by P. R. Adams
Naru rushed in behind him. “I’ve already accessed the intelligent agent. It says we can go in—208.”
Even as she spoke, the door buzzed open. Riyun barely noted the smell of detergent, the fresh paint on the walls, the tiles that hadn’t been pried away. All he could think about was the impossibility of three other investigators either dying or resigning and disappearing.
What had Aliat seen that made him so confident he had figured the case out? What had Tafar told his wife that hadn’t been in the file Yola Tromon had given them?
The elevator must’ve been moving through sand. When the door finally opened, Riyun couldn’t keep from sprinting into the hallway.
Naru stayed on his heels. “What’s going on? Tell me.”
He skidded to a stop in front of 208. “I don’t know.” He banged on the door. “I just know we have to find out what this Aliat knows.”
There was no answer.
Riyun banged again. “Aliat Dachul! We need to talk to you!”
No answer.
Riyun banged again—louder. “Mr. Dachul!”
Naru grabbed Riyun by the arm. “It’s too late at night for this kind of noise. Let’s come back tomorrow.”
“No.” Riyun tested the knob: locked. “We can’t come back tomorrow. We need answers. Now.”
Something was wrong. He could feel it. He backed up, then charged the door.
Wood cracked, but the door held.
“What in the Hollow Hills are you doing?” The hacker backed away.
He charged again, and this time the frame gave. He recovered his balance a few steps in and looked around. The apartment was nicer, bigger, and there was no one home. A little kitchen, a living room, a hall that led to two doors, another door off the living room.
And silence.
The silence of an empty apartment.
Naru hovered just outside the ruined door. “I can’t believe what you’re doing.”
“She can pay for the repairs. She—”
His eyes dropped to the carpeted floor. Something dark…
Stains…
Drops…
He followed them down the hall, stopping at the last door on the right-hand side. It was ajar. There were stains on the knob.
He shouldered it open.
A bed. A nightstand. A small closet. A wooden floor. Another door also ajar. He followed the stains to that and opened it.
It was a bathroom—a pedestal sink, a toilet, and a bathtub.
Plastic hoops littered the tiled floor. The shower curtain covered something in the tub. Something bloody.
Riyun stumbled forward, unable to stop himself now. He tugged the corner of the curtain back, revealing a face—a narrow and plain face, blood caking a mustache, eyes and mouth open wide in disbelief. Older looking.
And there were stab wounds. Multiple stab wounds.
Someone had killed Aliat Dachul.
9
“Yep. He’s dead.”
Riyun sighed, but he managed to keep that as the only show of his frustration with the building security investigator. The man was about average height, approaching middle-age, and he was missing his left ear. Where it should have been, the bronze skin was a pale pink—a hideous scar.
The investigator scratched the scar as he looked around the bathroom. “Smell that? Like animal shit?”
“I noticed.” Riyun pointed to the corpse’s shoes. “Looks like he has dirt in the ridges of the soles.”
“Yep.” But the way the investigator did a double-take at the shoes made clear he hadn’t noticed the dirt before. He scraped with a thumbnail at the clay-like substance—hard in the warm, dry air—from the sole of one shoe, put his nail under his nose, and made a disgusted face. “Just like the blood, it’s in the halls and the foyer.”
“I didn’t see it in the halls.”
“That’s what makes me an investigator and you a mercenary.” The one-eared man tapped his jacket over his breast, where a bulge indicated something—a device, maybe goggles? Or maybe it was a specialized badge. “You gotta notice things in this line of work if you want to stay in business.”
Riyun caught Naru’s eye roll and shook his head slightly. “I understand, Mr.…”
“Glumun. You can call me Investigator Glumun.” The man washed his hands in Aliat’s sink.
“Hey, are you worried about corrupting the crime scene?”
The one-eared man froze for a moment, then went back to what he’d been doing. “Nah.”
Naru squeezed past him, face pressed into her palm, head shaking. “Did you know anything about this Aliat Dachul guy, Investigator Glumun?”
“Not really. I manage too many properties to keep up with everyone.”
“You manage properties?”
“Well, sort of. As the investigator, I look into improprieties, criminal acts, and plumbing problems. Sometimes HVAC issues.”
She shot a look of pure disbelief over the man’s shoulder. “But you would know if this is really Aliat Dachul, right?”
“Oh, that’s Dachul all right.”
“He looks older than the picture we saw of him.”
The investigator pulled an antique tablet from inside his coat and tapped through some sort of ancient interface, then flipped the tablet around to show the display to her. “Recognize him? You gotta imagine him with all those knife wounds. And he was a little younger in that picture. But that’s him. Trust me.”
The hacker took the tablet. “Are you sure?” Her eyes jumped from the tablet to the corpse in the bathtub, and when the investigator twisted to look at the body, she nodded at Riyun. She wanted him to distract the investigator.
Riyun settled on the toilet. “Well, Mr. Glumun—”
“Investigator Glumun.”
“Sorry. Investigator Glumun. If this is Aliat Dachul, do you have any idea how he got in here without anyone noticing for, what, three days?”
