The Lucifer desk

18

Carla stood just outside the line of yellow plastic ribbon that marked off the crime scene, straining for a better look. Inside the Lone Star barrier, two cruisers sat with lights flashing, illuminating the night with swaths of blue and red. Overhead, a surveillance drone took aerial pictures of the street, while on the sidewalk below it, plainclothes detectives bent over three bodies that had been covered with clear plastic sheeting to protect them from the drizzling rain. Other plainclothes officers combed the street, collecting shell casings and placing them in evidence bags.

The shooting had taken place in front of Underworld 93, a nightclub in Puyallup, a district of Seattle that was heavily controlled by organized crime. Two burly men in expensive suits-probably members of a local crime family-stood off to one side, observing the cops. Given the way things worked here, they’d probably get the details of the investigation before Lone Star did.

A few young bar patrons, dressed in trendy clothes, stood in a knot in the nightclub’s doorway, answering questions and pointing up the sidewalk to where the bodies lay. Music boomed out through the open door.

Despite her enhancements, Carla was unable to make out the features of the victims. Rain beaded on the clear plastic that shielded them, blurring their profiles. Smears of red obscured the rest. There was blood-lots of it-on the cement. There hadn’t been time for the rain to wash it away.

Carla lowered her umbrella, ducked under the crime tape, and approached the Lune Star officer who was keeping an eye on the handful of people who’d gathered in the street to watch the police at work. Given the area, he was probably on the take and wouldn’t be averse to a cash “incentive” to let her know what had gone down here tonight.

As Carla approached, he immediately turned to confront her, one hand on the stun baton that hung from us belt, “Excuse me, miss. Officers only. Please step back behind the…” As his voice trailed off, his head tipped to one side. With a gloved hand, he reached up and flipped open the tinted visor of his helmet.

Carla smiled as she recognized the face. Corporal Enzo Samartino. What luck! She’d done an interview with him a few months ago, when the Men of Lone Star pin-up calendar was released. The officers who’d posed for it had gotten into some hot water, despite the fact that the calendar was a fundraiser for the children’s wing of Seattle General Hospital. It seemed that Lone Star’s top brass didn’t like the idea of their officers appearing in nothing but cap and boots. Or maybe it was the creative uses to which some of the models put the Lone Star badge that had slotted the brass off. In any case, Enzo had provided Carla with some of the story’s best quotes. And he’d been the best-looking of the bunch. She shifted her umbrella back to get a good look at his thick, dark moustache and long-lashed eyes.

“Enzo. Good to see you again! What’s a good-looking fellow like you doing in a place like this?”

Enzo returned her smile and touched a finger to the visor of his helmet. “Just my job, ma’am.”

Carla laughed. “Me too.”

“Shouldn’t you be downtown with all the other reporters? Sounds like the orks are really mixing it up with our City Center detachment, outside Metroplex Hall.”

Carla shook her head. “Not me. I’m the day shift. I’m officially off.” She tipped her head toward the spot where the detectives were working. “I heard about this shooting over the scanner in my car as I was driving home. Given the neighborhood, I thought it was just another driveby. But then I heard the description of one of the casualties. Native American, left hand cybered and chromed, right hand tattooed with a black bird.

Enzo jerked a gloved thumb over his shoulder at one of the corpses. “That’s him. You know the guy? We’re still trying to get an ID on him, he wasn’t local. And all he was carrying was a generic credstick.”

Carla glanced at the figure that lay in a contorted heap on the ground. From the way the plastic sheeting dipped, it didn’t look as if there was much left of the fellow’s head. “He’s a shadowrunner who goes by the name of Raven. Runs with an elf with blond hair-a Caucasian male about thirty or so. But I don’t know his name.”

“We wondered who that was, The sergeant had him pegged as a passerby who got caught in the crossfire. So he was involved too, huh? Doesn’t really matter much, now. We sent him off by ambulance, but he was DOA at the hospital. He won’t be answering any questions.” Enzo frowned. “Those two weren’t friends of yours, were they?”

