F Paul Wilson - Sims 03 (8 page)

 
          
EAST NEW YORK
,
NY

 
          
“One thing I’ve got to say about
hanging with you,” Patrick said as he drove them past peeling houses behind
yards littered with old tires and charred mattresses. “I get to see all the
city’s ritziest neighborhoods. Say, you live in
Brooklyn
,
don’t you?”

 
          
Yes, Romy thought as she stared
straight ahead through the windshield. She thought of the neat little shops and
bistros along Court Street, just around the corner from her apartment in Cobble
Hill. That was
Brooklyn
too, but a world away from this
place.
East New York
was the far frontier of the
borough. The economic boom of the nineties had run out of gas before it reached
here, and the boom of the oughts had kept its distance as well. The faces were
black, the cars along the trash-choked curbs old and battered, the mood grim.

 
          
“Hello?” Patrick said. “Are you still
with me?”

 
          
She nodded and looked down at the map
unfolded on her lap. She knew she hadn’t been good company on the slow,
frustrating drive across the
Manhattan
Bridge
and through the myriad
neighborhoods of the borough, but the nearer they moved to their destination,
the tighter the icy clamp around her stomach.

 
          
Lieutenant Milancewich’s call nagged
at her. Her sim-abuse tips had helped him make a few busts over the years and
in return he occasionally gave her a heads-up on investigations he thought
might interest her. But he wasn’t a friend, merely a contact, and she knew he
considered her a little wacko.
Maybe a lot wacko.
He
had no use for
sims
and thought her overzealous in her
one-woman war, but a bust was a bust and he was glad to have them credited to
his record.

 
          
Today, though, she’d heard something
strange in his voice; she couldn’t identify it, but knew she’d never heard it
before. She’d pressed him about what it was he wanted her to see but he
wouldn’t say anything beyond, I ain’t been there myself, so I don’t want to
pass on any secondhand reports, but if what I hear is true, you should be
there.

 
          
Is it bad?
she’d
asked.

 
          
It wasn’t good.

 
          
And that was what bothered her. The
strange note in his voice when he’d said,
It
ain’t
good.

 
          
“I hope we’re almost there,” Patrick
said. “I don’t think I want to get lost out here, especially with sundown on
the way.”

 
          
She focused on the map. “Make a left
up here onto—there!” She pointed to a pair of blue-and-white units just around
the corner. “See the lights?”

 
          
“Got ’em.”

 
          
Patrick pulled into the curb and they
both stepped out. She let him lead the way as they headed toward the yellow
crime scene tape. Once they were past that, Romy took the lead. Three of the
four cops at the scene were either in their units or leaning against them as
they talked on two-ways. Romy approached the fourth, a patrolman sipping a cup
of coffee outside the front door of a shabby, sagging
Cape Cod
.
He looked to be in his late twenties, fair-skinned, with a reddish-blond
mustache.

 
          
After showing him her ID and going
through the what-is-OPRR?
and
what’s-OPRR-got-to-do-with-this?
explanations
, and
making sure to smile a lot, she got him to open up.

 
          
“Got a call about a bad smell coming
from the
place.
” He cocked his head toward the house
as he spoke in an accent that left no doubt he was a native. “So we
investigated. Had to kick in the front door and that’s when it really hit us.
Ain’t the first time I smelled
that.
”

 
          
“Somebody dead?”

 
          
“That’s what we
figured,
only we had it wrong. Not some body—many bodies. And they ain’t human.”

 
          
Romy closed her eyes and took a deep
breath. She was afraid to ask.
“How many?”

 
          
“Looks like a dozen.”

 
          
She heard Patrick’s sharp intake of
breath close behind her.

 
          
“How many sims
were
taken from the globulin farm?” he asked.

 
          
“Thirteen,” she said without turning.
“At least they think it housed thirteen.” That was the count the police had
painstakingly gleaned from one of the computer chips plucked from the ashes.

 
          
“Hey, you think these might be the
missing
sims
from that
Bronx
fire a couple weeks back?” The cop shook his head. “
Don’t
that
beat all. I thought that job was pulled by a bunch of sim lovers.”

 
          
“These may have no relation.”

 
          
How could they? It didn’t make sense
that people who spray-painted “Death to sim oppressors” would kill the very
sims
they’d liberated.

 
          
The cop said, “Well, if they’re the
same, I’d guess from the stink and the condition of the bodies that they were
done the same night as the fire.” He shook his head in disgust.
“Pisses me off.”

 
          
Surprised, Romy looked at him.
“Killing sims?”

 
          
“You
kidding?
No way. I mean, I’m not in favor of someone going around killing dumb animals,
but what pisses me is that even though they ain’t human I gotta hang around
with my thumb up my ass—’scuse the French, okay?—while everybody figures out
what to do and who should do it.”

 
          
“How’d they die?” Romy asked.

 
          
“
Don’t need no
forensics team for that.” He poked his index finger against his temple and
cocked his thumb.
“Bam!
One to the
head for each of them.
Must’ve used jacketed slugs because—”

 
          
“Thank you,” Romy said, holding up a
hand.

