******
I stopped by the water dispenser, swiped my pass card, got a packet of water and then made my way to my desk. I sat in my chair and shut my eyes and logged into my mail. Scanning and sorting to memory the messages, I was grateful most were just general announcements and requiring no effort on my part. I was looking forward to an easy morning, for time to clear my head, when Ling messaged me to come into his office. With a groan, I got up walked into his cube.
Harvey eyed me for a second then got to business. That’s what I liked about Harvey; he kept his nose out of your off-hours life.
“Ben, we’ve got a body in a flat in the Idaho Cave complex. Residential Unit Charlie, flat 1598. Female. You’re next on the roster. Two foots are keeping the scene intact till you get there. Go clean it up.”
I just nodded, spun around on my heel and left. By the time I got to the lift, I had already linked into Comms, got a case frequency and contacted dispatch to tell the two rookies guarding the crime scene what it was and to join me on it. I also confirmed that lab services were en-route the crime scene.
I left the building and commandeered a cab and told the driver where to go. He didn’t like losing work time to cart me around, but he had no choice in the matter. Within ten minutes of me getting in the cab, the two patrolmen on guard at the flat had checked in and had given me a quick rundown. I wrote the info to memory.
The victim was female, age twenty-two. Name: Jean McSwain. Status: Worker. Currently, on the dole. The building manager had found the body in her flat.
I arrived shortly at the residential unit and went in. Exiting out of the lift at the fifteenth floor, the smell hit me. Sweet, rotten. This must have been what tipped the building manager to go in the apartment. The two patrolmen were in front of the dead girl’s apartment. Their names were Chang and Wurst.
“Lab team here yet?”
“No, sir," snapped Chang.
“Ok, I’ll go on in and look, send in the lab squad when they get here.” I didn’t wait for a reply, but palmed open the door and went in the flat.
She had been dead quite a few days. She lay crumpled, face up on the floor. Her belly was bloated with the gas of her guts rotting, and her face was mottled and swollen. She was wearing only a robe that mercifully covered most of her body. A brownish, tarry substance leaked out from underneath her. The bladder and bowels had let loose when death came.
The smell must have been terrible, but I had blocked my olfactory nerves just before I opened the door.
A rookie I’m not.
I began to toss the room. Typical single worker flat. Windowless, small room with sanitary cube and food nook in the rear. Folding bed/table/drawers by the wall. A couple of chairs and government issued info center. She had some items on a few shelves; pictures of her with what appears to be friends and family, entertainment cubes and other mundane stuff.
I started to go through her drawers. Underwear, overalls, hygiene supplies. I found a debit card and put it aside for later investigation. Near the bottom of one drawer, I pushed aside some t-shirts and found three joy holes.
Joy holes. Vaginal sheaths. Thin, polymer skins that have millions of nanocircuits coated on it. Women can insert them and become instant courtesans, able to send spasms of pleasure to their lover and themselves. Most couples have them (even if they don't admit it).
I examined one of the sheaths for a few minutes. Just as I suspected. It was a one-way street, only the male side was coated for play. The female side was dead-zoned. Any woman who used this would feel nothing but pressure from the act itself. That made our victim a pro, a hooker.
I took the debit card to the info center and gave it a scan. Over 2000 credits. Way too much for an unemployed worker to have lying around. Yeah, she was a working girl all right. Management frowned on freelancers, but it wasn't a high priority for us. Sooner or later Management would have stepped in and taken their cut of her funds.
The door to the apartment slid open, Wurst stuck his head in.
“Sergeant, the lab team is here, do you want them to come in yet?”
I nodded and a few seconds later the lab rats entered the room. I recognized the lead lad tech, Doris Pascal, a frumpy blond who was already well past her authorized breeding years.
“I wanna know what killed her and a complete DNA sweep—start with the body and work your way around the room. She was a hooker, and I want to ID her customers. There are a few joy holes in her drawer—swab those closely.”
Doris gave me a quick nod and went to work.
I stepped out into the passageway and told Chang and Wurst to keep the curious away and to bag, tag and seal the room after the lab team was done. I made my way back to the office.
