The Black Garden: Chapter 11

Beside me, Jak zoned in on the road with the intensity of a hunting eagle, flying past the other traffic, putting it between us and our pursuers as we tore up the chargeglass beneath our wheels. My heart sped; I grinned with raw excitement as the car wove around a motorcycle, passed a honking semi, slid between two cars to get into the far-right lane, and then took the exit at near-top speed. Jak cut the sirens there, slowing as we approached the road clearance gate for the city proper. He pulled us into a separate bay with blue lines instead of white.

“Detective Praetorius, N.W.P.D.” He rolled up to the window, pulled his badge, and held it up. “There’s a red Bison Max-Tray coming in behind us, unsure of plate—”

“772-HLF,” I said, drawing my cigarette case from my shirt pocket and flipping the slim silver box over my fingers, reveling in the lingering adrenaline high.

Jak glanced sharply at me, then smiled with grudging respect. “772-HLF. Don’t let them inside. The car is reported stolen.”

“Understood.” The attendant—far more capable than poor Peggy at the customs desk—entered the information into their terminal, and that was that. Every camera and gate in the city wall would flash an alarm if the mercs tried to follow us in their car.

“Man, that was fun,” I said. “Guess if they want my ass that badly, they’ll have to find another way in. Do you mind if I smoke?”

“A doctor that smokes?” Jak’s eyes flicked to the side as he pulled away.

“A Hunter that smokes.” I lowered the window down about a third and bumped a cigarette to my lips. “I’m only a doctor when I need to balance my karma.”

“…I didn’t say yes.” Jak eyed me as he pulled out from the gate and into city traffic.

“You didn’t say no.” I held the cigarette between my lips and lit it, half expecting an angelic choir to open up over my head as I drew greedily on the end. It was my first real cigarette since Seoul.

“Right.” Jak rolled his head and sighed. “I have to admit you’re not what I expected.”

I took a long, lingering drag, eyes fluttering closed with pleasure as I held it for half a breath, then turned my head to exhale through the part-open window. “Oh? What did you expect?” 

“I dunno…” Jak wasn’t a mage and didn’t sense the subtle shift in energy. His eyes were firmly on the road. “Someone... bigger.”

“I lost a lot of weight recently. Don’t harp on about it, though. I’m sensitive.” As my adrenaline began to ebb, I let myself relax a little. 

Jak didn’t seem to share my relief; his hands stayed tense on the wheel, eyes fixed ahead on the road. “Right, Mister… Miss... uh...”

I arched an eyebrow. I said nothing, letting it hang.

“I’m not actually sure which one to use,” Jak admitted gruffly.

I shrugged. “Sure.”

“What do you mean ‘sure’?” 

“I mean, sure, call me whatever you want.”

Jak’s stress was ramping up. I could smell the sour tang of it in his sweat. “Stop fucking with me. “I’m out here risking my career—hell, maybe my life—and you’re playing coy.”

“We’re both putting our lives on the line here, so I guess you’ll just have to dwell in suspense.” I sighed and tipped my head back against the headrest. “Look, Jak: I’m here to help you find some missing persons, not to disclose personal information, so put my elusive gender down as a Confluence quirk and let’s establish trust based on the mission at hand. What’s your connection to Boris Rybak?”

Jak’s expression flickered between embarrassment, irritation, and anger: all of which he visibly swallowed before clearing his throat. “Boris was a… friend. He told me who to contact and how if anything ever happened to him. Something happened to him, so I got in touch.”

“He must have been an extra-specially good friend if he disclosed his handlers to you.” I let a little acid creep into my tone.

“Yeah.” Jak’s hands tensed on the steering wheel. “He was.”

I let the silence hang, intrigued. Was I reading him right? Jak hadn’t pinged my gaydar, which was usually pretty accurate. And then there was the ring—not on the wedding finger, unless New Warder’s traditions differed. “Then for the first time in my life, I’ll be straight with you. There’s no way this side of Hell that Boris and Sh’chani eloped. They’re both dead.”

“I know.” The blue of Jak’s eyes seemed to dull as his expression grew weary. “Glad you agree.”

“They were murdered, and the thing that killed them is on the loose in your town,” I continued. “I want justice for them both. Work with me, and we can catch it before it does more damage. I’ll kill it stone dead.”

“Just like that, eh?”

I made a little finger-gun gesture beside my head. “Just like that.”

He sighed, and combed his fingers through his hair, driving one-handed. “I reached out to you people because Boris told me to. He said if anything happened to him, I needed to tell his boss. Your boss. He and I… we were making plans to leave New Warder at the end of the year. Head to Punawahu and throw in with the Confluence.”