Glumun tapped the tip of his shoe against the floor. “He showed up in the security logs a few days ago.”
“You’ve got video?”
“No. Something happened. We lost video for about a day there.”
“Lost video.” Riyun studied the corpse for a second more. “How often does that happen?”
“About as often as your friend Dachul here wandering around in the middle of the night.”
“Not much of a night owl?”
“Nope.” Glumun turned around and hooked his finger at Naru, demanding his tablet back. “You see, this is what I was saying about noticing things. First thing I did after you reported this body was to check on Mr. Dachul’s normal behavior, financial records, and whereabouts the last week.”
Riyun accepted the other man’s tablet when it was offered. “This is his life?”
“That’s one way to look at it. When you boil anyone down, they come out pretty simple.”
The data showed a man of habit, someone who enjoyed predictability and patterns. Each morning, the apartment’s power consumption increased at exactly 5:30 a.m., peaking forty-five minutes later before dropping back to minimal use. He departed the apartment building at 6:20 a.m. and returned twelve hours later on the nose. On a rare occasion, he went out again at 7:30 p.m., but he was always back in by nine. Power consumption reached its peak fifteen minutes later, then dropped until 5:30 a.m. the next morning.
There was little variation to this pattern.
Until about six days ago, when Aliat didn’t return home at night. And then there was a change again, nearly seventy hours ago, when he showed up once more.
Bleeding. With poop on his shoes.
It didn’t make sense.
Riyun handed the tablet back. “You don’t have any leads?”
Glumun snorted and put the tablet back in his jacket. “I don’t even have a case.”
Naru leaned against the bathroom door jamb. “You manage other buildings?”
“Yep. Every one of these dumps for miles. Just security for most. I do the plumbing here for my un
cle.”
She handed him her own tablet. “You know anything about these two guys?”
His eyes widened in surprise. “How did you know about them?”
Once again, the hacker looked past the investigator at Riyun. The message was clear: We need to get out of here. “It’s part of what we’re working on.”
“I bet.” He looked her over appreciatively, then shoved the tablet back at her.
“Well? What do you know about them? Do you know where they moved to?”
The one-eared man blinked blankly. “Moved to?” He chuckled. “Pretty sure they’re dead.”
Riyun stood. “Dead? We were told they moved.”
“Nah. You don’t move somewhere and leave all your stuff behind.”
“They left their things behind?”
“You deaf?” Glumun scratched the stump of his ear. “That’s what I said.”
“And you’re the security investigator for those buildings, too?”
“Yep. And I’ve seen their apartments. Places are spotless. Just clothes and personal effects left behind.”
“Any chance we could get a look?”
“There’s nothing to see.”
“Then it shouldn’t be a big deal for us to look, right? We are working the same job they were when they disappeared.”
“For this Yola Tromon. I know. You told me.”
Riyun smiled hopefully. “We could put in a good word with her for you.”
“Sure.” Glumun hitched up his pants. “Don’t touch anything, okay? And no more kicking in doors.”
“Promise.” Riyun handed his tablet across. “If you could just put the security authorizations in here?”
Naru crossed her arms impatiently while the investigator fumbled through the authorization process. Riyun could only hope Glumun was really as oblivious as he seemed to be. Once he returned the tablet, Riyun muttered his thanks, then followed the hacker out of the apartment.
When the elevator door closed, she threw herself against the back of the car and groaned. “Could you possibly have taken longer?”
“Me?” Riyun couldn’t believe he was suddenly the problem. “Glumun took an hour to get to us, and nearly another hour to tell us what we already knew, but I’m the one taking a long time?”
“I mean once I didn’t need him anymore.”
“And when was that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. When I was finished with his tablet?”
The elevator door opened, and Riyun realized for the first time there hadn’t been the smell of poop in the elevator car. He held up a finger. “Wait.”
He jogged to the stairwell and opened the door. It was there—the faintest smell. Out of place. Not human but animal.
How many animals were there in the city? He hadn’t seen any. Not yet.
Naru was waiting in the lobby, hands on hips, staring at the ceiling.
He tugged her by the jacket shoulder. “Why would someone who’d been stabbed take the stairs instead of the elevator?”
She dropped into the back seat, still pouting. “Maybe the elevator was down when the video was down. A lot of those systems are connected.”
“Hm.” Riyun fed the addresses into the skimmer. “Please take us to the closest one, Quil.”
The pseudo shot a furtive look at the hacker, and the skimmer roared to life. They lurched forward and took to the air. Once they were en route, he turned to Riyun. “When do we return to the hotel?”
“You feeling sleepy?”
“Some of the others have been asking what we are doing.”
“They bored?”
“I believe it is more likely anxiety than boredom.”
Anxiety. Did that make sense? Was that what he was feeling, twisting in his gut, the way his skin itched for no reason? It was so much easier with a combat mission. You knew the objective. You had a sense that even if something went wrong—and it always went wrong—that you could predict at least a little about the outcome.
Nothing about this was feeling even slightly predictable.
