The Ethics of Silence

by C. J. Nash

  “How far would you go for the good of the colony?”

  “Apparently, not as far as Lisa.”

  Mason helped Janet onto the transport and then also mounted. “Lisa was lying, you know.”

  “She’s not lying. She would wed you and bed you in a heartbeat. And once she was pregnant, she would cancel the contract and dump your ass on the next single woman standing in line. If you were to give up your investigation, you could have a very pleasant time while you are here.”

  “That’s not what she was lying about.”

  “Oh.”

  “She never saw her dead husband’s body. She called you and said that he was dead without ever seeing him.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “When I asked her how she knew he was dead, she said that he wasn’t breathing. I saw the pictures. She wouldn’t have had to check his breath if she had seen all that blood.”

  “Maybe. But some wounds bleed a lot without being fatal.”

  “But I asked her about his shirt. She said that there was blood on it. You and I both know that he was as naked as the day he was born. She never saw the body, but she knew that he was dead. She knows who killed her husband. She may not have been there when he died, but I would bet that she knew he was going to die that night.”

  “Well, she gave me a thought also.”

  “And…”

  “When she said that tourists get marriage contracts, I realized that I never even think about the tourists—or the scientists, for that matter. Maybe it wasn’t a colonist that killed Mr. Echols.”

  “Not a chance. I had considered the possibility, but not now.”

  “Why not now?”

  “Because Lisa knows who killed her husband and I can’t believe that she’d cover for a tourist or a scientist.”

  “Why not? Maybe she was having an affair with a tourist. A little dip in the gene pool.”

  “And what would be his motive? There is no possibility of a long-term relationship. The tourist had to leave for Earth in a few months. Wham! Bam! Thank you, Mam! And he’s gone back home. If the tourist had a jealous wife, she might want to take revenge against Lisa, but not Lisa’s husband. She might sleep with the husband out of spite, but she wouldn’t kill him. And, even if Lisa were having an affair, and by some crazy circumstance her partner or his wife killed Mr. Echols, do you really believe she would continue to protect either one of them after they were gone back to Earth?”

  “Okay. But it’s been eleven months. Maybe she’s forgotten some of the details. Maybe she’s confused about the shirt.”

  Mason stopped the transport and stood so that he could look directly into Janet’s eyes. “You told me that I could trust you. Do you really believe that Lisa doesn’t know who killed her husband?”

  Janet turned away. “No, I don’t believe it. She knows, so she must have a very good reason for not telling. Drop the investigation. Keep pretending, just to satisfy the governor, but drop the investigation. You can enjoy your stay on Mars. Take your pick of marriage partners; there are plenty that would be willing. When you tire of one contract, I can get you another. There has already been enough hurt. Please don’t make it any worse.” There were tears in Janet’s eyes.

  Mason climbed back aboard the transport and headed for home. There were far too many questions—questions that would not be answered by the colonists. His only hope of solving the puzzle would be in the evidence—if evidence still existed.

  Chapter 11

  MR. ECHOLS, I PRESUME

  Janet agreed to meet with Dr. Norton at ten hundred Wednesday morning. “We had best be on time,” she told Mason. “If he wants to meet that early, he wants to finish early and be done with us. If we make him wait he will be difficult to deal with—more difficult than usual.”

  Janet and Mason arrived early; Dr. Norton was already at the morgue.

  When the corpse was exposed, Mason exclaimed, “What happened to the body? It appears to be mummified!”

  “Not mummified,” Dr. Norton explained. “Desiccated.”

  “Desiccated! Mummified! What happened to the body?”

  “I was told to preserve the body until an investigator arrived from Earth. I was going to just freeze it, but I asked the Farmer for his opinion. He said that I could keep the body for a while, but the water was needed on the farm.”

  “Frozen. Desiccated. Are there any other surprises I should know about before I examine the body?”

  “We had to preserve the body. Desiccation makes sense. After the water is removed, freezing doesn’t rupture the cell walls.”

  “It also makes the body look like a mummy. How can I learn anything from a corpse that doesn’t even look human?”

  “I took lots of pictures of the body before the desiccation.”

  “I’ve seen the pictures.”

  “There are more pictures than the ones in my report. If you want to see them, I can send them to your notepad.”

  “Yes. Send me the pictures. How long will that take?”

  The doctor tapped out commands on his notepad. “That fast,” he said.

  Mason studied the pictures for several minutes. He selected one picture and expanded the view. “Picture number seventeen. What is that?”

  “I don’t have a picture number seventeen. Oh…They were probably renumbered when I sent them to you.” He peered at Mason’s notepad. “Zoom back out so I can tell what picture you’re looking at.”

  When Mason had restored the photo to the original magnification, Dr. Norton was able to find the picture in question on his own notepad. “Okay. What do you see in the picture?”

  “Look at the stab wound over the heart.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Magnify about ten times.”

  “Okay.” The doctor manipulated his notepad. “That bright spot on the picture?”

  “Yeah, what is that?”

  “Looks like an artifact.”

  “Artifact?”

  “Probably just the way the room lights struck the lens. Zoom back out and look to the right and below. You’ll see another artifact.”

