Greg Rucka - Critical Space

Bowles stopped typing, his eyebrows rising slightly. Gracey set his empty cup down on the tray and began twirling his pen, poking the inside of his cheek with his tongue.

"You couldn't stand a cotton ball on that crap," he told me. "Even if you got someone to sit still and listen to this, no one would buy it. It's impossible to prove."

"It's a theory," I said. "I don't have to prove it."

"You came here to give us that piece-of-crap theory?"

"Not really." I looked at Bowles. "You got all that?"

"I'm fine."

"Good, because I really want you to get the next part."

Gracey fell back against the cushions on the couch, spreading his arms with a shrug.

"Three years and two months ago," I said, "the Undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development authorized four million dollars deposited to a fund to study how better to assist children suffering from autism and their families who live in public housing in the United States. Over the following six months that four million was distributed to A M Consulting in Bethesda, Maryland, and Corsair Industries in Providence, Rhode Island. Four months after the final payment was made, both companies returned a forty-eight-page joint report to HUD."

"Sounds about right," Gracey said.

"In reality, and without the Undersecretary's knowledge, the four million was diverted to a Mr. Simon Freidich…" and here I spelled out the name "…as payment for the murder-for-hire of Alexander Akhmetov, then Kazhaki Minister of Energy. Akhmetov – a hard-line Muslim with ties to groups in Afghanistan and Libya – opposed the construction of an on pipeline that, in part, would allow light sweet crude to be sold to Israel at below-market cost. His murder ensured the delivery of that oil, and as such made good on promises made by the then Secretary of State, in essence assuring the success of the U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, at least for the next year and a half.

"Simon Freidich is, of course, known to everyone present as Oxford."

Beside me, Scott adjusted his glasses. Gracey stopped playing with his pen.

I added, "If you'd like, I can tell you all about the CIA-financed murder of General Augustus Albertus Usuf Kiwane Ndanga in Uganda, as well."

"You have proof?" Gracey asked.

"I don't need it. You heard Agent Fowler. Enough people know that if they want to find it, they will."

Gracey made a snorting sound, as if halfheartedly clearing his nostrils, then moved forward to the edge of the couch, glancing at Bowles. Bowles closed the top of his computer and then removed a small and sleek cellular phone from inside his coat. He pressed a button and almost immediately got a connection.

"Mr. Harris?" Bowles said. "Yes, your order has arrived."

He hung up, replaced the phone in his coat, and took the laptop off the desk, tucking it beneath his arm as he rose. None of his previous jitters were evident. He looked at me, he looked at Scott, and then he looked at Gracey. Gracey sighed and pulled his coat from the back of a chair, slipping it on, adjusting the lapels. Bowles headed to the door.

"For the record, we have no flicking idea what you're talking about," Gracey said.

"Of course you don't," Scott said.

Gracey came closer to me. He looked pointedly at Scott.

"He stays," I said.

Gracey sighed. "Off the record?"

"Sure."

"We've pulled the plug. Whatever he does now, he does alone."

"I figured."

"He wants his money back."

"Then he can talk to me about it."

"He says you were with her for four months. Says that she trained you."

"You sure you can trust him?"

"You took out his eye."

"I was going for his brain."

"We're done with this. It was a stupid flicking idea in the first place. Shit like this happens every ten, fifteen years, it always ends up the same. Nothing changes. You understand that."

"Sure."

Gracey hesitated, then grinned. "You're either a lunatic or a zealot."

"Why can't I be both?"

He moved to join Bowles at the door. "It'll be a while, but we'll be in touch."

After they'd gone, Scott moved to the desk and picked up the file Bowles had left behind, stowing it inside his briefcase. "Did he just try to recruit you?"

"I already have a job," I reminded him.

"Sounds to me like you maybe have another one," he said, and then his cell phone rang and took the last word for the time being. He answered it, saying his name, then fell silent. After a couple of seconds he made an affirmative noise, then another, then glanced at me. I took the opportunity to move to the window and close the drapes; Gracey or Bowles had left them open, and there was a good line of sight from across the street, on the Seventh Avenue side, and I didn't like the idea of anyone trying a long shot on us.

Although, if Gracey was telling the truth, it wouldn't be Oxford; without two eyes, he'd be useless as a sniper.

Scott finished the call with a "thanks, detective," and that brought my attention to him fully. He put his phone away.

"What?" I asked.

"That was a detective at the Seventeenth with a very good memory. When you vanished, I had a notice put out to your precinct that I wanted to be contacted if anything happened at your apartment. Trying to look out for Erika, you know."

"My apartment's been tossed," I said. It made sense; Oxford was looking for his money, he'd gone through my home. I found it vaguely insulting that he didn't give me more credit.

Scott shook his head. "Do you know a Margaret Horne?"

"Midge? She lives in the apartment below mine."

"She's dead. Someone broke into her place and stabbed her to death, did a number on the body with a knife. They can't tell if there was a sexual assault involved."

A bubble of panic was inflating in my chest, pressing against my lungs, making it hard to breathe.

"I'm going to head over there, talk to the detectives, see if I can find out what happened," Scott said. "Give me a couple hours before you call."

"Oxford," I said.

"Could be random."

I wanted to scream at him that it wasn't random, that nothing here was random anymore, that everything had a reason and a purpose, and that Midge dead in the apartment below where I had lived for four years wasn't just a message. So what if I had Oxford's money: he knew there were things more precious to me than that. He had come to my home and failing to find me had settled for the next best thing, someone I knew. He'd come to my home to commit murder, and maybe it hadn't even been me he was after.

I thought of Erika and her stupid dorm room door wide open to the hall, her back presented to anyone who came walking by with a gun or a knife or a club.

I ran for her life.

The door was closed and the sign on it had changed and now read K.C. ERIKA and NO WE'RE NOT BUT WE COULD IF WE WANTED TO.

I knocked hard, kept pounding on it until it was opened, and I'd started to say her name when I realized I wasn't looking at Erika but at another young woman entirely, one who was about Erika's height but whose hair was electric blue and shaggy, with a piercing below her lip and another just above it.

"Fucking knock it fucking off!" she yelled at me and then took a quick step back, probably realizing that I wasn't a student. Then she reached for the door and started to close it again.

"Where's Erika?"

"Get the fuck out of here or I'll start screaming," the woman said, and she put her weight against the door and tried to slam it in my face.

I moved forward and caught it before it closed, forcing it back. "Please – my name's Atticus, I have to find Erika."

"Let go of my door or I'll scream, I mean it, cocksucker."

"Where's Erika?"

She stopped shoving against the door, but didn't move her weight off it, keeping it partially closed. She peered through the gap at me. "Atticus doesn't have a fucking beard, cocksucker, and he wears glasses, and you better goddamn back off now because the rugby team is down the hall and they are personal friends of ours."