Out of the Black (9 page)

The first thing Ping saw was the visitor's lengthening shadow sliding across the floor, then a small form was silhouetted against the hall's light.

"Whoooaannt say nooooowhooh..." she saw the guns, stopped singing, stopped cold.

Ping registered female, registered her holstered gun- registered her badge. Left hand on the doorknob, right holding keys, face moving from affable to hard- she was absolutely beautiful.

Her skin was the color of cocoa. She wore no discernible makeup. Her patrol hat mostly hid her kinky close-cropped hair. She was a perfect contrast to Ahmed. Where his appeal came from style, hers seemed elemental... elegant. As he took her in for the first time, Ping was almost certain he could hear music, slow and passionate, hovering at the edges of his mind.

"Police- don't move!" Ping commanded, already feeling foolish.

"Yeah police! Who're you?"

"You know her?" Ping said without taking his eyes off of the woman.

Ahmed seemed to realize that Ping was not immediately going to shoot either of them. He looked both relieved and very surprised.

"Man,
nice
draw!" Ahmed said with the rash laughter of a man pardoned seconds before his certain execution. He glanced over his shoulder at the new arrival, "I see you've been listening to that Curve I gave you, babe. Man, you should have seen it! One second we're talking, then Pow!" He thrust his arms out, hands forming mock guns, his face a parody of gravity. "Seriously, it was liwatching Roy work- only in slow motion."

Ping was now feeling completely foolish about his little Malloy/Rodriguez tribute to freakout. At least he hadn't made the terror squeak. This was yet another thing he was hoping to keep out of his report.

"Sorry." His guns came down from combat position to ready position. He took a step back toward the couches. "Mr. Ahmed here was just telling me I was a dead man when... slow motion?" Ping said, feeling stung.

"Jeez baby, you're not usually so scary," the woman in the doorway said. "You've been practicing." She said, wagging her finger at Ahmed. She closed the door and pocketed her keys.

"Slow motion?" Ping muttered, holstering his guns, "really?"

"Now why are you telling the nice detective that he's a dead man, honey... hey, why is the nice detective here?"

Ahmed faltered. The bubble of his levity burst- Ping could almost hear it. Silence settled uncomfortably between the three of them.

"What?" She demanded at last, looking at Ping.

He was completely at a loss for how to continue. This investigation kept twisting on him. Most cases involved scratching for any bit of relevant information, then building a thin tapestry of the probability of guilt for the prosecutors to work with. This case was a continuing explosion of surprises and strangeness. At least it was interesting, he thought with a mental shrug. Mostly his job was tedious.

He sat on the coffee table facing Ahmed and waved her to the couch. "Sit, please."

"I'd rather stand." She said, squaring her shoulders.

"Suit yourself, but I have a feeling this is going to take a while." Her presence here was beyond surprising. It would probably cause procedural problems, potentially involving internal affairs. Now that was a mess he didn't even want to think about. He ran his fingers through his hair.

"I don't think this can take a while." Ahmed said, remembering his former urgency. "You've got to understand, I...we can't stay here."

"You want me to take you in? This isn't usually how these things play out- it's usually my idea."

"No. I need you to trust me- at least a little more, before we really talk. Please, we don't have any time now."

"Why not? You have another girl coming?"

"Yeah, maybe I could see this fancy draw of yours." the woman said, pacing behind the couch.

Ahmed closed his eyes, took a breath. "Tell me. How did it happen?"

The woman stopped pacing.

Now it was Ping with his hand on the doorknob; Ahmed and company were outside, waiting for him to open for them. His gut said that he needed their info as badly as they needed his. He took a breath and went with his gut. "Someone knocked out the Big Brother at Houston and Miller at around 1:15 this morning. They were making sure no traffic infraction video caught them in the background as they waited or worked."

The woman approached Ahmed from behind. She put a hand on his shoulder. He put his hand over hers. Ping continued.

"Probably before two, Lutine's car was rounding the corner when a sniper's shot came through the driver's widow. He died instantly."

"The driver? You mean Lutine's
dead
?" She interrupted.

