ROM squinted. “What?”
“Vagabond was kidnapped into sex ring. Probably grew up in that ring. If Vagabond hasn’t bullshitted us completely, Merryman is the guy who bought him. Instead of just renting for the hour.”
That slapped the woman so hard she sat back, hard, in her chair. “Wha--? A sex ring? Where’d you get that?”
“It’s the case file I stole all this from,” Orbis said, still raving. “A pedophila network.” He turned and—
ROM rose, and grabbed his hand. “Don’t you go after Vagabond.”
“That’s exactly what I am going to do.”
“Jus’ wait. Think! Why didn’t Vagabond say anything about this? Ever think about that?”
“Because the man is crazy!”
“Yeah,” ROM said, calmly. “He is. And that means he’ll fry you as much as look at you, if you get all Navy SEAL on his ass. You wanna take that on?”
Orbis stared at her grip on him until she got religion and let go. “I. Want. My. Life. Back.”
“Fine. Same here. Getting my life back? All for it. But if Vagabond’s been holdin’ out, you gonna need a hell of a lot more than that photo.”
“San Francisco Police Department,” Bo announced, bursting into Dr. Veracruz’s office. “Is the doctor in?”
The secretary was at his back. “I’m sorry, Dr. Veracruz! I told him you were busy—“
“What the hell?” Manny said, rising at the noise. “Bo? I’m with a patient—”
The cop rounded on the young woman, eyed her all of two seconds, and said, “Here’s why your life sucks: It’s all your fault.”
Manny gawked. “BO! Ms. Williams, I do apologize for this officer—“
“Vagabond lied,” Bo hissed. “From the start, he lied. Why do you think he gets so nutty around you?”
That shut him up. Manny paused. “Ms. Williams,” he said at length, “this is Officer Bo Bronsky of the SFPD, for whom I consult on occasion. I’m afraid I have to cut this session short. We won’t charge for this round.”
As the two women walked out and closed the door, both heard Manny very uncharacteristically yell to the officer “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
“Vagabond was kidnapped and sold into a human trafficking ring.”
Manny’s voice caught his throat. “What?” he croaked. “When did that happen?”
“When he was a boy.”
“How the hell did you find that out?”
“I really wish you could see right now,” Orbis muttered. “I came across a photo from an investigation. One we were told to stop.”
“Stop? Why—“
“The photo is Vagabond. Maybe seven years old, but it’s him. ROM aged the photo.”
“Age progression is inexact at best—“
“It’s him!” Orbis pressed. “He was bought and sold and he never told us. He’s never told us anything about his past. The only thing we know about his life is at and after Merryman’s assassination.”
“Assassination? It was a drive-by—“
“The hell is was. Merryman was eliminated.”
Manny held up is hands. “Whoah, whoah, whoah. Let’s back up. OK, let’s just assume you’re not a raving lunatic pulling shit out of thin air and what you say is true. Why ‘eliminate’ him?”
Orbis crossed his arms. “My best guess—“
“’Guess?’”
“—is that he was going to come clean about boy-Vagabond. At first, I thought Vagabond was a kept boy exacting revenge. Now I think he was completely fucked up to begin with, and went off the deep end when Merryman got shot. Vagabond keeps talking about how ‘they got Paul,’ but he never gave any hint on who ‘they’ were. We never asked because it looked like an anonymous drive-by. Because he’s never said, we’ve never figured it out! It was a needle in a field-full of haystacks.”
Manny was quiet for a moment, mulling the idea, trying to get things in a linear progression. “OK. Let’s start over. Hypothetically, why would Vagabond keep something like that a secret?”
Orbis recalled ROM’s dime-store psychology that, nevertheless, had a twisted logic. “I don’t think Vagabond wants admit what happened to him. He may be the world’s most powerful psionic, but he’s still a victim of abuse — and in total denial of it. But he wants to find Paul’s killer. He has two…I don’t know, ‘drives’ that are working at cross-purposes. He wants to forget whatever it was that happened to him when he was trafficked, and still find the killer, and I’ll bet you that killer, or killers, are members of the ring.”
Manny crossed his arms. “That is a pretty out-there theory, Bo.”
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