Illegal Alien

  “Had,” said the Tosok. “I molted earlier today.”

  Frank looked at the being. He did indeed have an orange left-front eye and a green right-front eye. “Oh,” said Frank. “Forgive me.”

  Hask moved in to take a seat. Frank looked at the seven aliens. They’d seen a lot of Earth. Although an effort had been made to present the best side of humanity, there had been no doubt that some of the worst had been displayed, too. The Tosoks had encountered poverty and pollution, and they knew that the security people were there to protect them from the possibility that a human being might want to do them harm.

  Still, the violence humanity was capable of had all been abstract to this point. But now—now they had to be told.

  “My friends,” said Frank, into the sea of round, disk-like eyes, “I have sad news.” He paused. Damn, he wished Tosoks made facial expressions; he still wasn’t good at deciphering the waving of their cranial tufts. “Clete is dead.”

  There was silence for several moments.

  “Do humans normally die without warning?” asked Kelkad. “He seemed healthy.”

  “He didn’t die of natural causes,” said Frank. “He was murdered.”

  Seven pocket computers beeped, slightly out of sync with each other.

  “Murdered,” repeated Frank. “It means killed by another human being.”

  Kelkad made a small sound. His computer translated it as “Oh.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  “Sir,” said Lieutenant Perez, stepping into the opulent office on the eighteenth floor of the Los Angeles County Criminal Courts Building, “we, ah, have a bit of a situation here.”

  District Attorney Montgomery Ajax looked up from his immaculate glass-topped desk. “What is it?”

  “I’d like to go over the criminalist’s report on the Calhoun murder with you.”

  Ajax was silver-haired with pale blue eyes and a long, deeply tanned face—a Bahamas tan, not a California one. “Something out of the ordinary?”

  “You could say that, sir.” He placed a photograph on the DA’s desk. It showed a bloody U-shaped mark on a gray carpet.

  “What’s that? A horseshoe?”

  “We didn’t know what to make of it, sir. I thought maybe it was a heel mark, but the criminalist says no. But, well, have a look at this, sir.” He placed a newspaper clipping next to the photograph. It contained a black-and-white photograph of Kelkad making his foot impressions at Mann’s Chinese Theatre. The imprint was almost identical in shape to the bloody mark.

  “Christ almighty,” said Ajax.

  “My thoughts exactly, sir.”

  “Is there any way to tell which Tosok made the bloody footprint?”

  “Possibly, although the print is not detailed.”

  “Is there any other evidence to implicate a Tosok?”

  “Well, Calhoun’s leg was severed with some sort of extremely sharp instrument. It went through the leg without compressing the muscle at all, and seemed to hardly catch on the bone. It cut through the femoral artery, and because it was a clean cut, Calhoun simply gushed blood out of it.”

  “And?”

  “And the guys in the lab can’t think of any human tool that could have done the trick. The slicing open of the abdomen seemed to be done mechanically as well. But the rib spreading—well, that seemed to be done manually. The cut edges of the ribs were razor sharp, and Feinstein found some chemicals on one of the rib tips that he couldn’t identify. It might be Tosok blood.”

  The DA had already seen the crime-scene photographs. “Okay,” said Ajax. “But whichever Tosok did it must have gotten soaked with human blood. Surely if it was one of the Tosoks, it would have had to have cleaned itself up somehow.”

  Perez nodded. “I thought of that, too.”

  “And?”

  “And I interviewed all of the Tosoks today. But one of them looked different from any of the ones I’d seen on TV. You know they all had blue or gray hides, right?”

  Ajax nodded.

  “Well, this one had a silver-white hide.”

  “Like it had bleached itself clean?”

  “More than that,” said Perez. “I’m told it had shed its skin.”

  “Like a bloody snake, eh?”

  “Yes, sir. Like a bloody snake.”

  The DA considered. “You know,” he said slowly, “there is another possibility.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A frame-up.” Ajax paused. “Not everybody liked Calhoun.”

