by Liana Brooks
“You have a new body for me?” Sam asked.
“No, your body is lovely. However, the morgue does have a new client.” Mac waved a gloved hand at Clemens. “Who’s our friend?”
“Agent MacKenzie, this is Officer Clemens. Officer Clemens, this is our borrowed ME, MacKenzie. How’d the guy die? Drowning? Alcohol poisoning? Blow dart?”
“All three, actually,” Mac said with a smile.
Sam’s eyes went wide in surprise.
Mac laughed. “No, he was garroted—strangled from behind by something, I’m guessing a plastic rope or knotted bag. Something that was probably readily available. It certainly wasn’t a professional hit.”
“What?” Clemens eyes went wide with terror. “We . . . we thought this was a boating accident!”
Mac stared at her for a moment longer than it took Sam’s eyes to start watering. “Adorable. Who thought that?”
“At the office, we have a sort of unofficial betting pool. People die every week: heart attack, car accidents, diabetes. The weather is finally warming up again, and people are getting their boats up.”
“Meaning there’s an increase in boating accidents,” Sam finished for her. “No one checked the body before bringing it in?”
“The EMT at the scene took a pulse, declared John Doe dead at the scene, and headed here while I took the witness’s statement.” Clemens frowned at the memory. “It wasn’t much of a statement. That stretch of beach is restricted for restoration. Our witness saw the lump and called it in thinking a dolphin had gotten tangled in a drift net. Animal control was first on scene. They phoned it in to us.”
Sam looked at Mac. “Okay, tell me about John.”
“John Doe is in his early twenties, has no ID on him, no fingerprints on file, and doesn’t match any known missing-person report in the district. He died midday, between eleven and two I’d say, of asphyxiation when someone wrapped something around his throat and pulled back, choking him. There’s subcutaneous bruising on his back where someone propped a knee to hold him steady.”
“You said plastic,” Officer Clemens said. “What makes you think the killer used that?”
“No fibers.” Mac shrugged. “A metal garrote would have cut into the skin, a fabric like a scarf would have left trace fibers. They may be there when we do a microscan, but as smooth and as wide as the markings are, it looks like plastic to me. Just a hunch.”
Sam nodded. “How long was he in the water?”
“Two hours, tops. And, you’ll like this.” Mac pulled up an image on the screen showing the John Doe’s wrists. “See the red marks? Like his wrists were bound, but someone cut whatever was holding him off before the body was dumped.”
“Trying to make it look accidental?” Clemens asked.
“This would only look like an accidental death if you’d never worked a homicide before,” Mac said.
“Mac, how many people in this district do you think have ever seen a murder before?” Aside from Henry, the only cases that even merited a bureau phone call had been a drunken hit-and-run around New Year’s and a domestic-abuse case before Thanksgiving. Neither of those had required an investigation.
He frowned. “Oh. Right.” Another shrug. “It’s still pretty hard to make strangulation look like an accident.”
“A guy goes out for a swim, gets tangled in the swimming line, manages to keep his head above water as he tries to untangle himself but it cuts off his air supply and he dies,” Clemens said. “It’s happened before. Last time was in 2067 during a minitriathlon at the beach. Run a mile, bike a mile, swim a mile. Cory Andrews was a seventeen-year-old high-school junior and in the lead until he swam into a fishing line. The crew on the rescue boat got to him in minutes, but he was already unconscious.
“After that, the mayor ran on a campaign to clean up the beaches. It was all over the news during fishing season or whenever the vote to up the cost of fishing licenses comes up.”
Sam could feel a stress headache coming on. “So, there’s a chance someone could have tried to copycat the accident? Wonderful.” Serial killers were such a pain in the paperwork. Give her a nice clean shooting to report any day.
“I wouldn’t look at local suspects first,” Mac said. “Whoever did this didn’t check the tide tables to make sure the body was washed out to sea.”
She met his eyes and nodded. “Unprofessional.” Opportunistic. “Maybe accidental? A kidnapping gone wrong.”
There was a knock at the morgue door before Mac could answer. Agent Edwin smiled nervously at her, and Sam waved him in.
“What’s up, Edwin?”
“This John Doe that just came in?” Edwin held a printout of John Doe’s face. “I think I know who he is.”
Sam’s eyebrows went up in question. “Who?”
“Nealie. Nealie Rho. He’s one of my pirates.”
Mac kicked back in his chair, grinning. “Pirates? Murdered pirates are good. I love Florida.”
“Shut up, Mac.” Chicago has certainly taught him how to enjoy the job. Sam turned to Edwin. “How sure are you that this is your guy?”
“I recognize his face,” Edwin said, looking a little flustered. “He’s an easygoing guy, not one of my real troublemakers. The worse thing he’s ever done is call me because a shipping container had one more box than usual. He liked to count stuff for fun. How many trips the tourist boat made. How many containers came into the shipping port. Little things. If the numbers were off, he’d call 911 to report suspicious activity. They always bounced it to me, so I finally gave him my home number. No big deal. Right?” His forehead creased in a worried frown.
“It’s not breaking any laws,” Sam said. “Can you run point on this, or are you too close to the victim?”
Edwin took a deep breath. “I can do it. Probably. I’ve never known a homicide victim before. Is it homicide or not? I really prefer not.”
“Possible homicide,” Clemens said.
“Definite homicide,” Mac said. “It was someone he knew, and it was probably a crime of passion.” He looked at Sam and shook his head. “This wasn’t accidental.”
