All of them.

Less than two hours ago they had had their council-of-war meeting: Sikes and Angie, Bryon Grazer, and, looking like he had just been fished from a reservoir, Theo Miles. The four detectives had crowded into Grazer’s office and in hushed tones had discussed the status of the Petty case. Thanks to Grazer, the status hadn’t looked good at all. “First of all,” Grazer said as he arranged four neat stacks of file folders by the computer on his otherwise empty desk, “Commander Franklin Arthur Stewart is no longer part of Naval Intelligence. He resigned his commission six months ago.”

“For real, or as a cover?” Angie asked. She leaned against a small credenza, jacket off, shoulder holster looking out of place over a pale pink cotton T-shirt.

“For real,” Grazer said. He reached into one folder and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Here’s a copy of the story that ran in the
Times
when he joined the Fuller Institute.” Grazer visibly relished the questioning looks everyone gave him.

“So what the hell is the Fuller Institute?” Theo Miles asked. He was the only one who didn’t realize that Grazer was incapable of not telling everything he knew.

“A private research institute for international affairs. Offices in Beverly Hills. It advises businesses and politicians on the current political climate in other countries and makes projections based on likely changes.” Grazer pulled what looked to be a press packet from a stack and opened it on his desk. “It’s all in this information folder. It’s actually quite prestigious. The founder, Amanda Fuller, was a foreign policy advisor to Reagan. People say she was responsible for the hard line Reagan took toward—”

“Do they do any work in astronomy?” Sikes interrupted. He couldn’t sit. He paced. Ignoring the looks Theo and Angie gave him.

Grazer ran his finger down a list from the packet. “Closest thing on their list of specialties is technology exchange,” he read. “They’re associated with research fellows at Brookings, MIT, and a bunch of international institutes.”

“So where does that leave us?” Sikes asked.

Theo rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder, and Grazer winced as the clearly audible sound of popping vertebrae echoed in the small room. “You’re right where I said you’d probably be,” Theo said. “Private research group equals industrial espionage.”

“What’s the connection to Amy Stewart?” Angie asked. “Other than the possible coincidence that her father or uncle or brother or whatever is employed by the Fuller Institute.”

Theo shook his head. Sikes was concerned by his ex-partner’s bloodshot eyes and slightly slurred speech. But then, he himself had shown up for his first day as a detective with a hangover the size of the Grand Canyon, so it wasn’t really out of place that Theo might be suffering from one now. Especially since his regular shift didn’t start till ten and he had come in this afternoon as a favor to Sikes.

“Try this,” Theo said, characteristically rubbing his face in thought. “It might even make sense of the coincidence part. The Fuller Institute is working on . . . something to do with technology exchange for one of its clients. Corporate, political, foreign, it don’t matter. Part of that technology involves a new aircraft or spacecraft . . . hell, it might even be something to do with optics—you know, what they put on spy satellites and planes.” Theo nodded to himself as he saw the others listening carefully. “So the ex-Commander Stewart has some photographs that he wants analyzed. Maybe they’re secret. So who can he trust?”

“His family,” Angie said. “Amy Stewart.”

“You got it,” Theo said. “She’s an astronomer. She knows about photographs. She can take a look at them, say whether they’re real or whatever. But then—”

“Dr. Petty gets hold of them,” Sikes said.

Theo shrugged grandly, palms up. His story was done.

“And they have to take the old guy out to get the photographs back,” Angie said. “Which means that the killer could have been someone hired either by the institute’s client or by the institute itself.”

Sikes felt relieved. “And Amy could just have been caught in the middle.”

“Remember what I said about your pants, rook,” Angie warned.

Sikes felt his cheeks flush as his ex-partner and his new partner exchanged knowing glances. Grazer just looked puzzled.

“So what do we do?” Grazer asked, looking at Angie.

“We sound out the institute,” she said. “And thanks to you, we’ve got a real good reason to. We phone up Commander Stewart and tell him Amy is missing and ask if he can use any of his contacts or resources to help us find her. Yeah, that should get us started. Should be pretty easy to tell if he’s up to anything.” She left the credenza and went over to Grazer’s desk, fanning out all his files, to his immediate displeasure. “How’d you come up with all this stuff so fast?”

Grazer compulsively straightened each folder as Angie finished with it. “Simple, really. I got Stewart’s service record through a military personnel data base.”

“You’ve got a friend in the Pentagon, right?” Sikes asked.

Grazer let his face go blank. “I have a friend’s password that let me access the system through my own computer,” he said stiffly. “But that’s all I’m going to say.”

