Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 59

At Hafidha's eyeroll and hand gestures, Daphne laughed. And then she looked Hafidha in the eye, all serious, and said, "Hafs? Do you have the hots for Chaz?

Hafidha rocked back on her heels. "Oh, G.o.d, no. I have the hots for creme brulee."

Act II The first notable thing Todd saw on the campus of the University of Nebraska at Omaha was the obligatory phallic obelisk. The second one was a smiling blonde way too young for the Iggy & The Stooges babydoll t-shirt she was falling out of. "The more things change," he muttered, and leaned forward over the back of the driver's seat of the inevitable dark purple 2003 Intrepid to tap Reyes on the shoulder. Briefly, he wondered who in procurement was getting the kickbacks from Dodge.

Then he wondered when purple got to be a government car color.

"We can't stop here. This is bat country."

At least Hafidha laughed. "That's Nevada, Duke."

"Nevada, Nebraska-"

"Don't let Chaz hear you say that." Lau, from the front seat, without looking up from the dossier in her lap. Sol, to everyone's amus.e.m.e.nt, puked if he tried to read in a moving car. "Let me guess. You still have nightmares about riding route 80 in the driving rain on a Harley, strung out on reds and megadoses of vitamin C."

"Don't be ridiculous," he said, and sat back, satisfied. "I'd never use nutritional supplements off-label. My G.o.d, would you look at all these white people?"

He got Hafidha again, this time just as she was stuffing a doughnut hole into her mouth. It was worth a shower of crumbs, especially since Lau got the worst of it. And despite Hafidha's obvious culpability in the unscheduled flurry, Lau glared at Todd as she dusted cake out of her hair. Oh, the injustice.

"I hate to interrupt the camaraderie," Reyes said, "but once we get Hafidha installed, Lau, you take the victims' known a.s.sociates. Todd, you and I are going to interview the victims."

"Just like the sixties," Todd said.

The car pulled up-on Dodge Street, synchronistically-in front of the administration building. Just like in the movies. Except here, the s.p.a.ces were available because the curb was yellow. There was metered parking off to one side, but Reyes just slid an FBI don't- tow-me plaque onto the dash and the occupants exited on an internal count of three. Reyes didn't even have to cue them anymore; they started manipulating the instant they got off the plane.

The funny thing was, no matter how transparent Sol thought the psychological games were, they worked. It's for their own good, he told himself sardonically.

I'm sorry. Could you phrase the answer in the form of a question?

The steeply pitched convex dark roofs over each entryway made the building look as if one of its grandparents had been a merrywidow Queen Anne Victorian, and another a nice block of flats. Campus Security met them halfway up the walk, in the company of a balding and colorless blue-eyed administrator. Todd was in the second rank, behind Reyes, but the man's gaze found him automatically. "Doctor Reyes?"

"Doctor Reyes," Todd said, pointing to Reyes. "I'm Special Agent Todd."

Reyes stuck out his hand, impa.s.sive, and watched unsmiling as the administrator wrong-footed, stumbled, balked coming up to the jump, and somehow managed to get over it with only a hard rub and a wobble. "Doctor Reyes. Pleased to meet you."

"Winston Woodward?"

Todd could almost hear the I presume?

"Sorry," Woodward said. "I a.s.sumed from your name that you would be Latino, and- well, there's no excuse."

As they turned to follow Woodward out of the sun, Hafidha tilted her head to bring her lips to Todd's ear and murmured, "6De cual parte de Mexico vienes, Doctor Reyes?" Todd bit his lip to keep from cracking up. Thank G.o.d they had Lau and Reyes along; he really hadn't ever mastered this professional demeanor thing. At least Woodward was still too fl.u.s.tered to notice, and talking fast: "Please, come inside, Doctor Reyes. And your team?"

"You've met Supervisory Special Agent Todd," Reyes said dryly. "This is Special Agent Lau, and this is Special Agent Gates, our technical expert. She'll need access to your network, and mainframe, if you still use one."

"Of course." Woodward rubbed his eyes. "I really hope you can help me, sir."

"So do I." Reyes straightened his tie, then smoothed his palm over tight-clipped curls as they advanced three abreast down a tiled corridor. Fidgeting. Uncomfortable, and Todd didn't think it was Woodward's unconscious, apologetic racism that had done it. Not for the first time, Todd wondered what had happened to get between Dr. Stephen Reyes and a brilliant academic career. He pretended to study a bulletin board which they pa.s.sed, plastered with pastel flyers for campus clubs and events-the local SCA barony, a student band, a self-defense club, BiGALA. They were exactly like the flyers Todd remembered from his own tenure as an undergrad, except in that computer typesetting and modern printing and copying had vastly improved their apparent professionalism.