A flicker of sorrow passed over my mouth as I ashed my cigarette out the window. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

Jak fell silent as we climbed a steep, curving road, heading through the city. Downtown New Warder was built of the typical metamaterials that Confluence cities were constructed of - smartglass, carbon-reinforced concrete, mycelium plastic and other superstrong organic polymers, biochar cladding - but as we headed toward the edge of the city, I saw brownstone rowhouses that wouldn’t have looked out of place in old European cities. 

“You’ve watched over this city for years,” I said, once I noticed that he’d started to relax. “What do your instincts tell you?”

“They tell me this place is going to the dogs, and Boris and, uh, Chani, they got involved somehow.” Jak didn’t look at me as he rolled his shoulders and leaned back, gazing fixedly out the windshield. “It started with an uptick in homicides. Always have a few here, but figures are climbing. Lot of people just disappearing and turning up dead in the forest.”

I set my ATLAS to record while Jak spoke. “Go on.”

“Yeah, well, that all started up after we got a new Governor. Aldo Zeelander.”

“Aldo Zeelander. Sounds like a brand of douche.”

Jak grunted in agreement. “Zeelander’s first move was to pressure the old Chief of Police to retire. They handed him a golden parachute and a medal for his service and shoved him out of office.”

“Did he deserve it?”

“No. Commander Gerould was a good cop and a good chief.” Jak scowled, eyes on the road. “Two weeks after he was forcibly retired, he died. Heart attack. Guy was only sixty-five and in good shape, took care of himself.”

I frowned. “What was the forensic assessment?”

“Conveniently handled by the Governor’s office,” Jak said acidly. “Natural causes.”

“Of course.”

“Of course. Anyway, our new Governor… he’s the youngest son of one of the Vornn board of directors, the manager of the company’s digital security department. Has a spine like a wet noodle, no fucking experience as a leader, no aptitude for it. He’s one of those career politicians with two modes: completely useless pushover, or reactionary tyrant.”

I mimed putting my fingers down my throat and throwing up. Jak almost smiled.

“Zeelander installed a new Chief, a buddy of his,” Jak continued. “Captain Rowan Murdock. Complete asshole. I busted another cop for corruption a couple of weeks back. Murdock intervened, ordered the charges dropped, because her mother is a friend of Zeelander’s father. I didn’t get a formal reprimand from our new Chief, but I got the vibe that if I kept pushing, he’d give me the axe.”

I listened thoughtfully. That kind of behavior was within the realm of normal human evil and not expressly demonic, but the sudden onset definitely sent up red flags. “You think your new Governor was involved with disappearing Boris and Chani?”

“Maybe. No... I don’t know.” Jak rubbed one of his eyes, and I felt another twinge of sympathy. “But I know the investigation into them was a joke. People don’t like the Confluence presence here, yeh? I asked to be made primary on the case and was denied. A couple of days later, I realized no one was primary. A buddy of mine who works in the Governor’s office said he’d overheard Zeelander on the phone, yelling at Chief Murdock to close the case. They basically sent an inspector into the house, went ‘oh well,’ and closed the fucking book on it.”

I took a moment to digest the information. “Boris trusted you enough to let you know he was in communication with CEIDR. Did he tell you anything about what he and Chani were doing here?”

“No. He was a pro, he didn’t discuss his clients’ business.” Jak shook his head. “He told me she seemed nervous in private, and that she was a workaholic. Driven, rarely took any time off for herself.” He took a hand off the wheel to rub the bridge of his nose this time, restlessly grinding nails into skin. “God... I’m already talking about him in the past tense.”

I grimaced as I watched him struggle, but you had to be careful how you offered sympathy to men like Jak—hard men, jaded men, who through training and experience had become compartmentalized. “I’m sorry, Jak. From everything I heard from my handler, Boris was one of the good guys.”

“He was. I’ll get over it.” The gruff tone suggested to me that ‘getting over it’ likely involved a hard workout followed by a locked front door and a handful of pills before bed. “But yeah. I don’t know what Chani was into. She might have been blackmailed by one of the organized crime gangs here, or by offworld pirates, or maybe she was into smuggling and pissed someone off. We won’t know until we find the bodies.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell Jak that there would be no bodies. My basic instinct was to blame Vornn, especially given the situation with the new Governor. But as I thought about it, well, Jak was right.

“Good points, on all counts,” I said. “I’ll be interested to see the Environmental Services house. There are things I can pick up that the police can’t, no matter how good your forensics guys are.”

For the first time since I’d met him, Jak’s expression turned hopeful. Wary, but hopeful. “I really hope so, ‘Doctor Soo’.”