  “If it is a frame-up, it would have to be someone who is part of the entourage traveling with the Tosoks. No one else could get into the USC dorm.”

  Ajax nodded. “True. Better check into their backgrounds.” A pause. “Start with Smathers.”

  “Smathers?”

  “I saw Calhoun show him up on national TV. That’s got to sting.”

  “Will do.”

  “Be thorough, Perez. If I’m going to have to lay charges against an alien, I want to be dead certain we’re right.”

  Frank was walking across the USC campus, passing by the Von KleinSmid Center. He looked up briefly at the one-hundred-and-seventy-six-foot tower visible through the portico; the tower was crowned by a five-thousand-pound gridwork globe, like a world picked clean.

  Frank knew all about being picked clean; he had been divorced for five years, and his twelve-year-old daughter was with his ex-wife in Maryland.

  It was the day before Christmas; the campus was almost deserted. Frank was used to it being cold at Christmas; he’d grown up in Canandaigua, New York, where winters were marked by bitter temperatures and hip-deep snow. But the path he was on was lined with palm trees, and Frank was more than warm enough in his black nylon windbreaker with the NASA logo on its back.

  Christmases were the worst; Frank never got Maria at Christmas. He’d actually been looking forward to this one—Clete had no family, either, and so they’d planned to mark the day together. They’d even been planning to exchange presents; Frank had bought Clete a trio of pewter starships from the Franklin Mint—a classic Enterprise, an original Klingon battle ship, and a Romulan Bird of Prey. Together, they’d cost six hundred dollars; far too much, really, but it had made Frank feel good to order them.

  And now—

  He made it a few more paces before he realized what was happening. If this had been upstate New York—if this had been proper Christmas weather—his breath might have escaped in great shuddering clouds, but here, in this warmth, palm trees obscenely decorated with Christmas lights, his sobs were escaping invisibly.

  Clete and Frank had met in grad school; they’d been friends for twenty years.

  God, how he’d miss him.

  Frank found a bench beneath a palm, and lowered himself on to it, putting his face in his hands.

  Merry Christmas, he thought.

  And cried some more.

  Three hours later Perez returned to DA Ajax’s office. “Okay, I’ve got the scoop on Smathers.”

  “Go.”

  “When PBS was contemplating making a new astronomy series, they wanted someone who could fill Carl Sagan’s shoes. Their first choices were Cletus Calhoun…and Packwood Smathers.”

  “Why’d they go with Calhoun?”

  “It depends who you ask. One executive I spoke to there said it was his just-plain-folks image: PBS was under a lot of fire from Congress, you know. They were calling it an elitist service. The network was doing everything it could to appear more populist, in hopes of not getting its appropriation slashed further.”

  “Makes sense,” said Ajax. “Heck, even I watched Great Balls of Fire!, and science always turned me off. But Calhoun was entertaining as hell.”

  “Right. But the other guy I talked to said they’d heard Smathers was difficult to work with, and that there were some improprieties in his research. He’d been a little too liberal, supposedly, with taking credit for work done not just by his grad students—which is par for the course, apparently—but also by other p
rofessors. They were afraid that might come out. Great Balls of Fire! was a coproduction with NHK—the Japanese television network. You know how the Japanese are about personal honor; they’d never be able to broadcast the show if there were a scandal about the host.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “So the executive I spoke to at PBS said the source of the information about Smathers was Calhoun himself.”

  “Are the allegations true?”

  “Apparently so. And if Smathers had learned that it was Calhoun who made PBS aware of them, costing him the host’s job—”

  “All right,” said Ajax. “Let’s bring Smathers in for questioning.”

  Parker Center was a large beige building two blocks from the Criminal Courts Building. Out front there was a black granite fountain dedicated to all the officers who had died in the line of duty. Part of the building was held up by a series of columns; behind these columns the main entrance was constantly guarded by armed cops.

  The interrogation room was windowless, small, and dimly lit. Perez stood with one foot up on a chair. He took a sip of coffee. “I understand you had reason to dislike Cletus Calhoun,” he said.

