Detective Humber lived on the third floor of a shabby apartment block that had little to recommend it. Maybe it was convenient for her work or something. It wasn’t that far from Central. Someone had spray painted the security droid manning the lobby doors an almost fluorescent shade of pink, and decorated it with yellow flowers. It looked quite fetching really, but it did nothing to secure the building. It was obviously busted; it had a bucket on its head.

David walked right on in.

Outside her apartment door, he pressed the buzzer and waited. The door didn’t open and she didn’t say anything, but he felt her arrive on the other side. He assumed she was checking him out using the peep camera above the door. All the apartments had them at least. Minimal security at most, but better than nothing. He eyed the lock on her door doubtfully. It was digital, but again it seemed basic. He was sure she must earn enough for better security than this. Why was she living in a low rent dump? Not his business.

“You going to open the door, de-tec-tive?” he said trying out Angel’s impudent drawl, and heard her growl a curse. He grinned. “Come on, you know you’re curious.”

“How did you get my address?” Chris said, her voice muffled by the door.

“Angel gave it to me.”

“She wouldn’t do that. Try again.”

He shrugged. “She did, so I’m not going to try again.” The door cracked open. He raised his hands when he saw the huge boomer in her fist. “Don’t shoot, I surrender, I come in peace, blah blah. Can I come in?”

She lowered her gun, but the scowl remained in place. “Smart arse aren’t you?”

“So they tell me. Do you want to do this in the hall?”

She stepped back and opened the door wider

He entered the apartment and waited for her to re-lock the door before following her into the main room. The space surprised him. She had it nicely painted in warm cheerful colours—pale yellow walls and bright white ceilings. She had chosen comfortable furnishings, not flashy, but not cheap junk either. From the outside, the entire block looked like a dump, but inside it was really rather nice, well, her apartment was anyway. He smelled fresh coffee coming from the kitchen. The vid screen was on with the sound low. She had Channel 5’s news segment on, and yes, it was still reporting on the attack upon Marie Stirling’s home.

“What do you want?”

He waved a hand at the screen. “Stephen was there. He’s missing like Michael.”

Chris’ eyes narrowed. “Why was he there?”

“He was invited to discuss the proposed acquisition of various properties in Monster Central by Techtron.”

“Ah ha,” she said, not sounding convinced. “What was the real reason?”

“Techtron’s involvement with AML.”

That surprised her. She tucked her gun in the waistband of her pants. There was a holster there at the small of her back. She led him into her little kitchen and raised the coffee jug and an eyebrow.

“Black, please,” he said and watched her pour two cups. He took a sip of his and frowned at how bitter it tasted. She couldn’t make coffee for shit. “Thanks.” He put the cup aside. “I need your help.”

“Why mine?”

“You’re a badge.”

“I’m on leave.”

“I won’t tell him if you don’t.”

She raised that very mobile eyebrow again. “Tell who?”

“An ex-colleague of mine. Doctor George Hoberman.”

“And how is he connected to this?”

“He came to my house with a pair of AML thugs not long after I was discharged from hospital and tried to recruit me. I think we both know that AML are involved with the latest abductions, and Hoberman is involved with AML. I think if anyone knows what they’re up to, he might, and more to the point, he’ll fold at the sight of your badge where a hard core fanatic won’t.”

“Point,” she said nodding. “You’re sure he knows what’s going on?”

“No, but there’s a chance. I don’t know anyone who supports AML... I don’t think I do anyway. If I do, they’ve kept very quiet about it. He’s the only one who I can point to that I’m certain has worked with them. You?”

“No one still free, no.”

He nodded. “Will you come with me to talk with him?”

“Let’s go.”

Hoberman looked ghastly. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and his skin was sallow. He was wearing wrinkled pants and a blue shirt open at the neck. No sign of his habitual tie, and he had slippers on his feet. Well why not? He was at home relaxing. Why shouldn’t he dress for comfort? No reason that David could think of, but he didn’t look comfortable. He looked stressed and very unlike the powerful man he’d known.

Hoberman looked ten years older and worried when he opened the door. Chris’ badge had been enough to get him to open it, but David had kept out of sight until that point. When Hoberman recognised him approaching, he tried to slam the door closed, but Chris had already pushed inside enough to hold it. David shoved the door the rest of the way open easily. He was very strong these days. Hoberman staggered as the door flew out of his hands to slam against the wall, and backed fearfully away.

“Evening, George,” David said cheerfully and closed the door. “May I introduce De-tec-tive Humber?”

Chris gave him a dirty look. “Nice to meet you. Call me Detective.”

“What do you want?”

“I think you know,” David said. “Don’t you?”

