Out of the Black - Lee Doty [27]
"Programming for fun?" Ping asked.
"Definitely not grading papers. Why?"
"Patience. There's some more stuff I need to ask before I can say anything... it's a cop thing." Ping smiled reassuringly. He was pretty sure the kid knew a lot more than he let on. However he was growing more certain that Ahmed didn't know anything about the scene under the bridge. He wanted to get out of inquisition mode before he dropped the bad news.
"Did you get along well with Dr. Lutine?"
"Did I..." the kid trailed off. Oops. "You said 'Did I'." His eyes seemed to glaze with imagined possibilities.
Ping raised his hands for calm. He was going to have to be more careful, "That's not..."
"Oh...my..." Alexander's eyes focused on the tablet resting on the table. "That's Ivo's tablet, isn't it... when?"
"Two this morning." Ping said. "He and his driver were killed in their car just west of the city."
"His driver?" There was an uncertain pause. "Peter Sieberg? Is that who you said before?"
"So you did know him?" Ping prompted.
"No...yes. I think I knew him, but not by that name." There was a blank stare of shock on his face, as if connections were breaking in his mind, leaving him numb.
Or perhaps the connections were forming. "How many other people did you find dead with them?" It was Ping's turn to be shocked.
"How did you...?"
"More than twenty?" The kid looked him dead in the eye.
"We're not sure, the revised count is now between eleven and fifteen... there's a lot of pieces."
"Good!" Ahmed slammed his fist on the coffee table so hard that a few of the keys fell from the bowl and clinked across the glass tabletop. Ahmed looked around the room, face belying an internal struggle. His eyes were glistening with unspent tears, but just when Ping was sure he was going to break down, he clutched the couch's arm and spoke in a decisive tone.
"I'm a dead man." Alexander's eyes locked on Ping's- a drowning man casting about for help, "Dead. And I'm not too sure that you aren't dead too. If Ivo's dead... if they're both dead, we're just as dead."
"I don't know- they're pretty dead." Ping said shaking his head, remembering.
Alexander nodded ominously, and there came a charged moment of silence into which an otherwise innocent sound slithered.
From outside, a key slid into the door's lock.
***
Jin had a mother, but she wasn't here now. No one was left to protect her. Though people surrounded her twitching body on the nightclub floor, no one could turn on lights that would dispel these shadows. There was no refuge from the dark, glistening insects that bored through her.
The swarm of jittering insects continued to pour through the door from darkness. More of her light went out and she was in another place- five years old, running into her mother's room well past midnight. She'd fled the terror of sleep, nightmares still clinging to her like her wet clothes. She knew there was an intruder in the house. Unseen, unheard- but she knew he was there.
But now mother's bed was empty and no covers were deep enough to hide her from this darkness.
Jin screamed like the little girl she had become again. The darkness was all around her, pressing inward. The intruder was here, stalking down the hallways of her mind, blackening everything it touched.
Her body convulsed. It screamed incoherently, clawing at its own flesh. Around it, the circle of jaded dancers widened. They knew the drill. Three bouncers built like trees arrived. The cops and ambulance had already been called. She'd become a statistic.
***
The dual tones of both Ping's guns unlocking sounded nearly simultaneously. They were in his hands, thrust out towards the door. He was off the couch before the door cracked open and moving sideways to keep the opening door between himself and the intruder as long as possible.
Ahmed was still on his couch. His arms had flown out to the sides in surprise at Ping's quick action, but then he'd frozen. His eyes were wide with shock, staring at Ping. Behind him, the door swung wide and