  Mason studied the spot that the doctor had suggested. “They’re not the same. I don’t think that the first spot is an artifact. I think there is something there reflecting the light. Mason moved closer to the corpse. He had never seen a desiccated body except in textbooks. Mr. Echols only faintly resembled a human being. He was only a skeleton with thin, dry skin tightly stretched over the bones.

  Mason hesitated before touching the dead man. He had a mental image of the corpse turning to dust at his first touch, but when Mason prodded the prone figure, it remained intact. “Here.” Mason pointed to a spot over the heart. “Do you see this?”

  “I see it. Do you think it’s the murder weapon?”

  “I don’t know. How do we get it out of the corpse?”

  “I can use a bone saw and cut it free.”

  “Is there a less destructive way to get it out of there? If that is the murder weapon, I don’t want to risk damaging it.”

  “I can soak the body in water and rehydrate it. It will take a lot longer than using a saw and I don’t have a tank here that is large enough.”

  “We could take the body to an apartment and put it in a bathtub,” Mason suggested.

  “Or, I could cut out the area surrounding whatever that is and immerse it in water.”

  “Do it.”

  ****

  Two hours later, the chunk of flesh yielded up the item in question. “Knife blade made out of glass,” suggested Mason.

  Dr. Norton shook his head. “Not a knife blade. Shaped wrong. That’s a letter opener. Handle’s missing, though.”

  “Why glass? Everything I see is made out of glass or plastic. Even all the forks and spoons I’ve seen are glass.”

  Janet answered, “There is a shortage of metal in the colony. Mars has metal ores but we don’t yet have the resources to mine for metals. Sand we have in abundance; we
can easily make all the glass we need.”

  Mason returned to picture number seventeen. “Then the artifact in this photo must be the letter opener. Actually, it has to be the handle of the letter opener.”

  “There’s no handle, just the blade,” Janet argued.

  “No, but there must have been a handle when the photo was taken. I don’t believe that the blade would have been exposed until the flesh was shrunken by desiccation. Have you seen a handle?” Mason asked Dr. Norton.

  “No. Those pictures were taken at the crime scene. Maybe the handle is there.”

  “I searched the crime scene,” said Mason, “but I might have missed it. It’s clear glass and it is possible that I overlooked it. Is there a lab where I can have this blade tested for DNA?”

  Dr. Norton answered, “We have an excellent genetics lab at the hospital. If we’re finished here, I’ll put Mr. Echols back on ice and take the blade to the lab for you.”

  Mason dropped the piece of glass into a specimen bag. “No. Don’t freeze the body—just keep it refrigerated. I’ll take the blade to the lab.”

  “It’s up to you,” said the doctor.

  ****

  “On the transport, Janet asked, “Why didn’t you want Dr. Norton to take the blade to the lab? Do you not trust him?”

  “I’m not sure if I can trust him or not. But when handling evidence, it is always best to control the chain of custody. I intend to stay with the evidence while it is being tested for DNA.”

  “Are you an expert in DNA testing?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know anything about DNA testing?”

  “Actually, nothing. But I can usually tell when someone is being honest with me and when they are feeding me bull shit. Afterward, I think we need to try and find the handle.”

  “So, I am guessing that you don’t want me to tell the geneticist that you haven’t got a clue what he is doing.”

  “Not a word.”

  ****

  At the lab, an attractive woman in her mid-forties extended her hand. “Good afternoon, Mr. Turner. My name is Dr. Donna Ward, senior geneticist. Dr. Norton messaged the lab that you were coming and I will give your case my personal attention.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Ward. And call me Mason.

  “Okay Mason, but only if you call me Donna. Dr. Norton said that you had a specimen that you wanted tested for DNA.”

  Mason produced the bag containing the blade. “How long will this take?”

  “About a half hour. You can wait if you like or I can send the results to your notepad.”

  “I’ll stay. Do you have an estimate of how many colonists are in your DNA database?”

  “Not an estimate. Exactly six hundred seventeen. The DNA signature of every man, woman and child is contained in our database. There are so few of us that we have to watch for genetic time bombs that could endanger the viability of the colony.”

  “You must be ever vigilant?” suggested Mason.

  Donna smiled. “Yes, we are ever vigilant.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “For one thing, we monitor all pregnancies. There is a slight—very slight—risk that a woman’s eggs might have been damaged by radiation during the trip to Mars. The shipboard shielding is good, but it is not perfect.”

  “Eggs only—not sperm?”

  “No. Sperm is constantly produced during a man’s lifetime, but a woman is born with all the eggs she will ever have. There is also the chance of spontaneous mutations in both sperm and eggs. We monitor pregnancies to ensure that dangerous genes aren’t introduced into the colony.”

  “And you terminate the pregnancies if you find the fetus to be non-viable.”

  “Yes, we terminate the pregnancies. It is not a moral issue; it is necessary for the survival of the colony.”

  “Sounds like genetic engineering to me.”

  “Not at all. We don’t control the pairing of partners, nor do we select which egg and sperm are paired. We trust in the same natural selection that has worked perfectly well since the dawn of mankind.”

  “But you destroy the undesirable.”