“I’ll ask the questions,” Chris said and addressed herself to Hoberman. “Do you?”

“No I don’t.”

“Hmmm. I’m sorry Doctor Hoberman, but I’ve been in this job a long time and I know when someone is lying to me. Please don’t do that. I don’t like wasting my time. Let’s try again. I’ll ask questions, you answer questions truthfully, and we part friends. All clear so far?”

Hoberman’s shoulders sagged and he nodded miserably. He turned away and led them into a sitting room. He collapsed onto a couch and put his face in his hands. David could feel the defeat rolling off him, and scent his fear and despair in the air. A frisson of excitement went down his spine and he shuddered at the feeling. He liked it that Hoberman feared him, and so did Mist. Of course the wolf took it only as their due. The less powerful should fear them. It was part of The Way.

Something had pushed Hoberman to the edge of emotional collapse. He tried not to gloat, but what goes around comes around as they say. This man had made his life hard when he was a junior doctor and had later tried to blackmail him. For all he knew, AML had been doing his bidding when they shot Mist that night. The wolf snarled, remembering the burning agony of silver in his guts.

David tried to put some warmth in his voice, but it was hard. “What’s happened to you, George? You don’t look well.”

Chris glared at him. He could read her expression like words. Let me handle it, she was thinking. He nodded to her and stepped figuratively back from things. He had wanted her along for her expertise. It would be foolish not to use it, but he wouldn’t leave it all to her. He would get what he needed out of Hoberman if she couldn’t.

“How did you get involved with AML, Doctor Hoberman?” Chris began smoothly. She was enquiring, not condemnatory at all, not accusing, and she certainly didn’t call him a raving idiot racist fanatic, which he manifestly was and she knew it.

Good trick that.

“Wilson came to me,” Hoberman began. “I swear I didn’t ask for this. He came to me!”

“Wilson is?”

“Christopher Wilson; he’s Techtron’s Chief of Operations—number two in the corporation below Stirling himself. I met him at a fundraiser and we got talking about things. He mentioned the coming election and said Techtron was looking for a cause to back. I don’t know why he chose me, but he said I would make a good candidate for Mayor, especially if backed by Techtron’s resources.”

“He probably found out about your AML leanings,” David sneered and received twin glares from his audience. He shrugged them off. “Truth is truth. You can’t go around saying what you do and not expect it to be noticed. Rumours spread. It’s what happens.”

Hoberman nodded reluctantly. “I won’t apologise for it. I say what I think and I won’t be silenced simply because it isn’t polite or politically correct. Wilson was quite insistent about my campaign being something worth his attention and before I knew it, I had AML bodyguards and Techtron funding. I had high ratings in the polls and a good campaign manager and PR. I was on my way to election, I’m sure of it.”

“But?” Chris said when he failed to go on. “What changed?”

“I heard some things. I confronted Wilson and demanded to know if what I’d heard was true. He didn’t even try to deny it! I told him I wouldn’t be party to murder, and he told me I would do what I was told or else he would withdraw funding. I told him I wouldn’t be held hostage that way, and be damned.”

“Good for you, George!”

“It was the end of my bid for Mayor. He pulled Techtron’s support and my campaign collapsed.”

“Go back to where murder became involved. Whose murder, where and when?” Chris said. She was, after all, first and foremost a murder cop.

“We aren’t talking names—”

“I think we are. In fact, I insist.”

“I don’t mean it that way. I mean that I didn’t hear names. It was an AML campaign with Techtron’s backing, or maybe it was just Wilson backing it considering recent events.”

“You mean William Stirling’s death. You think Wilson was behind that?”

“I think AML was behind it, but Wilson will benefit hugely from it. Stirling was a thorn in his side. You wouldn’t believe how many of his projects and schemes that Stirling vetoed over the years. He told me about some of them. Stirling dead, his daughter inherits but she’s missing... convenient, yes?”

Goddess he sounded bitter. He supposed Hoberman felt hard used by Wilson, and from a political point of view, he certainly had been used. Hoberman had been a pleasant face pasted over AML’s grinning death’s head. He was a bigot and racist, but he had drawn the line at murder. David supposed that was a good thing, but he couldn’t find it within himself to feel sorry for him. He should have known what he was signing up for the first day that AML sent bodyguards to shadow him.

Chris continued her interrogation. “What is AML’s endgame here? I can see how taking out Techtron’s CEO is good for Wilson, but what connects them other than money? Is it only the money?”

“That’s part of it. Wilson gains control of Techtron in exchange for funding AML’s new campaign, and for a time, mine as well. Everyone knows what AML ultimately wants. You don’t need me to tell you that they want a world free of non-humans.”