The way she said "dead" made it sound like this was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard. It also struck him as sounding somehow wrong. It seemed almost as if she was shocked that a sniper could kill him.

"No, the driver was a man named Peter Sieberg." Ping said. She looked puzzled.

Ahmed looked up at her, "Honey... I think it was Roy."

Some kind of tremor passed through her as a disproportionately large shock registered. "No." she said. She moved to her left, stumbling absently around the couch until she finally collapsed onto it next to Ahmed.

"So where's Ivo?" She asked both of them. Ahmed covered his eyes with his hand and clamped his mouth shut.

"In the back seat." Ping met her eyes. She understood.

Grief seemed to wash over her, pooling in her eyes. Her face softened with a deep, deadening sadness. But as he watched, her face tightened again with realization. Fear sharpened her eyes, raised gooseflesh on her arms. She looked around the room as if searching for lurking attackers. Her eyes settled on Ping, full of obvious distrust. Her right hand strayed casually toward the holster on her hip.

Ping resisted the impulse to move his hands closer to his own weapons. He didn't want to provoke another confrontation. These people had information he needed. That information was leading them directly into an intense and immediate fear for their lives. He needed to understand.

He continued, "When I say I have absolutely no idea what happened next, I hope you can accept that. What I do know is that the car came to a stop against a concrete wall beneath an overpass near the intersection. There something took the top of the car off- we found most of it, along with what might sum up to one or two bodies, fused to the bottom of the bridge overhead. When we got there, the area around the car was strewn with what might turn out to be between ten and thirteen more corpses. We found Lutine in the back seat. I'm sorry."

"They're dead." She seemed to be trying the words on, not liking how they fit.

"How did he die?" It was Ahmed, eyes still concealed by his hand. The voice was rough with emotion, his muscles stretched taught with internal pressure. "I've got to know."

Ping shook his head, "The less we dwell on that, the happier we'll all be."

The woman was crying now, tears but no sobs, hand still near her holster.

Ahmed removed the hand from his watery eyes and met Ping's gaze. Ping had expected tears and sorrow. He was mistaken. What he found in Ahmed's eyes was fury.

"Shot, slashed, burned... eaten?" He held Ping's eyes.

Eaten? Boy, he hoped that last part was sarcasm- probably not. "Slashed. Shot."

"No. This was hours ago!" The woman said, realization fueling new panic. "Why aren't they here yet? We've got to go now...right now." She said, expediency reigning in the fear that still colored her voice.

"If you feel it's too dangerous here, I can take you into protective custody." Ping said.

Neither liked this idea, but it was the woman who was first to speak. "Detective, believe me, there's nothing you've got that could protect us. There's nothing grunts like us can do against these people."

"Which people?"

"The kind of people who could kill Roy and Ivo." Alex said.

"This isn't a game show." Ping said, "Stop giving me answers that require more questions. I can't help you if you won't trust me."

"You don't get it!" The woman said, "You can't help us. No one can. We've got to get out of here!"

"You are going to have to do better than that. Talk to me!"

Her gun left her holster quicker than the eye could follow. The draw was textbook perfect, no telegraphing, almost silent, directly on target with little wasted motion. Ping made a mental note to compliment her on it if they both survived the next few moments.

There was only one person in the room who had a better draw. Ping's left hand intercepted her gun so softly she didn't at first register that she'd lost control of the weapon. His left hand drew her pistol across her body and off the fighting line between them while his gun left his holster. His right hand extended out over his left arm and his gun stopped, hovering before her right eye. The small 2mm hole in the barrel hung cavern-large in her vision.

"That was a pretty good draw." He said conversationally.

"You too." The woman said with only slight pause to find her voice.

"Shooting a police officer is a serious offense." Ping continued as if discussing the weather.

"Yeah, so I'd advise you not to do it." She came back right away. Her hard eyes were still dusted with tears, but they didn't flinch away from his, despite the intervening and presumably distracting gun before one eye. She was tough, which made her even more distractingly beautiful, if that were possible.

