TBntG-2 Chpt 8

=The Bull and the Genie=
==Chapter 8 - Book II - The Ninety-five Theses==
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==Pulling the Threads==
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Apartments - City of Samantha, Taurian Concordat
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Some things you had to do yourself. Especially when someone was, on the one hand, legitimately threatening you with turning the full fury of the law on your organization—and on the other hand, offering you the kind of money that only big organizations tossed around. 
 
It's a government, or a corporation. Big one. Daphne wasn't that interested in foreign affairs, save for how they interfered with her own business. Contrary to every movie out there, you could become quite rich on the proceeds of one city, thank you very much. Guys who tried for multi-world criminal empires tended to come to the attention of the governments that ran those worlds…and said governments responded very poorly to people trying to muscle in on their turf. 
 
The problem is, you could avoid muscling in on their turf, but if they decided to muscle in on yours…
 
Which is why I'm here. Daphne had her most reliable guys with her, guys who had been with Dad, back in the day. And all of them knew their way around a gun.
 
The Faceman lived in a nice little bedroom community, about twenty miles outside of Samantha. This far, the dropship hadn't even busted windows when it went down. It was the kind of place people moved because of the (.05 percent) higher crime rate in the city, while still availing themselves of all the amenities of the city, from the transport trams to ambulance service within 4 minutes of a call. 
 
The downtown was quiet. The curfew was over, but not many people felt like celebrating—or wanted to be seen as celebrating. There were some people on the streets, eating out, walking, talking, while other's stared at the latest news on the big screens set up by the electronics store. 
 
But there were enough people that their cars wouldn't be noticed. 
 
Amateurs waited until the dark of night. Smart crooks remembered that the best way to stay free was never do anything unusual, like driving around on deserted streets in the middle of the night.
 
"Jake." Marcus shrugged. "Common enough name."
 
"Yeah. Hopefully we're just finding out he's helping some husband avoid angry wives." Daphne said.
 
"Don't want the money?" Marcus asked.
 
Daphne frowned. "If it keeps me under the radar, you're damned right I don't want this. If it turns out we're working for the fucking Davion's 'I didn't know,' isn't exactly gonna save us."
 
"What if we find out we're working for the Davions?"
 
"Then we go to the Protector," Daphne said. Her brother was in the Guards and she wasn't about to help his enemies, even if he hadn't spoken to her in a decade. "Here we are." 
 
The two cars parked in the visitor's lot of the pleasant little apartment complex. Daphne and her four people strolled on in. After all, everyone had friends.
 
"Room 25," Marcus murmured. "Corner apartment."
 
Daphne nodded. Good choice for someone who might need to run. She bet both windows were easily opened. The stopped at the door and then… Daphne held out her hand. 
 
Hmmmm…
 
"What is it boss?"
 
"The carpet." Daphne gestured. The corridor carpet was heavy shag, probably so that the thundering herds of kids wouldn't upset the people trying to sleep in.
 
But that meant that if you opened the door… She looked back down the hall way.
 
Yep. Every door to an apartment had the shag in front of it crushed down by the movements of the door when it had been opened.
 
Probably another reason our Faceman was here. Most apartments had their doors opening inward. Something about not getting smacked in the face. But some? They had them opening outward, because about twenty years ago, there'd been a spate of invasion robberies that got enough publicity that some places built reinforced doors that were harder to push in. 
 
Never mind that all you'd have to do would be wait for a housewife to open the door while her hands were full of produce. Never mind that the gang that did that got arrested after their fifth attempt. But people had a nasty habit of taking the news and building up a story until they assumed their apartment building was going to be the next target for the Lost Soldiers of Kerensky who for some reason were moonlighting as robbers. 
 
But it didn't change the fact that the door hadn't been opened, at least in the last few days.
 
"Marcus? Open it." 
 
"Right, Boss." 
 
Now's the dangerous part. Someone walking along might notice them. The cameras weren't an issue—none of them were pointing at the door, because why bother? Monitor the elevators and stairwells and you had everything you needed without spying on your tenets. 
 
And Daphne bet they were looped, at least on this floor. 
 
"Alarm's off," Marcus muttered, running one of his magic tools over the door frame.
 
Very magic. Guns were easy, but his scanner had been built on Terra, and was probably the most illegal thing they had. 
 
"Manual lock, give me a second."
 
A few seconds later, they were in the room. A weak meow greeted them. There was a cat laying on the floor.
 
"What the fuck?"
 
Daphne knelt down. "It's dehydrated." Daphne wasn't a cat person, but her secretary was, and you learned some things in self defense. 
 
This meant that nobody was here. Nobody had been here for a while. The cat wouldn't be here if they had. "Tom, give the cat some water."
 
"Boss?"
 
"Someone gave us a ready made alibi. We hadn't heard from him, and were worried about the cat, which needs a living cat. Everyone else, on me." 
 