“So do you,” David said and Hoberman glared. “It’s true. I’ve heard your views, remember?”

“Then I didn’t explain myself very well. I do not want genocide. I want separation. That should be clear enough for anyone to understand. Even you, Doc—Mister Lephmann. Shifters are dangerous, vampires are dangerous, ghouls, zombies, demons... all non-humans creatures are dangerous! They can kill us, infect us, and even eat us! They infect us and steal our humanity or our immortal souls, and you wonder why I want them segregated?”

“We’re veering away from the main point,” Chris said.

“Do you think so? I think AML’s views are at the heart of it. I don’t hold with Newman’s fanatical ideals—they’re tantamount to genocide, but I understand where he derives them from. Fear. I’m not ashamed to admit I fear you, David. I fear you, I fear your kind, and I fear what your kind does to ordinary people like me and to our society. Every human changed is a tragedy; every human turned is a tragedy.”

John Newman was a name well known in the Republic. He led the Anti-Monster League, and his ideals empowered its members to greater and greater atrocities against non-humans every year. He was a fugitive now, but a remarkably successful one in that he still ran his organisation despite having to hide from the federal government. A cynical man might believe the feds weren’t really interested in capturing him, and be right in his opinion.

“And you have the answer, don’t you?” he said.

“In the past we hunted and killed non-humans to protect ourselves, but now our young people seek them out wanting to join them! Some want excitement or the thrill of danger, but more and more are choosing the dubious benefits of immortality offered by vampires, or they’re seduced by the allure of longer healthier lifespans offered by shifters. The young are the future of the human race, and they’re being stolen from us!”

David laughed. “Paranoia.”

“Fact!” Hoberman rebutted. “My answer might not satisfy Newman’s fanatics, but it would work. Non-human enclaves administered and even protected by the federal government and the military.”

“Prisons,” David said flatly. “Worse. Concentration camps. Are you insane? Do you realise what would happen if your idea became reality?”

“We would be safe from things like you!”

“No you wouldn’t. Do you really think the elves would let you pen them up? Do you think the vampires would or my people? Wake up man! Look to Europe if you want to know what will happen. What you propose has been tried. It led to the last War of Races!”

He wasn’t an expert in European history by any means, but he knew the basics. The human-elven pact had ended the last War of Races, but only because the elves agreed to the founding of the Empire as a way of controlling the human population. It was a last ditch effort to prevent the continual persecution of the elves and by extension non-humans in general.

The Empire ruled all of Europe even to this day and had successfully kept the peace between the races. The half-elven emperors and empresses ruled from palaces in London and Berlin, alternating between the two every few years. The monarchies of Europe were so intermarried with each other and the elves that none was pure human any longer, and that more than anything had kept the peace.

Hoberman’s idea of segregation was the polar opposite of what was known to have worked in Europe, not that the elves living on this continent would dream of interbreeding with humans. They were as racist as Hoberman in their own way. They preferred to keep their bloodlines pure and free of human contamination, and looked sort of sideways at their kin in Europe for not doing the same.

“Now who is giving in to paranoia?” Hoberman said.

“You’re an idiot.”

“And you’re a—”

“Shut up both of you!” Chris said, glaring them both into silence. “We have bodies on the ground and people missing. I don’t have time or patience to listen to two little boys argue the toss over history lessons we all learned in eighth grade. I don’t give a crap about what the elves would or wouldn’t do, or what they think! What I care about is finding out where the missing people are. Do you know?”

Hoberman shook his head sullenly.

“Who might?”

“Wilson maybe. It depends on how much AML trusted him, or how much he distrusted them. If I had his resources I would have made it my business to find out as much about them as I could.”

David shook his head in disgust. “To blackmail them with you mean.”

Chris glared David into silence again. “Fine. Wilson is already on my shit list anyway. Now I have another reason to interview him. Let’s go.”

David followed as Chris stalked away

Hoberman hurried to catch up. “He won’t talk. Hells, he won’t even see you!”

“He will,” Chris said confidently, and opened the door to let herself out. “My badge will get us in.”

“And his high powered lawyers will see you right out again!”

“We’ll see.”

David watched her go for the elevator and secretly thought Hoberman might be right this time. “Keep your head down, George. This is likely to blow up in all our faces soon.”

Hoberman nodded. He didn’t exit his apartment, choosing instead to stand in the open doorway. “It’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve taken some vacation time and don’t plan on leaving my apartment for the next few weeks.” He looked down, obviously wanting to say more but hesitating. “I didn’t lie that day in your room. I really did try everything to save you from... from this.”

“This? You can’t even say it, can you? I’m a shifter. Say it.”

