Accelerated by Vaughn Heppner Page A

said. “We shipped the body to Switzerland, to Geneva. It went out yesterday morning.”
    I pulled out a recorder and spoke the Swiss address, the airline and the transshipment number.
    “You’ve been helpful,” I said, as I clicked off the recorder and shoved it into my coat. “Thanks.” I put the three extra bills by her keyboard.
    She grabbed the money and stuffed it away.
    “Walk me to the door and buzz me out,” I said.
    Swiveling in her chair, Alice regarded me. “My brother is a weightlifter, and by the looks of it he could twist you into a pretzel. But I’ve never had anyone grab me as hard as you did back there, and my brother and I used to wrestle.”
    “Steroids,” I said. “I inject them straight into the muscles. Sometimes I get steroid rages.”
    Her features tightened. Then she got up and walked me to the door. She pressed a button and it buzzed. I took my leave, hurrying for my car, certain she was going to call security.
    ***
    It was hot by the time I climbed into the Ford. I powered down a window and looked for a place to buy a Coke.
    That hadn’t been the way to handle Alice. She might go to the police, and that would complicate matters. Money often unlocked doors, but it also made people curious, and it made them wary.
    I soon forgot about Alice and the morgue as I thought about Kay’s corpse airlifted to Switzerland. The move implied the Shop. Did the Chief first ship the body to Geneva so he could later send it by train to Milan? It looked like the Chief was one step ahead of me.
    Why hide the body?
    If Kay had new abilities, if her corpse showed those abilities, that was reason to hide it. It made me wonder if the Shop or Polarity Magnetics had tried to recreate the accident in Geneva. Were they attempting to make more…super-people? It was looking more and more likely.
    The heat coming off the street and the pollution stinging my nose made me power up the window. It was hotter in Long Beach than in San Francisco, much more than the four hundred miles should have warranted. One of the things I loved about the Bay Area was its cooler summer weather. Mark Twain had said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” The nearly constant breeze in Frisco swept away the pollution better than here.
    As I cruised through the streets, I noticed that the women here showed more skin. Many wore pink or white shorts and had ultra-tanned legs. Everyone wore sunglasses, so I fit in perfectly. Well, maybe not perfectly. I passed some used car lots and noticed names like Hernandez and Reyes. There were more taco shops than burger joints.
    It was midmorning already and I passed lowriders with mariachi music blaring, or rap with its rhythmic drone. The colors were brighter in Long Beach, the shops a bit more rundown like a Latin American country. Too many had iron bars over the windows. As compensation, perhaps, the faces were friendlier and there was a sense of life. The graffiti on various walls was stylish and often artistic. Sometimes, however, it reminded me of a bear scratching a territorial tree in the woods.
    My cell buzzed. I looked around to see if there were any cops. Finding none, I took it out, checked and answered.
    “How goes it, Blake?”
    “Good enough,” he said. “The police were cooperative; they answered all my questions.”
    Maybe I should have let him handle Alice. “Did you learn anything interesting?” I asked.
    “Everything happened just as the newspaper described it,” Blake said. “It was strictly by the numbers.”
    I frowned. “Were the police lying to you?”
    “Yes, I think so.”
    “They were hiding something?”
    “Exactly,” he said.
    “Do you know what?”
    “No.”
    “They weren’t cooperative then,” I said.
    “They answered all my questions.”
    “With lies,” I said.
    “No. I’m sure they laced the lies with the truth, which is quite different from lying outright.”
    “Sure,” I said. Why had the cops lied to Blake?