They turned into an outer office and walked past a vacant secretary's desk. "We'll know more once we've had a chance to talk to the victims."

Woodward, hand on his office door, hesitated. "Well," he said. "Then I also hope you can get something out of them."

Falkner crossed the bullpen, only two pizzas balanced on her left hand, because half the team was elsewhere. She set them down on the desk in the uninhabited office where the photocopier lived. Todd probably could have planted a flag in it based on seniority, but he claimed he didn't work well without constant supervision. There were pay grade rules about windows and cubicles and who got an actual office with an actual door, but the WTF wasn't exactly the fast track to promotion. And Falkner was proud of her people, who all seemed to think they had important things to worry about.

She didn't need to ding the service bell Brady had mounted on the wall beside the door. Chaz was already standing just outside. "Lunchtime?"

Behind him, she could see Brady stuffing a file into his locking drawer and setting the screen saver to blank his computer. Good man. He stood up, Worth a half-step behind- her hands already full of beverages-and followed Chaz into the room. "Time for the victimology?"

"Red rum and red sauce," Worth answered, while Chaz, with arms like derricks, reached down the napkins and the paper plates. "Thank you, Falkner."

"It's Friday," she said, and opened the first box: half pepperoni and half sausage, with green peppers and mushrooms on the lot. The second one was cheese and veg, and even though Lau wasn't here to help, Falkner thought Chaz would get through at least three quarters of it. Brady wouldn't eat anything that wasn't swimming in animal fat, and since none of the others would let Falkner hold the cheese, one pizza with artichoke hearts, black olives, sundried tomatoes, and garlic was her compromise.

Besides, Chaz liked vegetables. It always surprised her. He could no more live on them than a cat could, but as he'd said to her once when she'd raised eyebrows over his lunch of a Greek salad you could swim in and an entire loaf of garlic bread, "Just because I'm going to die of major organ failure by fifty, doesn't mean I need to hurry the process."

She could have done without the reminder that he and Hafidha were on borrowed time, but nothing ever got won by telling yourself pretty lies. The savage metabolisms that fed their slamming neurons would also eventually poison their livers and kidneys, if heart disease didn't get them first. Chances were, she and Reyes and Todd would outlive them both.

For every gift there is an answering burden.

She slid two slices of artichoke pizza onto the paper plate Brady handed her and took a diet c.o.ke from Worth. Then she pulled out the chair in the corner between the table and the copier and sat, draping two napkins across her lap. "Right," she said. "Victimology. What have we got?"

Brady flipped open a reporter's notebook while he chewed. He swallowed, wiped his mouth, and ran a finger down the page, leaving a grease spot. "Okay, first known victim is Danielle Potter, age eighteen. Her suitemates had her committed in September, after she began acting erratically and they feared for her safety. No family history of mental illness; she was a good kid there on scholarship, first of her family to attend college. Second victim, Peter Gooding. Age seventeen, a week shy of his eighteenth birthday-"

"Young for a college freshman," Worth said.

Chaz hmphed around a mouthful of pizza. Identifying. Falkner made a face she hoped could be blamed on the diet c.o.ke. She could hover over Chaz, but he was here now, and doing all right, and she couldn't change how he'd gotten there.

"Plenty of seventeen-year-olds graduate high school," Brady continued, so smoothly you could pretend you hadn't noticed him taking Chaz's side. He ate another bite of sausage pizza without moving his eyes from the notepad. "Gooding was always a bit of a smart, disaffected underachiever, according to his family. Parents divorced; mom worked full time; father remarried. Sounds like he didn't get a lot of guidance at home. Family became concerned when he didn't return home for Christmas break as planned.

He was found wandering, incoherent, and brought into an emergency room on New Year's Eve. Suffering hypothermia and frostbite." A brief silence followed while Brady chewed.

"Did he lose any fingers?" Worth said.

"You mean like Todd?" Chaz said.

Brady snorted. "Villette, if you believe that frostbite story of Duke's, you're not much of a profiler. He wasn't pushing papers in the Quartermaster's Corps in 1973, either."

"There wasn't much of anything involving American troops going on in southeast Asia in 1973, was there?" Chaz asked.

