Teeth of the Wolf

Teeth of the Wolf ebook-14-2

Time was he would sit in his prison cell, eyes closed, seeking something like zen, a hiding place where Makere couldn’t get to him. It hadn’t really worked then, but he tries to recapture it now, to find an empty space in his head to just sit and breathe. The shower soaks him, runs through his hair, his eyes closed, his breathing slow and rhythmic, until the water swirling down the plughole runs clean. Then he turns the chair, drags it back under the showerhead, and sits. He can’t let Penny know, but standing is an effort. Almost as much of an effort as thinking. The back of his skull alternately aches and tingles in pulsing waves. He just wants to sleep, and he knows enough about hitting people in the head to understand this is a bad sign. Could be a concussion. Could go to sleep and not wake up.

Focus, bro. Get your s**t together. So much going on, how does it all fit? The stiff in the park, Erica’s missing sister with the crazy grasses inside her house and the baby-making going on, the mysterious black van chasing them, Kingi and his tentacles constantly jumping in front of his car, what happened to Screech, Makere threatening first Mārama and then Penny, this body they pulled out of the mud and which someone then had the balls to steal right off the street. Who the hell would want that smelly thing, anyway? At least the missing body distracted Penny enough that she forgot about the state of the car, or how he got himself all battered and bleeding. Thoughts stream through the empty spaces like the water running over him. Different currents, but somehow connected. Crossing over, combining, but all running down to the same place. Or maybe not connected at all, just intersecting because he happens to be caught in the middle. It’s not all about you, bro.

Oh, fantastic. No voice in his head anymore, but he’s talking to himself like there is. That’s progress. If only he could get some sort of short, sharp wake-up call to make everything clear. If only…

Something in the plumbing clicks, and the hot water runs cold.

Matiu yelps, instantly chilled to the bone. He staggers up, slips, goes down on one knee, feels an overwhelming urge to vomit, manages to scramble to the toilet in time to void his stomach, and slumps to the floor against the wall. Shivering, naked, mouth hot with the taste of acid, he watches the water spray down from the shower. All those streams, cascading away from each other, then clashing as they hit the floor, swirling together.

The solution is not that everything’s linked. Kingi had nothing to do with Penny’s bodies, like Charlotte’s disappearance is unrelated to Makere. It doesn’t have to be connected, it isn’t some sort of f*****g jigsaw puzzle that’ll all snap together and make sense. Life, the world, are spirals constantly spinning apart and sometimes colliding. Like koru in the bush, rubbing against one another in the wind. Stop looking for patterns in the chaos. Look for the chaos engine instead, what drives the spirals.

Matiu grins, shakily clambering to his feet and flushing the toilet. Deliberately, he steps back under the freezing shower, leaning hard on the chair, lets the water run through his mouth and rinse the taste away. The cold reminds him he’s human, vulnerable, and that things can always get suddenly, painfully worse. But if he stands here long enough, he’ll go numb, and the pain will go away. When he shuts the water off, the warmth of the air is a relief. Now all he needs is some really good painkillers, and maybe a nice, strong coffee. One thing he can’t afford right now is to give in to the need to sleep.

- Pandora -

Back in the lab, Penny takes her lab coat from its designated hook and slips it on. She breathes deeply, her olfactory receptors alert for the fruity nuances of ketones and the cleansing odour of decontaminant. She exhales. Breathes in again, feeling her anxiety leach away. Works every time. The lab is her sanctuary and this lab coat her protective chainmail, even if it is only a 65% polyester: 35% cotton twill mix.

Better start by fixing things with Beak.

The fridge murmurs its approval as she crosses the lab in search of her technician, the soles of her shoes squeaking on the linoleum. Beaker is cowering at the far end of the lab, feeding Cerberus the meat filling from sandwiches left over from lunch.

He jumps to his feet. “Pandora…Penny.” Pushing Cerberus’ nose aside, Beaker stuffs the empty bread crusts into a container. “Is your brother OK?” He cradles the lunchbox under his arm like a rugby ball.

“He’s fine, although the same can’t be said for Dad’s car.”

Beaker grimaces in sympathy. “Ouch. Look, Penny, that joke I made about the body…”

Penny fends off his excuses with a wave. “It’s not your fault, Beak. I overreacted. It’s been a trying day.”

“I’m sure it’ll turn up,” he says cheerfully, Cerberus nudging him for more of his lunch.

“Hmm.” Penny’s brow wrinkles.

Beaker hurriedly changes the subject. “I’ve had a look at the samples from this morning’s John Doe.”

“Find anything?”

“Nothing notable from the bench seat samples, except to confirm that at some point the North Shore council was using lead-based paint.”

Penny guffaws. “Well, that’s hardly surprising, is it? That bench seat must have been there since the dawn of time; definitely pre-1980. Anything else?”

“Traces of what looks to be diethylamide of lysergic acid in the skin cells.”

“LSD?” Penny nods. “Drug abuse. It would have to have been a massive dose. Still, that fits with my observations at the scene; our John Doe looked to have been living rough.”

“It’s not conclusive, though.”