Riyun swallowed. Anxiety. Definitely anxiety. “The next time someone asks you what’s going on, tell them we don’t know.”
Naru’s hands slapped the seat back as she leaned forward. “We do know something.”
“Like?”
“Like all four detectives who worked this case are dead. And did you notice they were all men?”
He hadn’t paid that any attention. “We’ve got one body.”
“And one declared dead, and two that will be declared dead when someone realizes it. You just can’t declare them dead without someone requesting it, and these guys were single. Same as Aliat.”
Riyun twisted around to look her in the eye. “Is that what you got out of his tablet? Their backgrounds?”
She shrugged. “I got a lot of stuff out his tablet. He’s an idiot. Nothing was secured.”
“How do you know he won’t notice he was hacked?”
“I didn’t hack him. He gave me his tablet. Like I said, nothing was secured. That’s his fault.”
Quil had seemed content to watch the buildings speed by, but he turned his head at that. “We are headed to the residences of two of the investigators?”
Naru spun her black metallic brow stud. “First class tour of the city. Hope you’re enjoying it.”
“I have been watching the vehicle.”
Riyun blushed. “Sorry about that, Quil. You can come up with us at these other places, assuming the neighborhoods are safe.”
“It is a safe enough place from the looks of it.”
And in fact, when the pseudo set the skimmer down in front of the first building, Riyun had a sense that the neighborhood was respectable. The building was at least as well-maintained as Dachul’s had been, and there was more lighting outside. Up close, the concrete and stone looked less like something slowly regressing into its natural state than something that had been fashioned after a certain aesthetic. There was a smoothness to the edges that wasn’t from wear but machining.
The air had taken on a different scent—cleaner, crisper. Dawn was approaching, bringing with it a new day and maybe some warmth.
Riyun shut his door as softly as he could, but Quil took no effort to be silent. His door slamming echoed in the quiet.
It was easier entering the building with credentials pre-approved. Riyun led them to the elevator, then to the first investigator’s room. It was on the fourth floor, and it was exactly as Glumun had described it: neat to a fault. It didn’t look like anyone had ever actually lived in the place. All the clothes were smartly folded and put away. The dishes were clean, the pots and pans secured in cabinets. Nothing in the refrigerator had an expiration date.
Naru drifted through the rooms in disbelief. “You ever see anything like this before in your life?”
Riyun’s guts knotted. “Once. And I found it strange then. But some people are just weird.”
“This is beyond neat freak. It looks like one of those museum things. A diorama?”
“A semblance of life rather than life—right?”
“Yeah.”
Quil shifted the salt and pepper shakers on the small dining room table. “They were perfectly centered. That seems very…inhuman.”
Did the pseudo have the same sick feeling? Riyun headed back to the bedroom. The bed could have been from an advertisement, with crisp corners and the sheets pulled tight where he could see them. There was only the slightest dust on the desk and chest of drawers. Clothes in the closet were spaced perfectly.
His pulse climbed steadily with each near impossible bit of orderliness.
A sharply dressed soldier is a successful soldier.
He shuddered.
Coincidence. It was nothing but coincidence.
He turned when Naru entered the bedroom. She ran a hand over the comforter, mouth agape. “How—?”
“I know.” Riyun nodded toward the bathroom. “Polished sink. Clean toilet. No hairs in the shower drain.”
> “You think he knew he was…never coming back?”
“A suicide?”
“I—I guess.”
“You see anything here? Anything at all that we could use for evidence?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Convenient, huh?”
She nodded. “You think—?”
“The other place is going to be like this?” He opened a drawer again, noted the way the socks were folded and pressed tight against the sides. The underwear was the same way—no wasted space, nothing out of place. It wasn’t coincidence. He pushed the drawers closed and strolled stiffly to the door, standing halfway between hall and room. “It’ll be exactly the same.”
“Hey, that guy said he was the security investigator for all the buildings in this area, right?”
“Most.”
The hacker bounced on the bed, lips pursed in surprise. “Wow. Guess he never got any action.”
“Did you have a—?”
“I was thinking, even if that building’s cameras were out, maybe some of the others were working.”
Quil looked up from inspecting an immaculate frying pan. “Cameras…out?”
“That’s what the security guy said. Anyway, maybe we could see something from when Aliat showed up. You know, in one of the other cameras.”
“It seems unlikely security cameras would be out.”
“It happens. For nearly a day.”
The pseudo looked away. “Very strange.”
“Sure. That’s why she hired investigators, right, Riyun?” The young woman brushed her hair back and leaned back on the bed enough for a sliver of light to catch the neon of her crown. “So, want me to call him and ask for the video from the other buildings, or do you want me to grab it myself?”
Riyun pulled his tablet out to scan the apartment’s main entertainment display console. It was perfectly centered on a modest stand.
“Hey?” The hacker crossed her arms. “Are you listening to me?”
“Yeah. You can ask him. He won’t have video from those buildings either.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because the person who did all this wouldn’t make a mistake like that.”
“What?”
“You don’t have an obsessive compulsion for attention to detail like this and leave a trail. Other than the trail you can’t help but leave behind.”