She glanced aside to Ahmed quickly, "So much for your Amp."

"Told you he had a killer draw." Ahmed said, pressing himself farther back into the couch.

Ping favored them with an amused smile, "Why'd you try to shoot me?"

"I wasn't going to shoot you... maybe just tie you up."

"I am greatly comforted."

"You don't get it!" she said, defiant in her desperation, "They should have already been here! No way are they going to take out Ivo and Roy and leave Alex alive."

"Disgruntled history students?" Ping droned out the irony.

"Listen! If we don't get out of here right now, we'll end up like Ivo."

"Then you'd better start talking. Let's start with the dreaded 'they'. Who would 'they' be?"

"No, detective," Alex said with an air of finality, "not here, not now. If three SWAT teams were here with full air support, they wouldn't be able to help us."

"I'm listening."

"No, you're not." The woman said, "We've got to go! Now!"

"This is getting us nowhere." Ahmed said, "I'll have to show him."

"Show me what?" Ping arched an eyebrow and shifted his gaze to Ahmed.

Ahmed gestured to the computer desk.

"If you let go of the gun, he can show me whatever he wants." Ping said.

The woman nodded and released her pistol, which was already under Ping's hand. He slid it into his jacket pocket. He moved his pistol back to the ready position, parallel with the ground near his ribs, not pointing it directly at either of them. He backed up a step "OK, slowly now."

Ahmed stood and went to the computer desk. Ping gestured for the woman to follow where he could keep an eye on her. At the desk, Ahmed placed his palm on the lock plate and the desktop bloomed to life with multiple 3D windows of something that looked like visualizations of abstract math or particle physics.

"History papers?"

"Research Ivo had me working on." He gave a tight smile over his shoulder as he closed the visualizations. "I really don' know what it is yet, but that's a longer story than we have time for." He opened another application and began some simple configuration. Ping jumped as beat-heavy trance music filled the air and colors began to pass over the display in syncopation with the rhythm.

"You are
not
about to play me your favorite song or something..." Ping said, surprised for the hundredth time since midnight.

That got an amused chuckle. "This will only take a few seconds, but I'm going to need to concentrate. Please try to whisper if you need to talk, and absolutely no flash photography is permitted." He cracked his knuckles and hunched toward the display.

The music was jarring at first, but then became hypnotic... Ping rather liked it. It was deeply layered and filled with complimentary beat structures. He holstered his weapon and looked at the woman inquisitively. She raised her hands and shook her head with a "don't ask me" look on her face.

"With all the gunplay, I didn't catch your name." He whispered.

"Ralonde Jackson, but everyone calls me Rae. I'd like to say 'nice to meetcha', but it ain't."

Ping nodded. "I know what you mean."

Ahmed's head bobbed with the music, eyes closed now, colors and shadows washed across him. Rae's eyes moved nervously from door to windows. Windows? They were on the fourteenth floor... what was she looking for out there? Some of the surrounding buildings were high enough to allow snipers to target the windows, but the apartment's privacy glass was on full opaque so they were invisible from outside.

"Just when you think things couldn't possibly get weirder..." Ping whispered, gesturing to Ahmed's microboogie. He got one soft "ha!" in response.

Still grooving with the music, Ahmed turned around. "Hey, aren't those your keys?" He pointed to the bowl of antique keys on the coffee table.

"Oh!" Ping said, moving to the coffee table. He picked up the set of keys on the top... sure enough! He didn't remember setting them down... or getting them out of his pocket for that matter. It was going to be a long day. He pocketed the old metal keys and rejoined the others at the computer desk.

"So where's this amazing evidence?"

Rae's face was unreadable. Ahmed looked nervous but determined. "We can't show you yet, detective Bannon. Time is too short and it isn't safe here... or really anywhere."

"So what was with the music then?"

"We'll have to show you later- and you've got that thing to do." He turned to Rae. "Grab some of my clothes... enough for both of us. We won't be able to stop at your place. I've got to download some stuff and get some spare equipment."

"I'll need to get out of the work clothes too." She moved back toward the bedroom.