She smiles. “No, not conclusive.” Because there were those expensive Saveas. Why hadn’t he sold them? “Clark’s hoping to convince the pathologist to give me another look at the body. If that happens, I’ll make sure we get some additional tissue samples. Blood. Stomach contents…Nothing else of note?”

“Not yet. I still have a few assays to complete.”

Penny glances at the readout on the incubator behind him. “It’s already nearly five. They can wait until tomorrow.”

“I don’t mind staying late.”

“Beak. Don’t make me raise my voice.”

Flushing pink, Beaker ducks his head. “OK, OK, I’m going. Night, Boss.”

When he’s gone, and Matiu is still wallowing in the wet room, Penny goes to the cold store to retrieve the windscreen sample from this morning. Fingerprinting this sample will place Kingi on the bridge, and help prove he followed them from Little Shoal. And if she puts the assay on now, there’ll be enough time for the Breadmaker™ to run its full cycle before Craig picks her up for dinner.

Still standing in the cool room, she snaps on a pair of gloves, cuts the sample tape, placing half the sample in a cuvette, then pipettes in the DDT/proteinase solution, primer, and polymerase. That done, she returns to the lab and gives the cuvette a quick spin in the table-top centrifuge. 15,000 RCF should do it. She sets the RPM and listens to the quiet hum as the machine accelerates. Matiu was right. Just a few minutes working, and already she’s feeling calmer. Of course, it’s well documented that people find comfort in positive routines. Psychology papers cite the classic case of those 33 Chilean miners, victims of a rock fall, who waited months to be rescued. Giving the trapped men work assignments distracted them from their trauma, and instilled them with a sense of purpose. In some cases, it may have helped to maintain their sanity. Those papers were published decades ago now and, let’s face it, psychology isn’t the hardest science, but clearly there’s something to the theory. And happily, no one is asking Penny to move 4,000 tonnes of rock! The situation is still dire—it’s not every girl who can discover a bog body and lose it in the same day—but panicking isn’t going to change anything. Either the robbers have plans for it, and are keeping it suitably refrigerated until they reveal their purpose, or they’ll dispose of it.

Please let them have it safely refrigerated somewhere.

After a minute, the centrifuge pings and she removes the cuvette. The spun down solution is as black as octopus ink. She’s holding it up to the light when Matiu comes out of the bathroom, his t-shirt dangling in one hand and his torso bare.

“Penny? A little help?”

“Coming.” She slides the cuvette into the Breadmaker™, closes the lid, and presses start. The machine will do the rest: incubating the sample in situ, vortexing off the buffer, and carrying out annealing and digestion phases on the eluted DNA. All she has to do is wait. She snaps off her gloves and throws them into the recycling receptacle. Wipes her hands on the back of her lab coat. Time to find out how Matiu mashed up the car.

- Matiu -

“Thanks,” Matiu says as Penny helps him into his dirty shirt, regretting he doesn’t have a spare stash of clean clothes tucked away in the lab like she always does. The rush of nervous energy has drained away, and now he’s just sore, worn down, exhausted. Liquid energy is in order. He fires up the coffee machine, then pulls out the first aid kit from under the bench. Penny follows, a tension in her shoulders like she’s walking on rusty nails. “You want a coffee?” he asks.

Penny looks him over like a vet might regard a tortured Rottweiler: beaten animals can seem timid one moment but might never be more than a heartbeat away from violence. “I’d love one,” she says cautiously.

“Excellent, can you make me a long black while you’re at it?” He continues to rummage in the first aid kit.

“You’re unbelievable,” Penny huffs, glaring at him, but as he starts wrapping a clean dressing around his arm, she steps up to the Caffe Espress and punches in the commands for their refreshments.

However much Penny might love her lab equipment, the coffee machine was probably her single wisest investment. At times like this, the world might as well end if not for the ready availability of coffee. Thankfully, the shifting climate had allowed growers to cultivate good beans down in the Rimutakas and the Kaimai Ranges after the costs of shipping them from South America made coffee the express domain of the über-wealthy, for a time. Why the hell hadn’t he thought to invest in coffee plantations in his youth, instead of boosting cars and selling drugs and generally making a social nuisance of himself? That’s hindsight for you.

“So, you want to tell me what happened?” she says, clunking a cup down on the bench beside him and going back to make her own. “Who’s been beating you up this time?”

Matiu stifles a raw chuckle. “You should see the other guy.” Penny doesn’t need to know what happened at the chop shop. Wouldn’t believe him anyway. All he needs to do is keep an eye out, watch for Makere, figure what that sly bastard’s next move is going to be. Not let Penny out of his sight.

She turns, her knuckles white on the handle of the mug. “Is it something to do with that message about IVF meds? Did you have a run in with the angry relatives, is that it?”

“Who in the what, now? No! That was something else. I was just asking for a friend. Don’t go knitting any booties, sis.” He cinches off the bandage and scratches Cerberus behind the ears. The dog leans into his legs, whining low and soft. He’s got a phone call to make, before he forgets.

“Well, what happened to car 55?”

Matiu throws up a hand. “Place I took the car to get work done had a fire break out. Bad timing is all.” He pulls his phone from his pocket and taps at the screen, the coffee staring up at him from the white expanse of the benchtop like a cyclopean black eye.