Chief Irons' office was definitely a place that gave Grayson serial killer vibes; no normal person should be as interested in taxidermy as Irons was, who treated the hobby like fine art collecting. His office smelled like chemicals and whiskey, and old man cologne.
Irons was touching up the fur of a stuffed gray wolf, its mouth opened in a silent roar, dead glass eyes staring vacantly into space. He wore one of those little monocle things, like jewelers, or those guys who painted miniatures, and was needling thread into the wolf's skin.
"Tears, Officer Harman, are my worst adversaries," Irons said, forehead beaded with sweat. "What can I help you with?" he asked, without looking at him.
"It's about the S.T.A.R.S op, Chief," Grayson said. "I wanted to ask some things."
"Not your concern, Harman," Irons said, and he finished sewing the tear. He put away his sewing kit, then removed the monocle. Wandering over to his desk, Irons uncorked a crystal decanter of strong-smelling whiskey and poured himself a glass. He sat at his large wooden desk and leaned heavily in his chair, holding the glass on the shelf of his belly. "You've been asking around," he told him. "Word travels pretty quick in the precinct."
"It's just a big deal, Chief," Grayson argued, keeping his tone polite. "S.T.A.R.S got trashed. The ones who are alive are in the hospital. Something is going on. I wanna know if it's something we gotta worry about."
"Look," Irons said, and sipped his whiskey, "I get it, you're worried about Jill." He smiled, and the doughiness of his face exaggerated the smile into something caricature-like. "Don't look so surprised, Harman. Everyone knows about you two. Anyway, you got nothing to worry about. Jill's okay. Everything's under control. You're wasting my damn time."
"If this is a concern for public safety, Chief," Grayson said, his tone barely passing for polite now, "then I don't really think it's a waste of time. Something happened in those mountains." He wanted to say that he knew it was connected to Umbrella, but decided against it. His attention grazed Irons' desk; he noticed a spread of e-mails there, each one signed W.B, and they read pretty belligerently. William Birkin, Grayson was sure; he was the only guy whose initials and condescension matched that kind of vitriolic spew.
"You see something interesting, Harman?" Irons asked, and his voice had a kind of razor-sharp pleasantness that made Grayson's skin crawl.
"No, sorry," Grayson said, and shook his head.
"Okay," Irons said, still smiling. His eyes glinted like cold obsidian beads. "You can leave now."
Grayson nodded, then turned and walked toward the door.
"Harman?"
He looked over his shoulder. Irons sat in deeper shadow, just beyond the halo of light emanating from his desk-lamp. His eyes, in that darkness, looked like the orbital sockets of a skull. "You're a beat cop," he said, with that skin-crawling pleasantness. "Keep it that way."
Grayson nodded, then left the room. He was glad to be out of there. He'd half expected Irons to shoot him in the back, per Umbrella's orders. If Rockfort had ever been anything but a prison, it had been a testament to how far Umbrella went to silence their detractors. Shooting him was pretty within the realm of possibility when it came down to the company protecting their secrets.
But Irons hadn't shot him, which was all that mattered right now. He still had no definitive answers about what had happened in the Arklays, but that didn't matter anymore; Grayson knew something was coming. Irons had told him so without realizing it. He'd said he was a beat cop, and to keep it that way—a warning. And then there were those e-mails from Birkin…
Grayson went downstairs, into the lobby. The same geriatric from before was complaining to the front-desk officer about kids, except they'd vandalized his car this time, and not his lawn. He'd learned the guy was a regular at the precinct, one of those old guys who liked to hear themselves complain—about tattoos, loud music, dogs barking, kids biking past their houses at hours they considered unreasonable.
He noticed Brad across the lobby, who was getting something from the vending machine by the door.
"Brad?"
Brad looked up. "Oh, shit. Harman." Brad looked like he wanted to bolt. "Look," he said, "I'm not in the fucking mo—"
"Jill's in the hospital. So is everyone else. But you're not," Grayson said, and pushed him against the vending machine. He'd never liked Brad; beating the shit out of him would be worth a suspension. "You run away again, Chickenshit?" he asked. "Jill, she didn't mention your name. Said only her, Barry, Rebecca and Chris got outta there alive."
"Let go of me, asshole," Brad said, and he shoved him away.
"You're a sorry fucking excuse, Chickenshit," Grayson snapped, and he wasn't sure if it had been his confrontation with Irons, or the fact Brad was just there, that had riled him up. "You got no business being in S.T.A.R.S, you goddamn fucking coward. Jill's laid up in the hospital while your dumb fucking ass is buying soda from the vending machine."
"If it wasn't for me, they wouldn't have gotten outta there," Brad shot back. "I was flying the chopper that got 'em outta that place, asshole."
"Of course you were," Grayson said, scowling. "Safer that way, right? You wait around on the chopper while the others are getting their asses handed to them."
"Your girlfriend's alive 'cause I got her home," Brad said. "So don't take your shit out on me, Harman. I'm sorry Jill's in the hospital. But that's better than dead, right?"
Grayson resisted the urge to punch him, and stepped away. "Yeah," he said, "it's better than dead."
Brad retrieved his soda from the vending slot. "I gotta get back to work," he said, and shouldered past Grayson, jogging upstairs.