The group moved into the room. It looked like a normal apartment, but… Daphne sniffed.
Something had gone off. "Marcus, bathroom."
 
"Right." They moved to the bathroom and opened it. It was clean. 
 
Really fucking clean. Gleaming, like someone had gone over it with detergents. 
 
So where was… 
"Drain." Marcus said. He bent down and sniffed, then wrinkled his nose. "Wanna bet something got stuck in the drain." 
 
"Part of our faceman, I bet," Daphne said. She looked around. Kill him in here, leave the cat, probably cut him up and left with the parts, but a chunk got stuck and even with the cleaners it'd start rotting eventually.
 
If the room had been dirty they might have ignored it, or if it had been clean without the smell…
 
Bad luck and whoever hired them…
 
"Search the place." So they killed him. If not for our guy, by the time anyone checked the place, they'd find a dead cat and would never even smell the stuff coming from the bathroom. 
 
But not locals. Nobody has a reason to kill a faceman, especially with the 'fuck you' measures some of them put in place. 
 
"Found his gear," Cindy said. "Under the bed."
 
"Kind of a crappy place to put it," Tom said from where he was letting the cat drink. 
 
"Not really. If the cops have kicked your door in, no place is good enough. This was just to keep guests from wondering through." 
 
"Blanks are gone. The data chips are also gone," Cindy said. "Not getting anything from that."
 
"We don't have to. We're calling the police." 
 
"What? Boss, have you gone nuts?"
 
"No." Daphne gestured. "The cops couldn't come here. We did. But now we have a murder, and if we just do our patriotic duty. The cops have a lot more ways to handle it, and if this blows up… well, we did our patriotic duty."
 
"Think we're gonna get paid?"
 
"Not ending up in a deep hole is getting paid."
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Investigation Office, City of Samantha - Taurus, Taurian Concordat
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When the call came in, it was flagged and sent to the Organized Crime Division. Jake was known to them, even if there had never been probable cause to arrest him.
 
Now there was. A rumored murder? Twenty minutes after the anonymous tip from a good Samaritan who heard a crying cat, the investigative team was there. Some probes fished up chunks of rotting flesh where they'd been stuck in the drain pipe, a mass of hair, likely from the victim's scalp obstructing the flow.
 
"Right." Detective Wallice Cameron (no relation), looked around and frowned. "Clean hit. Not someone who got pissed off that a new face was expensive." 
 
"Got the phone records. No recordings, but no calls to anyone we know who would be in the physical modification area." Margaret said. 
 
So either he didn't need it, or they had someone to do that part… or that part had been done ahead of time. 
 
"But we do have several calls, about six to a booth, one call…" She nodded. "One call to the Comstar branch, probably a balance inquiry for his payment. And one incoming call… Another booth—MacMillis Recreational Grounds. Get this, that last was on the weekday, six o'clock and lasted only five seconds."
 
"What is the time of death?"
 
"ME will have to be certain, but if you're asking if it came near or on the date of our dear departed's demise… yah."
 
"An order," Wallice said. "Someone wanted a go-no-go order."
 
"Which lets out an angry spouse." Margaret said. "Hit?"
 
"No. If he pissed off someone willing to take this heat, they wouldn't be going for quiet."
 
"Yeah. Our good Samaritans?"
 
"Not good, but smart. My bet is they showed up for something unrelated, and then decided they didn't want in on whatever game was being played." He turned. "Get Judge Wallace out of bed. I want a warrant for every camera and record pertaining to the Mac Millis Recreational Grounds for the last two months." 
 
"What about the other calls?"
 
"Put some people on them, but even if we get faces, which we probably will, they're just using those phones for messages—probably not sticking around, but…" Wallice grinned, an unpleasant expression. "Someplace like a park in the middle of nowhere, in the off season? Someone calls for five seconds, once, not bothering to chew the fat about the big fish they caught? Someone really wants to be left alone. If we move fast enough we might be able to ruin their day."
 
They kept examining the room, dusting it for fingerprints and DNA, when Margaret got a call.
 
"Really? That was fast? Oh, state of emergency, right. We should do that more often, makes things easier." She glanced over at Wallice. "Want your Christmas presents early this week?"
 
"What?"
 
"We ran all the phone calls from the park out of the central exchange. Four phone calls that weren't locals. The one here, two to the same booth we picked up, and one?"
 
"Yes?"
 
"Concordat Shipping. A call to them asking for seats on an offworld flight. One problem, the flight was delayed, and right now…"
 
"All civilian flights are grounded." And they say God doesn't provide. "Get me a forced entry SWAT unit, and tell the local cops to observe, but not interfere with any traffic into or out of that park."
 
"Think they're dangerous?"
 
"They've killed once, and gone to a lot of effort to keep this hidden. Yeah.", But that's the problem with complex plans. All it takes is someone tugging on the wrong thread…
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Book 2 - 08