Читать книгу A Small Degree of Hope - Lyndi Alexander - Страница 6

Chapter 1

The officer guarding the half-lit, reeking alley behind Restaurant Row directed Agent Kylie Sanderson into the shadows behind him. “Your partner’s already down there. And, it’s two of them, ma’am.”

Kylie, wearing designer alpaskin boots, picked her way through the mud and discarded piles of food. Her mother, who found these things so important, must have called in every favor she was owed just to get her hands on a pair. She’d hate her daughter wearing them in stinking garbage. The thought made Kylie smile.

Her smile faded as she approached the heavy black dumpster. Behind it, her partner puked the contents of his stomach. Based on the history of this case, though, his indiscretion was likely not entirely due to his rookie status.

It was bad, then. But they always were.

Steeling herself, she climbed up on the plastic fruit crate in front of the dumpster and looked inside. The odor rising from the mélange of trash, rotted meat and spoiled dairy products sickened her, too, but not as much as the two women’s bodies on top did. Or at least what used to be women.

Holding one hand over her mouth and nose, Kylie shone her flashlight on the pile. The bodies were similar to the six others who’d turned up in the last few months in different areas of Muraco. Each dead woman was naked, and horribly mutated. Their flesh and organs had transformed by varying degree into green, scaly reptiles. Others had lost arms or legs to the change, their bones elongated, their hands narrow with nails turned into hard claws. This was the first one whose face was gone.

Blank yellow eyes stared, her nose and mouth distorted into a pointy chunk of mottled green hide. Fangs protruded from under the desiccated lips.

Yeah, this one was bad.

Kylie stepped off the box, never so glad she’d skipped lunch for a drink with an old friend.

She composed herself while the local officers held off clamoring media. Word had passed quickly that the planet’s Scientific and Investigative Research Taskforce elite team had again been called in from their headquarters in the Jescoan subdivision, on the other side of the world. Everyone knew something big was up. The “lizard women” were news.

She straightened her heavy black jacket then fluffed her hair. One of three women on the SIRT, she knew she was judged on her looks as well as her skills. She’d studied six long years for her criminal/paranormal degree, craving the opportunity to investigate the oddest and most inexplicable cases puzzling the universe. Her father had forbidden her to do it, but her fierce pride had driven her to defy him. She got that pride directly from him; he should have expected no less. She even used it as an asset in the unit. Whenever she was spokesperson for a case, she remained conscious of her status as a Sanderson.

The Colonel wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Pax, hon, you all right back there?”

Paxton Loring, a new officer and most junior on the SIRT squad, muttered amid more vomiting.

“Guess you’ll skip the mushu next time, huh?”

More muttering, with several obscenities added in.

Poor kid. She dug in her bag for some hand wipes for him. She’d certainly had her own embarrassments in her early months with the squad. When one dealt with aliens, perverts and psychotics, anything could happen, and usually did. Better to laugh than to cry.

Giving Pax time to pull himself together, she took out a pad and quickly scribbled some notes she could refer to when speaking to the press. Nothing too specific, keep the details private. Enough to feed the hyena pack, but she’d save the rest for the SIRT team to pore over until they solved this repulsive mystery.

Still no clue who might be doing this.

She bit her lip to chase away the nausea crawling up her throat. Not knowing who, or really why, was the worst part of her job. The planetary subdivision of Muraco, population 150,000, had its share of sickos, no question. One DNA experiment might belong to a nutso or a whacker. Two, maybe. Eight seemed purposeful.

Why in the hells would someone want women to look like lizards?

Some ninety-five percent of Andan’s population was human. Most likely, a lizard the size of a man, or as smart as one, would have to come from off-world. Off-worlders moved freely throughout their planetary system. What brought one here with nefarious intentions? Kylie’s team had to figure out the ultimate purpose of these twisted corpses.

Bureau chief Jaco Rand expected answers yesterday.

Media buzz echoed along the cracked bricks of the buildings beside her, photographers’ bright lights flashing from the far end in staccato rhythms. She growled at the utter uselessness of their bloodlust. As the evidence collection workers in their olive drab uniforms approached down the alley, she stepped aside. Show time.

“Pax, get a move on. We’ve got to go. Crime scene team’s here.”

“Coming, coming.” Paxton stepped out, wiping his tie with a yellow handkerchief. His normally ruddy face was pale and his wide-set blue eyes bloodshot. His thin frame shuddered as he made a wide detour around the dumpster, pointedly avoiding it, headed back to their vehicle. “Sprechan’s balls, never again. Enough lizards for me. Not even the crocosaurs at the zoo.”

“Let’s hope not. Maybe these are the last ones.”

As the sun slipped behind a cloud, a shadow of doubt and foreboding slid over her. Despite her hopes and prayers, something whispered in her ear that those victims tossed away like meal scraps in a cruel metal box wouldn’t be the last.

Not by a long shot.

* * * *

The next morning, after the lab techs had analyzed the evidence, Kylie as the squad deputy supervisor, prepared to give the daily briefing. Wishing she could prop her eyes open with toothpicks, she settled for popping two amp pills, and yawned as the fifteen members of the team gathered.