 
          
“Yeah, well, it was messy, all right.
But not near as messy as what was done to them after they was shot.”

 
          
Romy stiffened. “What do you mean?”

 
          
“Sliced them open from here”—his gun
barrel finger became a scalpel and he dragged it from the base of his throat to
his groin—“to here.”

 
          
“Christ!” Patrick said.

 
          
Romy swallowed. “Why on earth…?”

 
          
“Beats me.
Dragged all their guts out and piled them in the middle of the cellar floor.
Freaking mess down there, and if they think I’m gonna clean it up because it’s
‘evidence,’ they can—”

 
          
“I want to see,” Romy said.

 
          
“No, you don’t, lady. If there’s one
thing I know in this life, lady, it’s you do not want to go down in that
cellar.”

 
          
She looked around at the hollow-eyed
buildings and the hollow-eyed stragglers with nothing better to do than stand
at the police tape and stare.

 
          
He’s so right, Romy thought. I don’t.

 
          
But she had to see this for herself.
Nothing made sense. If these were the
sims
from the
globulin farm, what were they doing here? Had they been “liberated” just to be
executed and mutilated?

 
          
Setting her jaw to keep her
composure, Romy pulled a stick of gum—Nuclear Cinnamon—from her purse and began
to chew.

 
          
The cop nodded knowingly. “I see
you’ve been down this street before.”

 
          
“What’s going on?” Patrick said.

 
          
She turned and offered him a stick,
saying, “Because sometimes the smell’s so thick you can taste it.”

 
          
“You’re going in?” he said. He looked
genuinely concerned. “That’s way above and beyond, Romy. Leave it for the
forensics people. You don’t have to do this.”

 
          
“Yeah, I do,” she said. “Because
they’re
sims
the M-E will give them a cursory
once-over, if that. Most likely the remains will be shipped back to SimGen and
we’ll never hear a thing. I don’t expect you to come with me, Patrick. In fact,
I’d prefer you didn’t. But I need to see what’s been done, so I can get a feel
for the kind of monsters we’re dealing with here.”

 
          
She turned to the patrolman. “Let’s
go.”

 
          
“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head.
“Might smell a little better in there now with the doors open, but I’m not
going back in until I have to.” He pointed toward the open front door. “Once
you’re inside, head straight back to the kitchen; hang a U and you’ll be facing
the cellar stairs.” He handed her his flashlight. “There’s no electricity so
you’ll need this. Just don’t drop it. Or blow lunch on it.”

 
          
“Thanks. I won’t.”

 
          
Knowing that if she hesitated she
might lose her nerve, Romy immediately put herself in motion. She’d examined
dead
sims
before, some of them in a ripe state of
decomposition, and had learned some tricks along the way.

 
          
She’d gained the top of the two
crumbling front steps and was pulling a tissue from her purse when she sensed
someone behind her.

 
          
Patrick. His face looked pale, and
despite the cold she thought she detected a faint sheen of sweat across his
forehead.

 
          
“Wait for me out here,” she told him.

 
          
“Sorry, no. I could have stayed in
the yard if the cop had gone with you, but I can’t let you go down there
alone.”

 
          
“Patrick—”

 
          
“Let’s not argue about it, okay. I’m
going in. Give me a stick of that gum and we’ll get this over with.”

 
          
She stared at him a moment. Patrick
Sullivan was turning out to be a gutsy guy. She handed him a tissue along with
the gum.

 
          
“When we head down to the cellar,
hold this over your mouth and nose, pinching the nostrils and breathing into
the tissue. That way you’ll rebreathe some of your own air.”

 
          
He
nodded,
his expression grim as he unwrapped the gum and stuck it into his mouth. “Let’s
go.”

 
          
Romy led the way. Despite the open
doors front and rear, the odor was still strong on the main floor; but when she
rounded the turn and stood before the doorless opening leading down from the
kitchen, it all but overpowered her. She heard Patrick groan behind her.

 
          
“Tissue time,” she said. “And it
could be worse. At least it’s cold; that slows down decomposition. Imagine if
this were August.”

 
          
Patrick made no reply. Romy stared at
the dark opening of the cellar doorway. She wished there were someone else she
could dump this on, but couldn’t think of a soul.

 
          
Steeling herself, she flicked on the
flashlight and started down into the blackness. She kept the beam on the steps,
moving carefully because there was no railing. The odor was indescribable. It
made her eyes water. Even with her nostrils pinched, it wormed its way around
the cinnamon gum in her mouth and made a rear entry to her nasal passages by
seeping up past her palate.

 
          
When she reached the bottom Romy
angled the beam ahead, moving it across the concrete. At first she thought
someone had started painting the floor black and run out of paint
three-quarters of the way through; then she realized it was blood.
Old, dried blood.
The cellar must have been awash in it.

 
          
She flicked the beam left and right
to get her bearings and stopped when it lit up what looked like a pile of dirty
rope. She remembered what the cop had said—dragged all their guts out and piled
them in the middle of the cellar floor—and knew she wasn’t looking at rope.