“Hardly. Just sources, that’s all.” She winked. “I only consort with those on the right side of the law.”

Enzo refused to be sidetracked. “So why the interest in them?”

“I’m just out ambulance chasing,” Carla answered. “Even though I’m off work, old habits die hard. Anywhere there are dead shadowrunners, there’s a story. What can you tell me about what happened here?”

Enzo chewed his moustache, then glanced back at the plainclothes detectives. “Is this an official interview? I can’t release names until the next of kin are notified. shouldn’t even be talking to you. If the Homicide sergeant finds out I let anything slip…” He eyed the woman who was directing the plainclothes officers, then glanced even more nervously at the two gangsters in suits.

Carla could see that she was about to lose the slight edge she’d gained. If she didn’t convince Enzo to talk in the next few seconds, he would shoo her back behind the tape, and she’d have to wait until the morning’s press conference to find out what had happened here tonight. If, that was, the local ganglords allowed any press release at all. The shooting might have no connection at all with the shadowrunners’ visit to her apartment. Or it might be a vital link in the chain that would lead to her cracking open the Mitsuhama story.

“Tell you what,” she said, deactivating her cybereye. “We’ll keep this strictly off the record. I won’t use your name, or record your image or voice, and I promise to sit on any names you give me until they’re officially released. I won’t pester the relatives of the victims, and I’ll give you whatever information I dig up that might help the Lone Star investigation.” She favored him with her most winning smile. “If the sergeant asks what you were talking to me about, you can tell her you were finally getting around to asking me out on a second date. Deal?”

She was amused to see the big cop was blushing.

“All right,” he said grudgingly. “I can give you a little, but you’ll have to talk to the detectives-on the record-to get the full story. All I know is that the runner you said was named Raven tried to force Victim Number One to take a walk with him. Victim Number Two intervened to keep his girlfriend from being dragged away. Somebody started shooting, someone else started tossing mana bolts around, and a few minutes later, all three were dead. Or all four, I should say, since the blond elf also seems to have been involved in this.”

“The names and occupations of the two victims?” Carla prompted.

“Victim One-a female human by the name of Miyuki Kishi-is a corporate executive. Victim Two-Akira Hirota-is a Japanese citizen who shares a Puyallup address with Victim One. Judging by his tattoos, he’s a real bad boy. A local yakuza. He and the suit make an odd combination, by anyone’s account. But as they say, love is blind.”

Enzo shrugged. “If you ask me, this thing looks like a lover’s spat that turned ugly. Except, of course, that shadowrunners and a corp exec were involved. That could add up to an extraction attempt.

“Now it’s your turn, Carla. You can’t tell me you just happened to show up here on your way home. You live in Renton. You got an inside scoop on this one?”

Carla forced herself to keep her face expressionless Miyuki Kishi! She was one of the wage mages who’d worked with Farazad Samji on the Lucifer Project. Not only that, but Carla had been on her way to pay her a surprise visit when she heard about the shooting on her scanner. She’d tried arranging an interview with Rolf Hosfeld, the other Mitsuhama wage mage, and hadn’t been able to get past his apartment’s security. And now her only other interview possibility was dead. Drek. It just wasn’t her night. Or Miyuki’s, either.

Presumably, Miyuki had remained loyal to Mitsuhama. By placing the lion-headed dog at the Samji home, she’d been trying to prevent the leak of the corps research project. And so it was highly doubtful that she’d arranged for her own extraction, as Farazad had. Even if that was the case, she’d have been a fool to arrange an extraction on a night that her yakuza boyfriend was tagging along with her. Which meant the attempted kidnapping had taken her by surprise. It was a genuine extraction.

Interesting, that it was carried out by the same two shadowrunners who’d planned to sell Farazad out to the Renraku Corporation. Presumably the runners had already sold Renraku a copy of the spell for conjuring the spirit by now-the copy they’d gotten from Carla’s apartment yesterday afternoon. A copy that was useless without Farazad’s knowledge of how to control the spirit once it was summoned.