  Packwood Smathers’s white eyebrows went up. He considered for several seconds before responding. Finally, no longer looking at Perez, he said, “I object to all this, you know. I’m a Canadian citizen. If you’ll just call the consulate—”

  Perez moved into Smathers’s field of view. “Professor, this won’t take long if you cooperate. Simply tell me what you had against Calhoun.”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “There was some thinking that perhaps he had done an end run around you to get the PBS hosting job.”

  Smathers was quiet, sliding his lower teeth across his upper lip. Finally, he did meet Perez’s gaze. “I think I’d like legal counsel.”

  “Why? You haven’t been charged with anything.”

  Smathers rose to his feet. “Well, either do charge me and get me a lawyer, or I’m walking out that door.”

  Perez spread his arms. “Why the hostility, Professor?”

  Smathers’s tone was harsh. “You’re implying I killed Cletus Calhoun. I suspect even the implication of that is actionable. Look—you’re right, I didn’t like that snot-nosed hick. He may be more personable than me, and he’s got all that hillbilly charm, but he’s not half the astronomer I am. He’s just a personality, nothing but a popularizer. He dared to suggest that my work wasn’t wholly original? Christ, he hadn’t done dick on his own for years. But if you think I killed him, you’re crazy. And if you want to question me about such an offensive suggestion, you’ll do so with my lawyer present.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  Jesus Perez returned to Monty Ajax’s office. “I don’t think Smathers did it.”

  Ajax looked up. “Does he have an alibi?”

  “Not really. The ME says the murder took place around nine P.M., apparently. Most of the entourage and six of the Tosoks were attending an evening lecture at USC—Stephen Jay Gould was in L.A., promoting his newest essay collection. After Gould’s talk, there was a big reception. They weren’t home until after two. But Hask had begged off—to molt, he says now. And Calhoun and Smathers both stayed behind, too; Smathers didn’t like Gould, apparently—he seems to have a thorn in his side about successful science popularizers. And Calhoun said he needed the time to work on his script for his next episode of Great Balls of Fire! But the criminalists have found no evidence at all that Smathers or any other human was involved. And a team at UCLA has confirmed that the substance on the rib is not of—what was the phrase?—‘not of terrestrial origin.’”

  “So it is likely Tosok blood—or, God help us, Tosok semen or something like that,” said Ajax. “Could it have been planted?”

  “As far as we’ve been able to determine, the Tosoks have given up no tissue samples of any kind to human scientists. This apparently is a taboo with them: they consider the inner workings of the body extremely private. Apparently they were offered books on human anatomy early on, but reacted as if they’d been offered copies of Hustler. Given their approach to such things, it seems highly unlikely that Smathers had access to Tosok blood.”

  Ajax exhaled noisily. “So a Tosok did it?”

  “Apparently.”

  “And you suspect Hask?”

  “Yes. The shed skin makes it damned convenient, obviously. And we’ve had the bloody footprint blown up. It almost certainly wasn’t made by Kelkad, and we’ve eliminated one of the other Tosoks—a female named Dodnaskak—because she has feet that are much too large.”

  “That still leaves five other possibilities, including Hask.”

  “But Hask had a bluish-gray hide.”

  “Had is right.”

  “And the criminalists found this inside Calhoun’s room,” said Perez, putting a tiny Ziploc pouch on Ajax’s desk. Inside were three diamond-shaped flakes of blue-gray material. Perez was quiet for a moment while Ajax held the sample up to the light. “If Hask was about to molt,” said Perez, “he could have been dropping scales all day.”

  Ajax put the pouch down and rubbed his temples.

  Lieutenant Perez entered the sixth-floor lounge at Valcour Hall, accompanied by four uniformed police officers, each at least a head taller than him. The Tosoks Kelkad and Ged, as well as Frank Nobilio, were there, talking. Frank rose. “What is it, Lieutenant?”

  “Come with me, Doctor,” said Perez. “Which one is Hask’s room?”

  “It’s on the second floor.”