Brady shrugged. "Officially. But it's not like Duke was ever anywhere interesting, to hear him tell it-"

Falkner cleared her throat. "Can we save the rumormongering until after the victimology, or preferably until Todd is here to defend himself?"

Chaz winced-sorry-and helped himself to the final two slices of veggie pizza by way of apology. "So. Gooding. Family history of mental illness?" He flipped the box closed left-handed and slid it out of the way with his elbow.

"Mother is on an SSRI," Brady said. He shrugged.

Falkner shrugged too. So was her husband Ben, and half their friends. The modern world stressed people out, and the medical system was adapted to jack them up, prop them up, and shoot them back out into play. She thought of race horses, doped to run when what they really needed was rest, and nailed that chain of thought before it could get away from her.

"Soma," Chaz said.

Worth gave him an odd look. "Soma's a muscle relaxant."

He shook his head, held up a hand, chewed vigorously, and reached for his coffee mug, only to find it empty. Worth pushed a spare Diet c.o.ke at him, and he made a face and spurned it with his fingertips. "My liver does not thank you. No, not Soma Compound. Soma as in Brave New World. Aldous Huxley. Science fiction novel with a t.i.tle from The Tempest. 'O brave new world that hath such creatures in't!' Plot revolves around drugging the populace to keep them from noticing a totalitarian regime headed by a charismatic psycho named Mustapha Monde? No? Dang, where's Todd when I need him?

"Alphas, betas, and gammas," Falkner said, remembering the social ranks in the book, and was rewarded with a wink as Chaz started on piece number six.

"Victim three," Brady said. "Jeremy Hansen. Eighteen. A working-cla.s.s kid, mother dead, father not remarried. Two siblings, attending college on savings and student loans. His girlfriend back home became concerned when he stopped answering her emails, sometime in March. No-"

"-family history of mental illness," Worth said. "Four and five?"

"Melanie Wosczyna," Brady said. "Nineteen. Commuter student, local family, worked nights at a doughnut shop. Her father's an alcoholic. In intermittent recovery, it sounds like. No schizophrenia, though, or family history of major mood disorders. She was found by Campus Security, holed up in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Fine Arts building in mid- April, hugging her knees and shivering. Sounds like she's a pretty good candidate for a PTSD case even beforehand. Her dad put her mom in the hospital at least once, and who knows what else went on?"

"I sense a trend," Falkner said, while Chaz started in on the first of the remaining four slices of meat pizza.

"You should consider doing this professionally," Brady said, and if Falkner hadn't been in a position of authority she would have flicked a spitball at him. "Victim number five, Hanson Cape. Age 19. Who is the only vic whose family has money, by the way, which could be a coincidence or could be a significant break in victimology. Mom is an eye surgeon; dad is a patent lawyer."

"Why's he going to a state school?"

"He washed out of Lawrence, in Appleton, Wisconsin. His grades were shall we say a little less than exceptional, so he was coming back for a second pa.s.s at his freshman year in the hopes of being readmitted to Lawrence as a transfer student later. It sounds like Mr. Cape likes girls, pot, and crew, not necessarily in that order. He attacked a T.A. in his Intro to Drama cla.s.s in late May. Ten st.i.tches in her face and two broken teeth."

"Ow." Worth's hand pressed her lips in sympathy. "Where's she?"

"Went home on a leave of absence," Brady said, checking his notes. "Hope she makes it back."

"Drug related psychotic break?" Chaz paused to pick a fennel seed from the sausage out of his teeth with a fingernail, while Falkner reminded herself that it wasn't his fault n.o.body ever taught him table courtesy.

"Potter's and Hansen's families and a.s.sociates, at least, are confident they weren't using."

Worth shrugged. "The parents are always the last to know."

Brady sharked a third slice of pizza. Chaz looked at him reproachfully, and Brady defended his plate like a lifer. "You got a whole pizza plus a slice!"

Chaz looked at Falkner. "Did you get any of those cinnamon things?"

"In the kitchen," Falkner said. She couldn't stand the smell of the icing while trying to eat cheese and tomato sauce.

Chaz rose, collecting his coffee mug and Brady's water cup. He appeared visibly thicker through the middle, like the family dog after Thanksgiving dinner. As always Falkner wondered if that wasn't more than a little uncomfortable. "Be right back."

Falkner glanced at her watch. Thirty seconds or less, she estimated, with amus.e.m.e.nt. He made it in twenty-three, balancing the box of cinnamon twists under one arm. Brady swiped one of those, too, but spurned the icing; Worth just shook her head. Falkner asked, "Do the victims have anything else in common? Club, major, residence, hobby, peer group?"