Assuming Renraku was the “Mr. Johnson” behind this job, the corporation would have been slotted off at purchasing this incomplete package. Its execs would have demanded that the runners supply them with the missing piece of the puzzle; and the shadow-runners would naturally have assumed that one of the other mages who worked with Farazad would have the key. Too bad for them that the wage mage and her boyfriend had proved such a tough target. Still, the runners had known they were going up against a mage-even if they didn’t realize that a yakuza would be coming along for the ride. The money must have been good indeed.

Enzo was waiting for Carla’s reply.

“It certainly looks like an extraction attempt.” she answered. “The runners were probably after Miyuki Kishi because she works at Mitsuhama Computer Technologies research and development lab. She’d be a valuable target, with her knowledge of Mitsuhama’s research projects.”

Enzo’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know where she worked? I didn’t tell you that.”

Carla’s heart sank as the cop laid a hand on her arm and half turned toward the detectives. “I think I should call the sergeant in on this one,” he said. “You know three out of four victims-hardly a coincidence, if you ask me.”

“I don’t know Miyuki personally,” Carla told him hurriedly. “I’ve never even met the woman. I only recognized her name because of the story I did on an associate of hers-a Mitsuhama employee by the name of Farazad Samji, who died four nights ago. I was going to interview Farazad’s co-workers for the story that KKRU did on his death. Miyuki was one of those who worked with Farazad at the research jab.”

Enzo turned back to listen to her. He’d released her arm, but was keeping a close watch on her, as if worried she’d bolt away. “How did this co-worker die?”

“He apparently summoned up a kind of spirit. I don’t know how or why, but apparently it killed him. The spell Farazad used was recorded on a datachip, which an eyewitness to his death found in his pocket.”

“I remember now,” Euzo said. “The exec who died in the alley. I saw your story on it. So what’s the link? Why do you think what went down tonight was an attempted extraction?”

“The two runners who died tonight ah… contacted me… the day after our story on Farazad aired,” Carla said. She decided to blend truth with fiction. “They tried to talk us into turning over our copy of the spell formula, presumably so they could sell it to someone else. There’s a chance the spell was developed in the Mitsuhama lab, and that another corporation would pay big nuyen for it. But KKRU refused to deal with them.

“Raven and his elf pal seemed to want that spell formula pretty bad,” Carla continued. “Maybe they thought they could get it out of Miyuki. When you come right down to it, my conclusion that this was a corporate extraction is just a guess, really.”

Enzo stared at her in silence. She couldn’t tell if he was buying her story.

“Listen,” she added. “I’ll give you something if you agree not to ask where I got it-and not to tell your sergeant who your source was. Something that could help Homicide crack tonight’s case. If I give it to you, will you let me walk away without having to answer any more questions?”

Enzo folded his aims, considered a moment, then nodded. “All right,” he said at last. “But it better pan out. I know where to find you if it doesn’t.”

“It will.” Carla took a deep breath, then plunged on. It wouldn’t hurt to have the cops do a little investigative work for her. It just might shake something loose. “I have it from a reliable source that the two dead shadowrunners were working for Renraku. Assuming this corporation has other shadowrunners on tap-and in this city, where runners are easy to come by, that’s a given-there may be an attempt to extract another Mitsuhama wage mage. There are two more who worked in the lab with Farazad and Miyuki, Their names are Evelyn Belanger and Rolf Hosfeld.”

Enzo’s eyes widened. “You’re saying they could get hit next.” He reached for the portable radio at his hip. “I’d better call this in. Mitsuhama may want to contract for extra security for those two.”

Carla lifted the crime tape and prepared to duck back under it. “Promise you’ll keep my name out of it?” she asked. She shot a meaningful look at the two burly men in suits. “Since one of your victims is yakuza, there’s bound to be a little heat on this one. And I don’t want the yaks breathing down my neck. I don’t think it would be healthy.”

“All right,” Enzo answered. “As long as you keep quiet about me giving you the names of the victims.” He glanced at the two yaks. “For the same reason.”

“It’s a deal. And we’re still on for that after-hours interview. Call me in a day or two, O.K.?” Carla blew him a kiss and hurried back to her car.