Read Finch by Jeff VanderMeer for Free Online Page B

Partial came to talk to them. Or after the Partial came to talk.
    Finch had a simple formula. A polite knock. Short questions, in a
friendly tone. Didn't like to go in like Blakely, guns blazing. Or like
Gustat, using threats to coerce. They got information, sure. But not
always the right information.
    He worked the long line of closed doors to either side of the discolored,
torn carpet. At the fifth door, a mother answered, holding her son. Maybe
five or six, born around the time of the Rising. The mother looked worn.
Pale and thin. Probably starving herself to feed the child. Probably thought
that holding the kid would make Finch play nice. The kid's open, eager
face confounded Finch. Almost like seeing another species. Parents kept
their children hidden. Went out to forage for them. Finch's father had
done the same for him. During the wars.

    "What do you want?" she asked.
    Finch decided he wanted nothing. Asked a couple of easy
questions. Showed her the photo of the dead man. The woman
didn't recognize him.
    Tried a couple more doors. A middle-aged man in a tank top and
shorts answered holding a frying pan. For defense? For dinner? Either
way, he didn't know anything, hadn't seen anything.
    Neither did the old married couple who might've lived there for
forty, fifty years. Might even have recalled when 239 Manzikert
Avenue hadn't been a dump. The man stood behind the woman,
peering out with the kind of distant stare Finch associated with
the camps. The wife had a blotch of purple on her forehead that
might've been a birthmark or might've been fungus.
    The next interview went better. A man of about sixty answered.
Slight build. Large blue eyes, accentuated by the wrinkles in his
forehead. A cultured voice. He wore a too-tight dinner jacket. The
points of the collars on the white shirt beneath stabbed the flesh
of his neck. His wrists showed from the dark ends of his cuffs. He
looked like a child in a straitjacket.
    As Finch questioned him, he slowly realized the man had dressed
up for the interrogation. Had heard him at other doors down the hall.
Soon, the man was asking him to come in for tea. Polite in a way that
hadn't been common in Ambergris for years. Finch guessed violinist
or theater owner. Either that or he'd once been the doorman.
    He didn't know anything about the murders. (Finch couldn't recall
when he'd started calling them murders, but the word felt right.)
Thought the man in the photograph looked familiar, but couldn't
place him. In the way people do when they're trying to help.
    Then the man asked if the people living there had been of use.
    "People living there?" Finch echoed.
    "Yes. There were people living there. A man. A woman."
    "Really?"
    "Yes. I don't know their names."
    Didn't know anything else, either.
    Who was lying to him then? Heretic? The Partial?
    Remembered Heretic's strange mood as he headed up to the fifth floor.

    In the apartment, the bodies lay much as before. Except that each
had sprouted a thick, emerald-green stalk topped by a nodule. The
detectives called them memory bulbs. No one could pronounce what
the gray caps called them. Sounded like a word between loam and leer.
An aqua-colored nodule for the man. Bright orange for the gray cap.
Which meant Finch had learned something new.
    The bodies still looked peaceful. Even with the dull light streaming
through the open window. The man looked better preserved than
when Finch had seen him that morning. Sometimes death did that.
For a time.
    A figure stepped out of the back room. The Partial, grinning.
    "Shit." Finch's gun appeared in his hand. Heart pounding.
    "I'd aim that somewhere else if I were you," the Partial said. Fungal
eye blinking and blinking. Recording.
    Finch transferred his gun to his left hand. Shook his right. Green liquid
hit the floor. Goddamn gun. Wiped his hand on the side of the couch.
    "Did you follow me here?" Finch demanded.
    One eyebrow arched. "Getting paranoid? Afraid