  “Take us there.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  “Just take us there, please,” said Perez. “You’re Kelkad, aren’t you?” he said, looking now at the dark-blue Tosok. “You may want to come along, too.”

  Perez pressed the call button, and the elevator immediately reopened. He stepped in and held the door, waiting for Frank and Kelkad to join him and the four uniforms. Frank sighed, and they got in. The elevator dropped four floors, and Frank indicated with a hand gesture that they should head down the east wing. They passed through several open glass doorways, and finally came to Hask’s room, at the end of the corridor.

  Perez knocked on the door. “Hask, open up. This is the police.”

  There were sounds of movement inside the room, and a moment later the door opened. “Are you the Tosok known as Hask?” asked Perez.

  “You know that,” said Hask.

  “Hask, I hereby arrest you for the murder of Cletus Calhoun.”

  Frank’s eyes went wide. “Now, wait a minute—”

  Perez reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his well-worn Miranda card. He knew the rights by heart, but had to read them from the card, lest some lawyer later argue that part of them had been skipped. “You have the right to remain silent. If you give up—”

  “Wait just a goddamn minute,” said Frank, eyebrows climbing.

  “—the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right—”

  “You can’t arrest an alien!” said Frank.

  “—to have an attorney present during questioning. If you desire an attorney—”

  “For Christ’s sake, Lieutenant!”

  “—but cannot afford one, one will be appointed for you without charge. Do you understand these rights as I’ve read them to you?”

  Hask staggered backward. Even with eyes in the rear of his head, he still apparently didn’t see where he was going. He bumped into his desk, and an object—a disk about thirty centimeters in diameter—fell from the desk. It hit the bottom shelf of a built-in bookcase on the way down, and cracked in two.

  “Do you understand these rights as I’ve read them to you?” repeated Perez.

  “Lieutenant, surely you can’t think that Hask committed the murder,” said Frank.

  “Dr. Nobilio, we think there’s sufficient evidence to bring charges, yes. Now, Hask, do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?
”

  Hask’s legs bowed out, allowing him to bring his two arms down to touch the floor. He picked up the two pieces and looked at them, one with his front set of eyes, the other with his rear set. The eyes Frank could see were blinking rapidly.

  “Do you understand these rights?” said Perez for a third time.

  “I—I believe so,” said Hask. His tuft was waving back and forth in agitation.

  Frank held out an impatient hand. “Show me the arrest warrant, Lieutenant.”

  “Hask?” said Perez.

  “For Pete’s sake, Lieutenant, he may speak English, but he can’t read it. Give me the warrant.”

  Perez reached into his jacket and handed the papers to Frank. Frank had never seen an arrest warrant before, but there was nothing obviously wrong with it. It said:

  The undersigned is informed and believes that:

  COUNT 1

  On or about December 22 of this year, in the county of Los Angeles, the crime of murder, in violation of Penal Code Section 187 (a), a felony, was committed by Hask, a member of the Tosok species, who did willfully, unlawfully, and with malice aforethought murder Cletus Robert Calhoun, a human being.

  Notice: The above offense is a serious felony within the meaning of Penal Code Section 1192.7 (c) (1).

  It is further alleged that in the commission and attempted commission of the above offense, the said defendant, Hask, personally used a deadly and dangerous weapon, to wit, a knife or other extremely sharp instrument or tool, said use not being an element of above offense, within the meaning of Penal Code Section 12022 (b) and also causing the above offense to be a serious felony within the meaning of Penal Code Section 1192.7 (c) (23).

  Jesus Perez

  ​(LAPD Robbery-Homicide detective)​

  Declarant and Complainant

  “Satisfied?” said Perez.

  “Jesus,” said Frank.

  “It’s Hay-soos.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you. You can’t possibly be serious about this.”

  “I am.” The lieutenant turned to Hask. “Do you know what an attorney is?”

  Hask was still holding the two broken halves of the disk; they seemed to be painted on one side—it was a decoration of some sort. “An advocate,” said Hask slowly, “or someone who acts upon one’s behalf.”