Max Collins - Skin Game

Max felt herself growing uneasy — something wasn’t right somewhere.

Clemente’s expression was blank now, except for a fire in his eyes. “And why do you think a transgenic is responsible?”

A sick feeling oozed into her stomach.

“That’s the opinion of your superior officer?” he asked whoever he was talking to. “You wouldn’t happen to mean Special Agent in Charge White?”

Max rocketed to her feet. Wanting to rip the phone out of Clemente’s hand, she started pacing behind the desk.

“You know I can’t trust that son of a bitch,” the detective said.

Did he mean White?

“I know he’s high-ranking, but he’s still a son of a bitch... Where are you now, Agent Gottlieb?”

The caller said something — if the phone hadn’t been pressed so tight to the detective’s ear, Max would have been able to hear it — and Clemente’s expression shifted back to pissed off.

“You left the scene of a murder ?”

Now her stomach did a little back flip into the pool of nausea flooding her belly.

“You people never fail to amaze me,” Clemente said. “We need to talk, and soon... All right you tell me where and when! God knows I should defer to your high standards of professionalism.”

Again the caller’s response didn’t help Clemente’s mood.

“You better know in one hour, Agent Gottlieb, and you better call me back within that time span or I’ll have a warrant issued for your goddamned arrest. The last I heard, federal agents weren’t exempt from the laws of this land.”

And the detective thumbed End.

“Murder involving a transgenic?” Max asked, stopping to lean on the desk. “What the hell is going on?”

She was doing her best to stay cool; she wanted to project power and control to this man. The half of that phone call she’d just heard raised too many questions, and she had a feeling she wasn’t going to like any of the answers.

Clemente seemed to be working at controlling himself as well, though his anger and anxiety were clearly not directed at her. “A sector officer at the checkpoint between Eleven and Twelve was killed tonight.”

Max tried to keep the rage out of her voice, with little success. “And Ames White thinks a transgenic did it.”

Clemente nodded once, gravely. “And he’s supposed to have proof.”

“What kind of proof? That wasn’t him on the phone; that was his stooge Gottlieb, right?”

“Right. As you probably gathered, Otto discovered the body but left the scene, so I don’t know how the hell they secured any kind of evidence.”

She drew a deep, slow breath; then she let it out and said calmly, “You do know that there’s more to Ames White than just your typical government pain-in-the-ass scumbag.”

“Well, he’s definitely a government pain-in-the-ass scumbag. You don’t have to talk hard to convince me of that.”

“Ramon, if you just take a close look at him, you’ll find out that there’s a lot more going on than NSA duties.”

Clemente’s eyes tightened. “Such as?”

“White’s—”

She stopped.

She knew that whatever she said was going to sound completely crazy, and she would lose all cred with the cop.

“Go on, Max. What do you know about White? Is he... dirty, somehow?”

“That hardly covers it.”

“You have to tell me more.”

Hell, she could barely believe the true agenda of Ames White herself... and she’d seen the agents of the cult firsthand. How could she hope to convince Clemente without the risk of losing his confidence completely?

“You just... need to take a good hard look into him,” she managed.

“I can only look so hard.”

“You’re a detective, aren’t you? Fucking detect!”

He gestured with open hands. “Max — if there are bad things to be found out about Ames White, what makes you think that either White or the government will let a local cop find them?”

“I found out, didn’t I?”

“Then take the load off my shoulders — share what you know.”

She sighed and sat back down, heavily; she wished the darkness of the room would just swallow her. “Look, you’re not going to believe me... so I want you to check it out on your own. Seeing is believing, you heard of that?”

Intrigued, Clemente rubbed a hand over his chin. “What makes you think I won’t believe you?”

Max rolled her eyes, shook her head. “It’s too whack to be true... It just is .”

A tiny, teasing grin appeared. “Like the government making genetically engineered killing machines without the public’s knowledge?”

She smirked at him. “Yeah, like that — only a whole lot weirder.”

The detective’s smile disappeared. He looked confused, and she could hardly blame him. At last he said, “You said you trusted me. Well, that goes both ways. Trust me with this, Max — trust me that I’ll take you seriously.”

And, so — taking a deep breath, and a leap of faith — she launched into the story of the ancient breeding cult whose snake-worshiping conclave of leaders manipulated events and people, and had for centuries; she pressed on, telling the detective how these crazies had been trying to breed genetically superior humans for the last thousand years or so, an objective that had eventually led to the modern-day creation of Manticore.

To some degree, they had succeeded in their attempt to build a “better” human. She had seen Ames White, who did the bidding of the conclave, perform acts of strength and daring that rivaled anything any transgenic could accomplish... with the added detail that White and the others like him could feel no pain.

When she had finished what even she knew sounded like the most absurd of tall tales, Clemente looked even more confused, and a little bit like she’d punched him out.

But at least he wasn’t eyeballing her as if she were a madwoman. In fact, her gut instinct told her he believed her, or at least believed in her sincerity.

“Can you prove any of this?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not really — anytime I’ve gotten anything, they’ve covered up, sort of a scorched earth policy. But that team that came into Jam Pony — you saw those pumped-up uber-humans — they didn’t work for any government agency... They worked for the conclave of the snake cult.”

He said nothing for a long time. They just sat there in the darkness, with his eyes moving in thought, and Max studying him to see if she had outright lost him.

Finally, quietly, Clemente said, “You’re right, Max — it does sound crazy.”

Max’s heart sank.

“But,” he said, getting up, shaking his head and grinning wryly, “in this job, it doesn’t pay to not look into things, just because they sound crazy.”

A warmth for this man filled her, and she stood and extended her hand; they shook, and she said, “Thanks, Ramon.”

He checked his watch. “I’ve got to split... but I’ll dig into this weird shit, as much as I can. Snakes, huh?”

“Snakes.”

“Those I may not dig into.”

She smiled a little. “Don’t blame you.”

“Why is White’s agenda — the snake cult’s agenda — antitransgenic? Shouldn’t all you genetic wonders hang together?”

“I don’t understand it myself, Ramon. Still putting pieces together. The point is, White wants to wipe us out... and blaming murders on transgenics is a good way to win that PR war we were talking about.”

“People don’t usually die in PR wars.”

“I don’t mean anything light by that, Ramon. I’m sorry that the cop got killed, no matter who did it.”

“Thanks, but getting killed wasn’t the worst of it, not for him or your PR war — he was another skinning victim.”