While awaiting the lab results, I sat at my desk and accessed Central Data and looked into the life of the late Jean McSwain. There wasn’t much. Born: 2504, Beijing Cavern Hospital. A result of an in-vitro match by the Eugenics Board. Father: Richard Woo, lab tech third class, Mother: Brenda McSwain, tube sanitation worker. Never met her dad. Mother died two years ago—suicide. Jean made it through tenth level academics, where she placed in the lower thirty-percentile—worker bee all the way. First and only job was as a food prep tech for Idaho Caverns administration and according to Central Data records, wasn’t too good at it. Was relieved of duties two years ago and went on the dole. No arrest record. She hadn’t applied to do her mandatory breeding, but she was young and had until she was thirty-five.
From the way she was living her life, about her only positive contribution to society would’ve been her genes. Now even that was lost.
I sat around the office for a while; sorted through a few more files and messages and then went to the cafeteria for a bite. Halfway through lunch, a notification alert came into my comm link and said the lab results were ready. I wolfed down the rest of a food wedge and went back to my desk to access Central Data.
She had been dead a little over eight days. Cause of death was a single puncture through the heart by a slender, stiletto type object. Entry was from front to back, clean and sharp.
No surprise there. Almost all murderers use knives, blunt objects or fists. The occasional poison crops up every now and then. With the draconian penalties on possession of firearms by non-security personnel, most killings are done with whatever’s handy. This one was just neater than usual.
DNA results gave us ten names, nine male and one female. The female was a neighbor. I linked into Wurst to see if he was still on the scene. He was. I told him about the neighbor and told him to bring her in for examination and let me know the results. That left nine guys to bring in and examine.
I flashed up the nine names and breathed a sigh of relief when I confirmed none were engineers or higher. Fewer hassles that way. Should be able to go out and just grab'em, drag’em and plug’em into the machine and figure out if any of them was the guilty party. There was a chance none of them was our man, but I doubted it. This one had “John” written all over it.
I got up and walked into the Captain’s cube. He was inside there, sitting behind his desk with his eyes closed. I could tell by his jaw twitching that he was sorting through some admin stuff, so I just sat in the extra chair and waited for him to finish. After a minute or two he opened his eyes and looked at me.
“Well?”
“I got the initial results from the Lab on the dead broad at Idaho. Looks like she was a hooker. Stabbed to death. Lab says we got DNA from ten citizens in the room, one female who was a neighbor and nine males. All workers or low level techs.”
I saw the look of relief cross Ling’s brow with the mention of that last fact.
“Let me guess, you want some bodies to help you go out and escort the citizens in for examination, right?”
“Yeah. The two foots who secured the scene are bringing in the woman neighbor for exam, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for it to be her. I’m banking on one of her customers or a boyfriend. We’ll know more when we get’em in.
It should be fairly cut and dried.”
Ling shrugged and shut his eyes. I waited. After a few moments, he opened them and said, “Espinoza is yours for two days, that should be enough.”
“How about also letting me keep the two rookies from the scene. It’d be good for them.”
“You’re getting to be a lazy bastard, Ben”
Harvey shut his eyes again, this time for a shorter period. He looked at me when he was done.
“Sorry, Patrol says no. Luke Espinoza is it.”
I sighed in resignation, got up and left.
By the time I had reached my cube, Espinoza had already linked in and said that he’d be free in about an hour. I gave him the case comm freq and permission to view the case file. I took four of the names and gave him the other five. First one to score a winner had to buy the other a beer.
With the ground rules established I scanned down my four names and picked the one that lived and worked closest to the office. No need to exert myself, and maybe I’d get lucky the first time.
The citizen’s name was Amos Mallory, a maintenance mechanic for the Idaho Cavern’s Infrastructure Bureau. I made my way to his guild’s hub office and was disappointed to find out from the duty section foreman that Mallory had gone off-shift a little less than an hour before.
“Does he usually go straight home after work?”
The foreman, a short, small man with a mane of wild frizzy hair, shook his head.
“Nah…he and his wife split up years ago. He lives alone. I’d bet he stopped off for a few before he drifts back to his flat.”
“Does he have a favorite pub?”
“Lot of us hang out at the Marlybone near the Oxford tube stop a few blocks down. You might try there.”
I thanked him and left.
You can find pubs and bars dotted across the Cavern landscapes, especially near transit stop points, so they can catch your average worker bee coming from (and often going to) his daily grind. The Marlybone was typical of the breed. There was the flat, glowing sign above the double-panel doors that opened into a simple room with a bar against the far wall. Cheap chairs and tables of compressed dirt and polymers were arranged haphazardly in the space. Music droned in from a speaker behind the bar. Old Earth jazz mixed well with cheap beer and liquor.