Her team met in the largest conference room of their digs, which were the best available in town. Boxes of evidence piled onto the table in the center of the room, allowing each team member scant space for their computers. She sat on the windowsill, watching the street six stories down as the team grabbed their morning sustenance. The agents had set a huge desk in one corner of the room as a temporary buffet table, home to a shifting pile of crackers, cookies, snacks and several pots of stimcoff.

After the sleepless night she’d spent haunted by the woman’s hideous face, the buzz of male voices, men laughing and joking about the usual crap—sports, spouses or subordinates—got on her nerves. She activated the computer projector. The first picture on the screen a full-on picture of the two bodies in the dumpster. Without the smell to accompany it, the view was nearly tolerable. All the same, she didn’t look. Been there, done that. No one wanted the T-shirt.

The blood drained from their faces as the reality of the scene settled over them.

“Good. I’ve got your attention now.” She clicked through to the next picture, a close-up of the second woman’s arm, covered with reptilian green skin. The detail of the photos only increased their horror value.

“These are the most revealing photos we’ve received to date, with significant information on the alterations. Notice the texture of the skin isn’t scaly, like a snake, but something more akin to the old Terran Gila monster. The techs describe the nubs of bright color as ‘smooth and dry, almost bead-like.’”

She moved on to the next photo. “As with the other deceased we’ve found, these two were in varying states of change. According to the lab, the one with the altered face is farthest along in the transformation. Autopsy proves her internal organs have also been affected, her heart mutated to a three-chambered organ, her diaphragm atrophied and reproductive organs altered, in their estimation, from the human capacity for live births to that of an egg-laying species.”

Stocky veteran officer Sloan Vincent looked up from his third cup of stimcoff and frowned. “Now, hold on. You’re saying she was becoming a reptile?”

“So they’ve determined. These are not skin grafts or other limited conversions. Whoever’s doing this apparently means to make the vic over into a full reptile.”

“What in the name of all the hells for?” Akim Qilamen adjusted his stylish tie, fidgeting in his chair. “What good would a woman be if she laid eggs, hmm?”

“The question before us,” Kylie persisted, “is why? What purpose does the transformation serve? If we can determine why, maybe we can head off the perp before he strikes again.”

She sat on the edge of the table at the front of the room, shoving a box aside with her hip before she clicked through the next photos, a rundown of all their vics. “Over the last three months, eight victims. Different areas of the subdivision. Different mutations. The coroner hasn’t determined whether the mutation process is the cause of death. No outward signs of other trauma, however, so that theory’s the most likely. They’re still working on how the mutation is taking place, so—”

“So,” came a clipped male voice from behind the screen, “we have a terrified subdivision and nothing to give them. As you can imagine, this is not popular with the government types. Not that I care, particularly.”

Kylie’s boss, Jaco Rand, came out to join her. A scar graced his left cheek from eye to ear. Balding, wisps of wiry red hair clinging to his hairline like moss on the side of a deteriorating building, Jaco was short, squat and bristled with attitude. He’d grown up on the Rim, on one of the outer planets where life was wilder and less regulated. He believed in order, but not in authority.

He continued, “On the other hand, we have budget requirements and it would be delightful to come up with a big score. Especially if we want to purchase the new mobile crime lab we’ve been talking about. Nothing pays like success. So I want this done, and done right.”

He turned to Kylie. “You’ve got kits for each of them?”

Torn between anger because he’d minimized her and trashed her briefing, and relief that the display of gruesome pictures had concluded, Kylie gestured to the box behind her on the table. “I was getting there.”

Jaco studied her with beady blue eyes then broke into a smile. “You’re cute when you’re pissed off.”

Kylie’s face flushed and she turned away.

To the men, he said, “Study this information and hit the streets. Ask the local cops for their usual snitches then the unusual ones. Someone knows something about this. And I want it to be us. Dismissed.”

The men dutifully filed up to retrieve the dossiers.

Still burning at Jaco’s cavalier takeover, Kylie killed the power on the projector and threw on her shiny black leather jacket. Her sister Nissa had bought it for Kylie’s twenty-fifth birthday. It cost more than Kylie made in three months. The label wasn’t why she wore it, but the warmth.

Jaco hung around until everyone else left. Kylie packed the rest of the photos into an evidence box. She cleared her throat into the silence. “That was dirty.”

He came closer, staying out of arm’s reach, and shoved his thick hands into his pants pockets. “Yeah. It probably was. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Right.” She hadn’t expected him to take responsibility, even be almost apologetic. It wasn’t his usual way. It threw her off stride.

His foot tapped. “So, I’m sorry.”

She glanced at him, actually a look down, since he was a finger’s length shorter than she was. His lips pressed together as he stared at her, eyebrows raised and shoulders hunched up. His ‘poor me’ look. Did he really think that was the best way to get what he wanted?

“You sure are sorry,” she said.

He just smirked. “Dr. Astrid wants you down in the morgue. Time to put your dazzling exobiology skills to work. Hot date with some cold bodies.”

“You’re an incredible jerk, you know?” She left the box for him to stash. As she headed to the science section, she slammed the door, wishing his private parts had been in the way. That would have taught him to stomp on her bandwagon.