Grayson went home that night with a disciplinary warning. Sherry was staying at his place because she'd said she was lonely, but Grayson knew it was really because of his Nintendo 64. Annette, like pets, treated video games with a certain degree of hostile revulsion, the kind of woman who'd rather see Sherry playing soccer than playing Mario Kart. Not that Grayson blamed Annette; it was the sensible thing for any parent to want, to have their kids playing sports instead of video games. Still, Annette was a little too hard on the kid, and it was nice to see Sherry having fun.
Sherry beat him again, and grinned. "You're really bad at this game, Grayson," she said, giggling.
"Maybe I'm just letting you win?" he teased, and set down the controller on his coffee-table, where last month's issues of Electronic Gaming Monthly, Chicago Review, and The New Yorker sat neglected.
"No, I know when someone lets me win. You're just really bad."
He laughed. "Don't have much time to practice these days," Grayson said, and shrugged. Someone knocked on his door. "One sec, kiddo." He ruffled her hair, and then answered the door.
Annette stood there, still in her lab coat. "Sherry left a note and said she'd come here?" she said.
"Yeah, she's here," Grayson said, and let her inside.
"Mom, I wanna stay here tonight," Sherry said, pouting. "I said so in the note. Please?" She stretched the please for a couple of seconds.
"You can't just invite yourself over to people's homes, Sherry."
Grayson wanted to say that Annette always invited herself over to his place, but because Sherry was there, he said nothing. He just grinned and shut the door behind her. "It's okay," he said, and meant it. "I ordered some pizza, if you're hungry. Just don't touch the chicken strips. Those are Sherry's. She's real territorial about her chicken strips."
Annette sighed. "If Grayson's okay with it, fine."
"I rented some movies, too," Grayson said. "Sherry wanted to see Mulan."
"Mom was supposed to take me to see it," Sherry said.
"Your mom's had a long day, kiddo. Cut her some slack," Grayson said, and looked at Annette, mouthing, "We need to talk."
Annette nodded, and said, "Mind if I go out onto your balcony for a smoke?"
"Not at all," Grayson said, and walked with her to the sliding door. He stepped out after her, sliding it shut behind them. "So I visited Irons today," he said to her, watching her light a cigarette. "Got nothing but a warning from him. He had e-mails on his desk from William. Know something about that?"
Annette took her cigarette between her fingers, the cherry glowing bright orange in the twilight. "William had Irons watching S.T.A.R.S. Among other things," she said, and shook her head, folding her arms across her chest. "Wanted him to up security around the sewers. People were getting nosy, especially the press. Some reporter's been hounding me for an interview. Says it's about Umbrella's upcoming scholarship program, but I somehow doubt that."
"So you gonna give the interview?" he asked.
"If I say no, it just looks suspicious," Annette said. "And maybe it really is just about the scholarship program?" She slipped the cigarette between her lips again, blowing smoke.
"Is Irons in Umbrella's pockets, or William's?" Grayson asked, watching her.
Annette shrugged. "Both, maybe," she said. "Maybe Irons figures he can collect from William, and the company? Two birds with one stone. He walks away with enough money to retire to Mexico."
"You really don't know much about what's going on with William, do you?"
Annette shook her head. "He doesn't really tell me anything, Grayson. You know that. It's how we—well, you know." She finished her cigarette and flicked it over the railing. He wondered how many of the cigarette butts on the sidewalk belonged to Annette.
"How we wound up together," he said, and leaned his arms on the railing.
"Yeah," she said, and nodded, absently running her fingers through her hair. "But don't think I regret it," Annette added quickly, as if she was afraid she'd insulted him. "Because I don't, Grayson. It's just, I don't know. I'd never expected it to work out like this. When I'd first married William, he wasn't a bad guy. He could actually be kind of romantic at times. Now? There's no effort anymore. I feel invisible. And honestly? I feel like I don't even love him anymore, not even a little."
"We don't need to talk about this," Grayson told her, mostly because it was making him uncomfortable. He still had a lot of complicated feelings to untangle, and right now, he didn't want to think about them. "It's okay, Annette. I get it. I'm not offended."
"I'm going to divorce him," Annette said, and there was something different in her voice this time that hadn't been there before, in all the times she'd said that—resolve. "Forget waiting for his fucking research. I'm gonna talk to a lawyer, start the whole process."
"Annette—"
"You sound unsure," Annette said, and frowned. "Did you… change your mind?"
Grayson shook his head. "No," he said, and meant it. "I just have some things to work out."
"With Jill, you mean."
He nodded.
"I understand," Annette said, and she reached over and squeezed his hand. "It's complicated, isn't it?"
He nodded again. "Yeah." Jill, and he still hadn't quite reconciled his feelings about Alexia. Alexia had been dead for fifteen years, but Grayson had never stopped thinking about her, about the woman she might have grown into if life had given her the chance.
No, he told himself, it wasn't life that had denied her the chance. Alexander had, when he'd decided that Alexia had been nothing more than an experiment. If all she'd been was an experiment, then what had she stood to lose? She, in her thirteen-year-old mind, hadn't been human. She'd been a genetically-engineered Pinocchio.
"You all right, Grayson?"
"Yeah, sorry," he said. "Sometimes I fall into my head."
