Max Collins - Skin Game

Max let out a long breath. “Skinned — how many does that make?”

“Three. One we found two nights ago... it was all over the news, you saw that, right?... Now this one tonight, and there was another a few months ago.”

“All cops?” Max asked.

Clemente shook his head. “The first guy’s prints came up on the computer that he was a shoe salesman, but there was something hinky about that one.”

“Hinky how?”

Another head shake. “I’ve already told you way too much, Max. Now I’m outta here.”

She walked along with him. “We’ll talk again?”

“I don’t know,” Clemente said with a shrug. “This cop killing will be a priority, and if we are looking for a transgenic, well... you might not want to invite me back in.”

“Ramon, this changes nothing about what we discussed; in fact, it shows we were on the right track — Ames White and others like him will try to use this to further inflame the public.”

“Yeah, and it’ll work.”

“So find the real killer, why don’t you?”

“Even if it’s a transgenic?”

“It certainly won’t be a transgenic from inside Terminal City.”

“Are you saying it would be impossible for one of you to sneak out of here?”

That made her uncomfortable. “We are penned up, but... it would be possible, yes. So I tell you what — we’ll look into this from this end too. After all, if the killer is a transgenic, we want him caught as much as you do.”

The cop stopped to look at her. “You do?”

Max stopped and nodded. “Ramon, if we want to be part of this society, we have to prove to people that we’re not monsters. If one of us is doing this, he needs to be stopped.”

“Now that would be good PR,” Clemente said.

“It’s more than just PR — it’s the right thing.”

She escorted the detective to the gate, where the two transgenic sentries awaited. As he walked through, he turned back to face her.

“No one in, no one out — right?”

“Right.”

Clemente started to turn away, but turned back. “And, Max...”

“Yeah?”

“We will talk again.”

Her smile tight and sober, she said, “Good.”

Clemente walked off into the early morning darkness, his two uniformed bodyguards falling in alongside him, heading for the National Guard barricade.

Her back to the gate now, Max asked, “Dix, did you get all that?”

“Oh yeah,” came the voice in her earpiece.

“Call Logan, and transmit that tape to him. And, Dix?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell Joshua I need to talk to him right away.”

“I’ll get on it. Where are you gonna be?”

She started walking. “Coming to you.”

Already waiting when she arrived, Joshua looked up when Max entered the media center. Dix, Luke, and several other transgenics manned the monitors, most of them concentrating either on the security screens or watching the TV news coverage. Dix sat up on his raised platform in front of his computer monitor.

“You get Logan?” she asked.

Dix nodded. “Got him online right now. You wanna talk to the boy?”

“Yeah.” She climbed the two stairs up to Dix’s work station. He slid aside so she could ease in front of the camera mounted on top of his monitor.

“Hey, you,” Logan’s face on the screen said.

“Hi — need your help.”

“When did I ever say no?”

“Did Dix send you the conversation he taped?”

“I’ve got it.”

“Good. When you check it out, you’ll hear Clemente refer to a killing a while back. It was mentioned in passing on the news coverage of the cop who was skinned two nights ago.”

“Rings a faint bell.”

“It’ll ring clearer when you listen to that conversation. What I need you to do is find out all you can about that first murder.”

“Okay — get right on it. Are we trying to solve a murder? Do we have some sort of serial killer out there, skinning his — or her — victims?”

“All of the above and more. But mostly, know this: White’s involved with this somehow. One of White’s minions, Otto Gottlieb, called Clemente while he and I were confabbing.”

“Does White suspect a transgenic? The TV newscast indicated that, remember. Or is this just antitransgenic media games?”

“I don’t know,” Max said. “But there’s definitely something going on — typical Ames White manipulation and disinformation — and we need to know exactly what that is.”

Logan said, “All right, Max. I’ll find out what I can.”

Relief flowed through her.

Somehow, having Logan working on this made her feel that it would all come out all right in the end. The other problems they’d met together had turned out all right, hadn’t they?

Then she thought about where she was and the situation they were in and felt like laughing. Even surrounded by police and the National Guard, not knowing when an all-out genocidal attack might be launched on Terminal City, she felt everything was all right simply because Logan was on her side.

Max allowed that perhaps Original Cindy had been right in saying, “Boo, you are so whipped.”

She couldn’t help but smile; maybe she was.

“Something funny?” Logan asked.

She shook her head. “Just nice to know you’re working with us.”

“Nice to be appreciated... I’ll let you know when I have anything.”

“Thanks,” she said, wanting to say, I love you , instead saying, “I’ll seeya.”

“Yeah,” he said, pausing, as if fighting his own urge to say something significant, but saying only, “Seeya.”

And the screen went blank.

Max climbed down from Dix’s perch and put a hand on Joshua’s shoulder. “Can we go talk?”

“Sure, Little Fella.”

They went for a walk, ending up again in the tunnel below the far end of Terminal City. Though it gave them privacy, the claustrophobic space also reminded Max of the basement at Manticore; and she found herself feeling uneasy about being down here, especially when she considered what she wanted to talk to Joshua about.

Finally, she just dove in. “You remember us talking about the others — the ones like Isaac.”

“Yes, Max.”

“I want to talk about them again.”

“Okay.” His canine brow wrinkled. “Something wrong?”

They took a few steps, the tunnel dark, their footfalls echoing very softly off the walls. Neither of them really needed the lights to see, and without Logan along, they didn’t bother to turn them on.

“There... may be.”

Joshua said nothing.

“You see... another policeman died tonight.”

“And now Max thinks it was one of us too.”

Max shook her head quickly. “No — it’s just that Detective Clemente thinks there might be evidence that it was a transgenic.”

“Not good. Not good.”

“Joshua, that doesn’t mean it was someone from the Manticore basement, or even that the evidence is real... considering the source.”

“Source?”

“Ames White.”

A low growl escaped from Joshua and his eyes burned with hatred.

Though, like Max, Joshua sought only a peaceful life and a chance to fit in, a part of him longed to tear White into tiny pieces and watch him die very slowly. White had murdered his friend Annie — sweet Annie Fisher, a blind girl who had never hurt anyone.

Gentle giant or not, Joshua still wanted to exact a full measure of revenge for this heinous crime. Max had kept Joshua from killing White that night at Jam Pony; but they both knew that if he ever caught up with White again, she would be wasting her breath, trying to stop the beastlike man that was Joshua from killing the manlike beast that was Ames White.

Max eased down the wall and took a seat on the tile floor. Though she was someone who needed to sleep only every few days, she felt like she could just curl up on the cool tiles. Joshua slid down and sat facing her, his back propped against the opposite wall.