“That I doubt,” Angie said.

Grazer sniffed loudly and pretended to ignore the insult. “Then, once I had the service record, it was easy to cross-correlate for news clippings and the material we have in the research library.”

Sikes was surprised. “We have a library? Where?”

“In the basement,” Grazer said.

“So when do we sound them out?” Sikes asked, looking at the other two detectives standing next to Grazer’s desk.

“The sooner the better,” Angie said. “We should go together.”

“Hey! How about me?” Grazer asked indignantly.

“Three of us might be a bit too much police presence,” Angie said. “How about if you go back to your computer and your network of friends and see what you can get for us on who the institute’s clients are?”

Grazer dug through his files and pulled out a sheet of computer paper. “Here’s the list of them. What else?”

Theo Miles took the sheet and began to scan it.

“Well,” Angie said, “then I guess you can come with us and, uh, cover the back door or something. Just in case we make any of the people at the institute nervous.”

Grazer’s eyes brightened. “I can certainly do that.”

Then Theo passed the client list over to Angie. “Who’s going to be making who nervous?” he asked. “Check this out. Near the middle.”

Angie looked at the sheet for a few moments, then passed it over to Sikes.

Sikes groaned. There was no escape from his worst fear. The three middle entries on the Fuller Institute’s list of clients were the United States Air Force, the Navy, and the State Department.

“What did I tell you?” Theo said. “What you want to bet it’s spy versus spy?”

Angie didn’t answer. Her sharp eyes studied Theo, assessing his condition. Sikes didn’t want to know what she was thinking. “Sikes tells me you’ve been on cases where the government might have been involved in a sanctioned homicide,” she said.

“That’s why I crawled out of my warm bed to be here this afternoon,” Theo said.

“What would you recommend we do?”

“I’d recommend you do nothing. You do not want to become involved in any kinda shit like this, no way. You want my opinion, you get yourselves over to the captain’s office, and you just sit there like your legs are useless, and you stay there until he’s called the FBI.”

“Why the FBI?” Angie asked.

“Every time FBI guys get involved in something they shouldn’t get involved in, they know it inside of an hour. Washington keeps ’em on a real short leash. All the government-involved cases I stumbled into got transferred over to the FBI and then got conveniently lost. And that’s what you want to do right now. Be real sure you haven’t got anything at all to do with this one.”

“Why not?” Grazer asked. “We are the police, you know.”

Theo leaned over Grazer’s desk. “Because, junior, if you start messin’ around with government hit men, the next thing you know they’re going to come sniffin’ around for
you.
Even if you are the goddamned police.”

Everyone turned to look at Angie. She picked up Grazer’s phone. “I’ll call the captain,” she said as she punched in an extension number. “We’ll set up a meeting.”

The captain was going to be back, at the station house by five. Theo said he was going back home to bed, and he’d appreciate it mightily if no one put his name on any of the reports. Grazer, looking even paler than usual, took his rolled-up shoulder holster and gun from a desk drawer and said he was going down to the target range. Sikes looked at his watch. There was no way of knowing what would happen after they met with the captain. “I’m going to get my daughter at school,” he said. “Think I should bring her back here?”

Theo patted Sikes on the back. “Why, that’s almost paranoid of you, kid. But Kirby’ll be okay.” He smiled sardonically. “Tell her the G-men will only be gunnin’ for her dad this time.”

Theo was laughing as he left Grazer’s office.

No one else was.

“I know it’s not fair,” Sikes told Kirby as he inched along Ventura toward Studio City. “But you’ve got to cut me some slack on this one.” Kirby sat in glacial silence. “I’ve got to go back to work. If I hadn’t picked you up now, then I wouldn’t have been there when you got home. Hell, I wouldn’t even know
when
you got home.”

“Daaad, I can look after myself.”

Sikes tried to think of everything his own parents might have said to him in a similar situation so he could be sure not to say the same things to his daughter. But it wasn’t working.

“I worry about you, Kirby. I want to make sure you’re going to be safe.”

He felt Kirby’s eyes digging into him. “Dad? Axe you sure you’re not in some kind of trouble?”

“No, not at all,” Sikes said.

“No lying, remember?”

Sikes gritted his teeth. “Okay. A little bit of trouble. I’m in a little bit of trouble.” He made the turn off Ventura, heading toward his apartment building.

“Dangerous
trouble?”

Sikes hated this conversation. Kirby was just a kid. She shouldn’t be worried about anything like this. “Aw, look,” he said, “I’ve got my new partner in on this, Theo’s helping out, we’re all going to meet with the captain—”