Ex-Kop (35 page)

I was looking at Yuri, running it through my head one more time, getting a feel for how to play it. I was hardly in a position to take the moral high ground with anybody, but I wasn't about to let that stop me from doing what I had to do. “How could you go along with all this, Yuri?”

“I had no choice.”

“Don't lie to me, Yuri. You made Adela's fake confession. You made the fake execution vids they use at the Zoo. And you filmed all the real executions so those sick bastards would have little keepsakes.”

“It wasn't my fault,” he whined. “They made me do it.”

“They didn't make you do anything. You went along because you wanted to. Tell me why.”

He stared at the floor.

“Tell me, Yuri. You'll feel better.”

“You said we could help each other?”

“I think we can. But not until I know why you did it. You have to convince me you're worth saving.”

“I just wanted to make movies,” he whimpered.

“That's it?”

He looked me in the eyes again, searching for understanding, searching for forgiveness. “I never wanted to hurt anybody. It started with the pornography. I know people frown on it, but nobody was being forced into doing anything they didn't want to do. It was all consensual.”

I met his eyes, trying to keep my anger bottled up. “How did you get from there to filming executions?”

His eyes began to water. “It was the way Horst described it. It didn't sound so wrong when he explained it. The first one was just a beheading. Dying that way is supposed to be painless. It happens so fast. That guy was going to get gassed anyway, so what did it matter? And I got to make the vid they showed at the Zoo. I wanted to see if I could make them believe it was real using nothing but holos. And I did it,” he said proudly. “They thought it was real. Nobody knew the difference. After that, the executions got worse, a lot worse, but it was too late, don't you see? I was already a part of it.”

“You just wanted to make movies,” I said with far more understanding in my voice than I actually felt.

“Yes,” he whined. “I just wanted to express my art.”

“You couldn't have made movies on your own?”

He shook his head. He counted the reasons on his fingers. “No equipment. No funding. No distribution outlets. There aren't any drama schools on this hellhole planet, which means no acting talent. You have to pay a fortune in bribes for filming permits.”

I put up my hand, telling him to stop before he started counting on his other hand. This was something I understood. This planet held everybody below their potential. The harder you tried to succeed, the harder Lagarto slapped you down.

He looked at me, all weepy. “What's going to happen to me, Captain?”

I tried to make myself believe my lies. I was a captain, third-generation
KOP. I stole from Maggie's anticorruption personality, incorporating it into my speech. “I'm going to clean up KOP, Yuri. My father was a cop and so was my grandfather. It hurts me to see KOP go to hell, you understand me?”

Eager to please, he said that he did.

“The Koba Office of Police was once a symbol of pride. That's the way it was in my grandfather's day, but now it's turned rotten. Everybody knows it. Cops are out for their own personal gain. They have no respect for the institution, you get me? Ian Davies was rotten, and I killed him.”

Yuri's eyelid twitched.

“Hoshi was rotten, too. He's dead, Yuri. I killed him, too. They disgraced their badges. They put everybody's reputation on the line when they put those badges on. They were a disgrace. Conspiring with offworlders against their own kind. I can't think of a higher form of treason.”

“You're absolutely right. They were bad seeds,” Yuri said, already in full suck-up mode.

This was going to be easier than I thought. “I know you're just a pawn in all this, Yuri. I'm going to offer you a deal.”

He was leaning forward now, hanging on my every word.

“I'm going to restore KOP back to its glory days, and you're going to help me. First you're going to bring Adela's body down here and put her in one of these cabins. Then you're going to drag Ian and Hoshi's bodies down here and set them in front of that door. When you're done with that, I'm going to take your statement.”

“What should I say?” he wanted to know.

“You're the only survivor, the only witness. You're going to explain how the offworlders killed the girl, and they forced you to film it or they would've killed you, too.”

“Yep, no problem,” he said. “I can do that.”

“You're going to mention the names of four guards at the
Zoo, the ones who smuggled Adela out. You have to mention them. They must be punished.”

“Got it,” he said.

“Then you're going to say that Ian and Hoshi tried to save Adela. The offworlders shot them, Yuri, but not before Ian managed to throw the gene eaters in. You're going to explain how Ian and Hoshi held that door shut. They were wounded and dying, but all they could think about was doing their duty. They didn't try to run away and save themselves. Instead they stayed and made sure the offworlders couldn't get away. They're going to become heroes for the next generation of cops to aspire to. You understand me?”

“Nobody's going to believe that part,” he said. “The forensics won't match.”

“They'll believe you, Yuri. The coroner is in my pocket. He's going to write reports that match your story. Okay?”

He nodded. “Okay. I can do it.”

“That's not all. After I take your statement, you're going to call Ian's crew. You're going to tell them you want to meet. You're going to get them to implicate themselves, and I'm going to film it. They need to be purged out of KOP, Yuri. Every one of them. I'll use it to make them resign. If they contradict the official story in any way, I'll go to the DA.”

“I understand.”

“Because if you do all I ask, I'll give you your freedom. But if you don't, I'll see to it that you'll pay for your crimes. The Zoo is an unpleasant place, Yuri.”

He nodded.

“Do you think you can do everything I ask?”

“Yes.” He was smiling, relieved.

I had him. “Good,” I said.

T
HE
rain was coming down again, this time as glass needles that stung when they struck my back. I was on the roof of an old warehouse, hunched over a viewscreen, trying to keep it dry. It was receiving a vid stream from the camera Yuri placed inside the warehouse. On screen was Yuri, who was waiting inside for Ian's crew to arrive. He paced the floor, passing in front of broken-out windows through which the rain came slanting through and pelted the crumbled concrete floor.