  “Not by choice—by necessity. And the greatest majority of the fetuses we terminate would not survive to term anyway. Those that would survive would tax already overburdened resources and possibly destroy the colony.”

  “So, you cull the undesirables and improve the race.”

  “We only remove those who would have not survived before the event of modern medicine. Color blindness, for instance, is an undesirable trait but would never be used as a criterion for termination.”

  “Where do you draw the line when you select which child you kill and which child you allow to live? Dr. Norton told me that human life was sacred on Mars.”

  Donna wiped away tears that threatened to spill from her eyes. “Do you think I want to play god with the lives of children? Do you think I enjoy taking those innocent lives? I hate my job! I didn’t come to Mars to kill children, but to keep the colony alive, it is necessary. And where do I draw the line? Hell! I don’t know any more. I select a fetus for termination and I feel so damned guilty. Maybe that child could have survived and lived to become the one person that saved the colony. Or, I can decide not to terminate and I worry that this will be the child that drags the colony down to its destruction. I hate this job, but it has to be done.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mason said. “I was speaking out of ignorance.”

  Janet joined in. “Mason doesn’t understand the hardships the colony endures. He’s got a lot to learn about us but, to be fair, he is trying.”

  Donna’s notepad chimed. “I’ve got the results.” She glanced in Janet’s direction.

  Janet shrugged. “I trust Mason. You can tell him the results.”

  Donna turned her notepad so that Mason could see. “Only one match, Lawrence Echols. No other complete DNA samples.”

  “But there are other samples?”

  “Not really. Bacteria and viruses contaminate the specimen. Dust may carry DNA fragments from any number of people, the chickens, and any of the plants found in the colony. There are DNA fragments there but nothing that can be identified.”

  Mason extended his hand. “Thank you, Donna. And, again, I apologize for accusing you of…of…”

  “Of playing god,” Donna completed Mason’s thought. “No apology necessary. I do play god and I am not proud of the role that I play. I make the decisions so that others don’t have to share that burden.”

  “We all have unpleasant tasks. I do not envy you yours.”

  Donna squeezed Mason’s hand. “Thank you, Mason. Maybe you will come to understand the colonists after all.”

  ****

  Back at the scene of the crime, a thorough search of the apartment failed to produce the missing piece of the letter opener.

  “We’ll have to go back to the morgue,” said Mason.

  “Dr. Norton won’t be happy.”

  “I don’t give a damn if the doctor is happy or not. We’ve got to find that missing handle.”

  “Maybe it broke while Mr. Echols was being stabbed. Maybe the killer took it with her.”

  “No. I am certain that it was in that photo that Dr. Norton made. And even if I am wrong, and I don’t believe that I am wrong, I still have to try and recover the evidence.”

  “Okay. I’ll text him. But he’s going to be pissed.” Janet tapped a message on her notepad.

  Almost immediately, Mason’s notepad chimed. The screen displayed: Incoming call from Dr. Robert Norton. Accept/Reject. Mason pressed Accept. “Dr. Norton?”

  An irate voice rasped from the notepad, “What the hell do you want now, Mr. Turner?”

  “I need to go back to the morgue.”

  “I’ve already closed the morgue for today. Tomorrow doesn’t look too promising either. If you insist on being a nuisance, why not pester Dr. Gardner. After all, it is his month to have morgue duty.”

  “But you’re familiar with this c
ase.”

  “Yeah. And I’m getting very familiar with a real pain in the ass that shouldn’t even be on this planet. Why the hell do you want to go back to the morgue?”

  “I need to do a more thorough search for the other half of the letter opener.”

  “I did a thorough search after you left. I can promise you, it’s not here.”

  “Was the body desiccated in the same room where we examined it or is there another room that we need to check?”

  “Maybe there is another room that you should check but it’s not at the morgue. The body was sent to the farm for desiccation. We don’t have that capability at the morgue. Talk to the Farmer and stop bothering me.”

  Mason’s ‘pad displayed: Call terminated by Dr. Robert Norton.

  Mason closed the notepad. “Can you contact the Farmer and set up a time that we can look for the missing piece of the letter opener?”

  “If I can set it up, do you want to go today?”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “Then would you mind going without me?”

  “I guess I could go without you. Why?”

  “I’m sorry, Mason, but I am really hurting. I’ve got to rest.”

  “Oh my god! I am really sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Forget about the farm. I’ll get you back to the apartment. I want you to rest. We can worry about this investigation tomorrow.”

  Through the pain, Janet smiled weakly. “Would you mind doing something for me?”

  “Anything. If I can possibly do it. Anything.”

  “After you get me back to the apartment, could you go out and buy dinner for us? I’m starving.”

  “Anything in particular that you want?”

  “How about that cheese ravioli we had in the Starlight Room.”

  “Can I get it to go?”

  “Tell them it’s for me. They’ll put it in a box. And some Martian Red wine—low alcohol. And a desert—anything sweet.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No. Let’s just get back to the apartment. I really need to lie down.”

  ****

  Mason waited until Janet had changed into one of his shirts and was comfortably in bed before he made his way to the restaurant. Inside, he made his request and was told that the wait would be about ten minutes or so.