A large window light was attached to the far right wall. The window was currently showing a tropical island sunset, waves gently lapping at a sandy shore, gold-red light suffusing the bar.
A view of a world lost.
The window itself was a bit worse for wear, its corners worn and curling up and a large gash in the upper-right quadrant exposing the gray wall behind it. I figured that after a few belts, the mind would ignore the flaws.
The customers quit talking when I entered. My orange stripes and handgun announced to all what I was. I slowly made my way to the bar, looked around a second or two, then asked for a large shot of gin. The bartender gave it to me and didn’t even ask for my debit card. He knew better.
I slowly drank my gin, savoring the taste of cheap pine on my tongue. I sat my glass down and turned to face the citizens in the bar.
“I want to talk to Mechanic Third Class Amos Mallory. Citizen number 098-967-U1003.”
He was sitting near the window. I had already recognized him from the picture in his file that I’d scanned into memory at the office. I had him nailed within seconds of opening the door to come in. But I wanted that drink first.
He knew his place. He slowly stood up and raised his hand.
“Right here, officer.”
“Alright citizen, come with me. We need to have a talk about Jean McSwain.”
A look that was part embarrassment and confusion crossed his face for a moment, but he just shrugged his shoulders and grabbed his coat from the chair. I stood up from the bar and started to walk towards the door, when someone spoke.
“Goddamn bastard Caveman.”
I spun towards the voice. A group of four people, three men and an old woman were sitting at a table.
I don’t know if it was the gin or my hangover, but I was in no mood for crap, so I decided to play my expected part.
“Next asshole who says a word to me is going to regret it.”
I figured that was enough to shut everyone up…it usually is. However, this time I was wrong.
“Fuck you.” It was the old broad talking.
She was thin with skin like yellow, wrinkled leather. Her hair was pulled back into a gray bun. Her coveralls were stained and greasy, and I could tell from her eyes she was deep in her cups.
“Fuck you, Caveman. You sold your kind out for implants and nice apartment. Screw you.”
Everyone in the room was stunned. No one talked to security like that and got away with it. She’d called my bluff and left me no options.
I pulled out my gun and shot the old bitch in the throat.
I had no choice, really.
She was out before she hit the ground. The class-D neurotoxin in the darts they issue us takes less than a second to stun a full-grown man, so she never had a chance.
I immediately linked out and summoned an emergency response squad, just in case any others decided to follow the old woman’s lead, but they just sat there like good little sheep until the foot patrol and emergency squad arrived. I told the squad sergeant to gather up the woman and put her in the emergency van. I then grabbed Mallory by the arm and hustled him outside. By now, a crowd was gathering outside the pub to see the show. I motioned to a patrolman standing nearby, and he snapped to.
“Take Citizen Mallory back to Company Square and throw him in holding until I get things cleaned up here and get back in the office.”
I shoved Mallory towards the officer and turned back and walk back to the front door of the bar. I was met by the squad sergeant exiting the pub.
“Take that old dame to med-hold” I snapped, “And when she comes to, fine her a 100 credits and tell she’s lucky she ain’t spending a year in detention.”
“No need, Sergeant, she’s gone.”
“Gone? What the hell you mean gone?”
“Looks like she had a bad ticker or something. Neurotoxin killed her. It happens to the old ones sometime. Want an autopsy or do we just send her to the morgue for recycling?”
I stared at him for a second, taking in what he said.
Gone. Dead.
“Sergeant, you Ok?”
I shook my head and muttered, “Fine, fine…cycle her. I got more important things to do.”
I turned and stalked off.
Security had made a pact with management a long time ago. We do what management tells us, but management doesn’t care how we do it. While "Human Resources" branch of Cavern Security who monitors “political issues” inflicts most of the casualties, we in the "Civil Branch" of Cavern Security have our accidents too. It happens. But no questions are asked, and no investigations are made when it goes down. In turn, management gets what it wants. It’s a system that’s kept the peace for almost 200 years with very few complaints…from management at least.
I linked into headquarters and gave the examination team a heads-up on Mallory. I told them to scan him and forward Espinoza and me the results. If they were negative, they were to let him go.
Mallory would either be home or have a date with the recycle bins by midnight.
It was getting late and I really didn’t feel like working anymore, so I signaled to Ling that I was calling it a day and went home. Five drinks later I was asleep.