Yuri had done everything I'd told him to. He'd sweated over each of the dead bodies, carrying them a few hurried steps at a time before inevitably losing his grip and dropping them on the decking with sickening thuds. He would swat at the flies dogfighting around his face and then go back to wrestling the bodies along until he managed to get Ian and Hoshi in position, their backs leaning up against the sealed hatchway. He'd brought up Adela's body last, dragging her by one of the body bag's handles.

We'd rehearsed his statement three times before going live. I didn't appear in the recording in any way. When I wanted to say something to Yuri, I'd stop the recording first. I coached him along and, using his statement, I'd created a movie of my own, starring Ian as the hero and Hoshi as his sidekick, with Adela Juarez playing the role of the death-row damsel in distress, and the dastardly offworlders starring as the mustachioed villains.

I'd beamed the completed statement to Maggie and Abdul,
who were already writing evidence reports to match. There'd be no mention of the gap between Ian and Hoshi's times of death or the fact that Ian had burned vegetation embedded in his wounds. The reports wouldn't mention that the bodies had been moved. They'd died trying to hold that hatchway closed. Just like Yuri said.

Maggie's lieutenant would keep it hush-hush. He'd keep everybody off that boat except for Maggie and Abdul. Nobody would see the repeated bloody splotches on the deck created by Yuri's corpse-carrying fumbles. Nobody would ask about the scorch marks from a brief firefight near the gangway. My fingerprints would go completely unnoticed. Lieutenant Rusedski would play along. It was an easy choice for him. He could either take the credit for his detectives solving the barge murders and dying heroically in the process, or he could admit he had two dirty detectives working on his staff, one of whom he'd already publicly supported for the squad leader post.

Maggie would arrest the four zookeepers. She'd shave off time in exchange for them fingering one of the dead offworlders as the ringleader of the operation. The whole thing would be cinched up. Nobody would look any closer. There'd be no reason to. Yuri wasn't the only one who knew how to make a pile of bullshit look real.

I checked the uplink one more time. Yuri had set up all the equipment. I didn't want to leave room for somebody to call the vid a fake, especially anybody who knew about Yuri's holo work. Yuri had told me he could arrange for the feed to be beamed up to the Orbital so it could be digitally signed by a security authority. I grilled him about it, asking all kinds of questions he patiently answered. “No, the digital signature can't be faked.” “No, you couldn't feed them false footage for them to sign. We were using one of their own cams.” “No, you can't tamper with their
cams. You can't even open up the case. Exposure to oxygen melts half the components.”

Yuri had no idea how completely I'd set him up. He was a damn fool to believe I'd ever set him free. I'd sentenced him to death. He just didn't know it yet.

There was a knock at the warehouse door. Yuri walked over to the cockeyed door and scraped it open. The crew came through, all five of them. Wu looked like the new de facto leader of the group. He took head-of-the-pack position, face to face with Yuri while Froelich, Lumbela, Kripsen, and Deluski fanned out behind.

Yuri greeted them. “Am I g-glad to see you,” he said nervously.

Wu's face was unreadable.

“I'm sorry I called you,” Yuri said. “I didn't know what else to do. Ian's dead. So is Hoshi. Those two cops you've been looking for raided the barge, and they killed them. I barely g-got away.”

“We know.”

Yuri's face screwed up. This wasn't going the way he thought. As far as he knew, the plan was that he would break the news to them that Ian was dead. They'd be shocked and panicked. The five of them would start arguing about what to do, and he'd just sit by and let them work it out. He'd let them bring up the barge murders. He'd listen while they talked about Horst and his offworld customers. He'd play along with them until I had enough evidence.

And, if he felt like he was in danger at any time, all he had to do was say, “I'm thirsty.” Say that, and I'd be there in a flash, ready to rescue him. So he thought.

Yuri had no idea that I'd already had Maggie call the barge scene in. He didn't know that the five cops he was facing had
already been down to the barge. He didn't know that once they got there, Lieutenant Rusedski called them out, telling them he wanted to see them all in his office tomorrow morning. Yuri didn't know that Maggie put out an APB on him, stating he was a witness in a cop killing.

And here he was, trying to chat them up, unsuspecting of the fact that they'd already been searching for him when he called. He had no idea how desperate they were to save themselves. Ian was already dead, and so was Hoshi. And Maggie was closing in on them. Why else would Rusedski call them into a meeting? Just them and nobody else. They were under suspicion, and they knew it. But they hadn't been arrested yet. There was still time to cover their tracks. They had to find Yuri before Maggie did. If she found him first, he'd talk. She'd have all she needed to send them to the Zoo for life. …

Wu pulled his piece.

Yuri choked on the words, “I'm thirsty. I'm thirsty!”

Wu bunched up his eyebrows, thinking that was a strange thing for Yuri to say at a time like this, and then he sizzled off the top of Yuri's head.

I checked the feed again and verified that it was still working.

Lumbela, Kripsen, and Deluski picked up the body and carried it to the door. So Wu was definitely the new leader, and those three were the grunts. That made sense. Wu and Froehlich were both homicide, while the others were just beat cops. I watched them finish the cleanup and move off, the camera rolling all the while.

Amateurs.

The grin on my face took a long time to evaporate in the rainy weather.

Then I called Liz. I still had to deal with Horst.