"Not from the paper," Brady said, while Chaz scooped frosting onto a cinnamon stick. "But they're all disaffected. Lonely, not loners?"

"Easy prey for a charmer," Chaz said. Worth lowered her chin to her hands to watch him eat. "Charismatic type, manipulative, make you feel like the center of the world. Until you'd do anything for him. We could be looking at a cult."

There were two cinnamon sticks left in the box. He pointed to them, and Falkner and Brady both shook their heads. Brady, Falkner noticed, had fallen silent too, and was also watching Chaz slowly and methodically alternate sips of coffee and bites of cinnamon twist.

Thirty seconds later, he broke a piece off the last cinnamon stick, tucked it into his mouth, and looked up, from face to face. Dawning worry lit his expression. He froze, and tried to use his coffee to clear his mouth, but the cup was empty again. "What's wrong?"

Worth shook her head wonderingly, without raising it from the backs of her fingers. "Wow," she said. "It's like watching a snake engulf a frog."

Chaz rolled his eyes and swallowed his mouthful stiffly. His Adam's apple bobbed hard enough to look like it hurt. "Shut up."

Worth stood and collected his cup. "I'll refill your coffee, Python."

"And I'll call the rest of the team," said Brady. "And fill them in on what we have."

"Tell me about schizophrenia," Hafidha said into her headset, while the fingers of her left hand skimmed fluidly on the scroll wheel of her mouse. "And I'll tell you about patterns of victim behavior."

Todd's voice came crisp and clear over her earpiece. "Reyes or Chaz could give you a better precis."

"But Reyes is driving you to the interview," Hafidha answered, reasonably. "And Chaz is eleven hundred and eighty-two miles away, approximate driving distance. So thrill me with your dulcet tones, Duke."

He snorted. "All right then. I'll put you on speaker, Hafs. Reyes, correct me if I'm wrong." He cleared his throat, and continued in professorial tones: "Common to most diagnoses of schizophrenia are a combination of positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms. Positive symptoms include what we think of as the defining characteristics of schizophrenia, such as auditory or less commonly visual hallucinations, delusions- especially paranoid ones-and racing thoughts. Negative symptoms reveal a drop in functionality, such as apathy, flattened affect, poverty of speech, increasing inability to navigate social situations, catatonia. In addition, although this is not yet considered diagnostic, the schizophrenic shows cognitive impairment, such as disorganized thinking, disorganized speech-"word salad"-failures of memory, and so on."

"Good," Reyes said, his voice attenuated by the directional mike.

"I've been reading the DSM-IV," Todd answered, complacently.

"Yes," Hafidha said. "And you have an MS in psych to go with your law degree, and the master's in comparative religion."

"I do? d.a.m.ned senile dementia. Who can remember these things? Where was I?"

"Reading the DSM-IV."

"Right. Also, anecdotally, schizophrenics may abruptly drop a lot of weight, in part because they may not eat, and in part because-"

"An amped-up brain burns through glucose like whoa," Hafidha said, taking a bite out of a Ring Ding. Hafidha 'the human tapeworm' Gates. If I ever get tired of cop work, I can go into hot dog eating contests. "Maybe he's trying to turn them into jammers?"

"Jammers?"

"Anomaloids," she explained, reluctantly, sliding the ridiculous word out long and droopy. "Gammas."

She had said it flippantly, but the implication settled in on Todd's thoughtful silence. "Think you could?" he said, when she'd had plenty of time to frown at the other half of the Ring Ding and set it back on the wrapper with its doomed twin.

"Make a gamma? It makes me queasy to think about it. How much does a gamma brain scan look like a schizophrenic one?"

Reyes grunted noncommittally, which Hafidha took to mean, Some.

Todd changed the subject, because Todd did things like that. Unless he was conducting an interview, in which case, he only changed the subject to come back at you from a different angle. "What have you got on the school records and police blotter, Hafs?"

She rolled the mouse wheel again. "Nothing conclusive. Nothing coming up colors. If there's a sixth vic, I'm not finding them, and it's not like college students, even freshmen, have daily homework a.s.signments we could track. I placed a couple of calls and emails to professors, though, and it does seem that each victim's cla.s.s attendance dropped off for a week or so before he or she cracked. That's-what was your word, Duke?-anecdotal, though."

"Right," Reyes said. "So what do college freshmen do?"