Hoberman glared. “I tried to save you,” he said and slammed the door in David’s face.

He heard the locks click.

“Are you coming or what?” Chris said holding the elevator doors.

“Seeing as I’m driving, that should probably be my line,” he said joining her in the elevator. “Where are we going?”

“Where do you think? To see Wilson of course.”

“Okay. Do you know where to find him at this time of night?”

“No, but I know how to find out,” Chris said and raised her link. “We detectives know stuff.”

“Hmph!”

Wilson apparently, was one of those workaholic night owls that David had heard tell of, but had never met. According to Chris’ sources, he was currently in his office at Techtron making billions of dollars or something for the mega corporation that he oversaw, and probably performing his evil overlord impression for his AML friends. David could easily imagine it. Such powerful men had reputations for being ruthless manipulators, and after talking with Hoberman, he was prepared for that to be the case here.

He drove them to the Techtron Building and into its parking facility beneath the massive chrome and glass needle-like tower. He parked as soon as he could and then rode the elevator up to the penultimate floor where Wilson held sway. Chris was quiet beside him, thinking cop thoughts, and tapping her thigh impatiently as the elevator raced for the 119^th floor without stops.

“Do you credit Hoberman’s story?” he asked to break the uncomfortable silence.

“Hmmm.”

“Was that a yes hmmm, or a no hmmm?”

Her lips twitched toward a smile. “Yes.”

“Which?”

“Yes I think he was telling the truth. It doesn’t mean it is the truth, only that he believes it is.”

“You’re no help.”

“Be still my heart! My purpose in life isn’t to make yours easier. I’m only here because there’s a chance Marie Stirling is still alive and in need of my help. I’m here because if Wilson knows where she is, I might be able to get my hands on Michael Fabron. Remember him? The vampire who turned O’Neal and allowed him to run amok killing nine women in my city?”

“No need for snark.”

“You think that was snark? You haven’t heard snark. I don’t give a crap about your vampire. I have my own vamp to find. If Stephen is being held in the same place as Marie Stirling, then fine, I’ll help him too, but make no mistake—I’m looking for justice for nine dead women not to save a vampire from AML.”

“Fair enough.”

The doors opened and let them out on the 119^th floor. It was late and the offices were deserted. They followed the signs and found their way to Wilson’s outer office and reception area. A feminine android was in charge of the reception desk at this time of night. David noticed that Chris seemed reluctant to approach it, and wondered why.

“Shall I?” he said waving a hand toward the pleasantly smiling machine.

“I’ll handle it,” she said and marched up to the desk. “Detective Humber, Robbery Homicide Division out of Central to see Christopher Wilson.”

The android smiled. “I’m sorry, Detective; he is not accepting appointments or receiving visitors this evening. May I make an appointment for you to see him tomorrow?”

David grinned as Chris growled something unpleasant that she would like to do to the dumb machine.

The android blinked very realistically and the smile disappeared. “Vandalism of this unit will result in legal action and your removal from the building by security.”

Chris presented her badge. “Scan it and override security.”

The android checked the badge and the smile was back. “Security override confirmed.”

“Take us to Wilson.”

“If you will follow me, Detective?”

David chuckled, and Chris glared at him. “That was entertaining.”

The android led the way to an office door. It knocked and waited, still smiling. There was no answer. It knocked again and waited. David got the impression it would continue all night, stuck in a loop. Chris didn’t have the patience to find out. She ignored the android’s protests and opened the door.

“Well... hell,” Chris muttered.

David peered into the office over the cop’s shoulder at Wilson’s corpse sitting behind his desk with a hole in his head and a matching pair in his chest. “Damn. I guess he felt so guilty that he shot himself.”

“Yessss” Chris drawled. “That’s it. You’ve solved the mystery. He shot himself in the heart twice, but felt so guilty about his part in AML’s campaign that he shot himself in the head for good measure.”

He smirked. “Not.”

“Not, and you better take off. I have to call this in.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

“I have to. Building security will have us all nicely recorded arriving in the lot and coming up here. I have to stay to guide things in the right direction. I can keep you out of it.”

“I could stay to give a statement.”

“You already did.”

“I did?”

“You gave it to me.”

“Oh yeah, I remember now.” He smiled at her. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Really. Don’t. Not to anyone.”

“Understood. See you back at the club?”

“Maybe,” she muttered and took another look at Wilson. “I’ll call first.”

He nodded and left her to make her call.

“Baxter I need you,” Chris began. “Get your brain out of the gutter! Goddess damn it all, how does Mary Pat put up with you? Listen, I have a corpse here for you... no I’m not kidding...”

David grinned, shaking his head in disbelief as he made his way back to the elevators.