“Passion?” Sam asked flatly. “Really? Running someone over is a crime of passion. Beating someone bloody is a crime of passion. Who strangles someone with a plastic bag in a fit of anger? No one stops and looks around and thinks, ‘Gosh! That plastic bag looks like a great murder weapon! I’m so enraged! Let me choke you!’ ”
Mac shrugged and stood up. “Nealie and his buddy were talking, they start arguing over something. One of ’em’s pacing, one’s sitting. Nealie sits down with his back to the guy. Maybe he’s pouting, who knows. The other guy flips, the argument’s gone too far, and he grabs something he had on hand, wraps it around Nealie’s neck, pulls back, and chokes Nealie to death.”
“Then drags him to a boat he just happens to have lying around?” Sam asked. “And where do the cut arms come in?”
“Bondage play?” Edwin suggested.
All the air left Sam’s lungs as she gasped in shock. “What?”
“Erotic asphyxiation is a thing!” Edwin turned to Clemens for support.
Clemens shook her head. “Not my kink.”
Sam shook her head to clear that disturbing image. “Mac says passion, I say premeditated murder, Edwin has accidental, erotic-related death. Clemens, you want to get in on this? Mac’s buying lunch for the winner.”
“Me?” Mac laughed. “What if I win?”
“You’re not. I’m right.”
Clemens shook her head. “I’m going to go with accidental, nonerotic death.” She blushed. “I like taking the long shots.”
Sam walked Clemens out to the parking lot as Mac and Edwin got ready to leave for the swamps.
Clemens stopped beside the rental. “Nice car. I guess bureau pay isn’t as bad as everyone says.”
; “It’s a rental,” Sam said. “I usually drive the Alexia Virgo, standard-issue car of lower-middle-class workers everywhere.”
“What happened to it?”
“Somebody bashed it up in the parking lot. It’s in the shop until they can get all the parts in to fix it.”
“Wow, I hope the other guy had insurance.”
“Don’t know. Whoever rammed my car into something didn’t stop to leave a number after their joyride. Just a nice, cryptic note and a two-hundred-dollar copay.”
“Did you report it?” Clemens asked, sounding angrier than Sam felt.
She shrugged. “Two officers came in and took my report. They said they’d look at the security video from the street cams, but they haven’t gotten back to me.”
“Do you remember which officers you talked to?”
“Hadley and Ranct.”
“They’re good people,” Clemens said. “Good officers. I’ll talk to them and see if I can’t get them to give your car some priority attention.”
“You don’t have to,” Sam said. “I don’t need special consideration, and I don’t want favors I can’t repay.”
Clemens rolled her eyes. “Your drive-by vandalism is the second biggest crime in this town in weeks. If the patrol officers haven’t gotten back to you, it’s because someone in the tech department is too busy playing video games to check their in-box. I’m not doing you favors by reminding someone to do their job.”
“Good for you, throwing weight around like that.”
Clemens smiled. “I’ve got to start somewhere now that I have weight to throw around. Now that I’m a real person . . .” She shrugged. “I want to be a real person, you know? I want people to know I’m more than a vacation trinket created in the lab.”
Sam knew exactly how she felt.
Henry’s address, according to the lab employment records, was 12B Basilwood Loop, part of an apartment complex that catered to singles and young couples.
Sam knew where it was only because she’d run across it during her apartment hunt and remembered how out of place the Basilwood Apartments felt. Most apartments in Florida were cement blocks with stucco texturing and tropical colors. In fact, cement blocks were the preferred design aesthetic anywhere hurricanes were a common occurrence. Basilwood was synthetic wood with cuckoo-clock embellishments. She half expected to see a little woman in wooden shoes carrying tulips popping out of the arched windows of the main building as the clock struck the hour.
She drove around the loop until she found building twelve and parked in a vacant, unmarked spot. Two spots were marked 12B. Presumably one for Henry and one for his roommate. Lucky her, the roommate’s car was sitting where it belonged.
Taking the stairs two at a time, she went up to Apartment B and rapped her knuckles on the door. From inside she heard the unmistakable sound of the soundtrack for War of Wars, a first-person shooter that was being advertised on every radio station and Internet site in the Commonwealth. Fake gunfire rattled inside. She knocked again, louder. Someone swore, and the music stopped.
“What do you want?” a lanky man with brown hair demanded as the door swung open. He glared at Sam, looked her up and down once, then changed his frown to a sleazy smile. “I mean, hey, babe. How’s tricks?”
“Ha-ha,” Sam said without inflection. “Funny. Are you Devon Bradet?”
“Um, yeah.”
“I’m Agent Rose, I left you a message about meeting today?” Sam said, holding up her badge for inspection. “Do you mind if I come in?”
“Oh, right! The clone. Yeah, yeah, come in. I’ve been dying to meet you!”
She tilted her head to the side in confusion. “Officer Clemens is the clone. She isn’t working this case. I’m here to ask you a few questions about your roommate, Henry Troom.”
Bradet held the door open and gestured to a set of mismatched chairs. His high-end holoset was paused in the middle of a shoot-out between blue-fatigued soldiers and aliens in red shirts. “Do you play?” Bradet asked.
“No, I’m not a big fan of guns.” And video games hadn’t been at the top of the nuns’ list of acceptable entertainment at school unless you wanted to play Deidre Duck’s ABCs.
“Ah, man, you ought to try this! It’s benjo! The top gamers’ mags all say it’s the next big batty-fang.”
“I’m going to nod and pretend I keep up with youth culture,” Sam said. The way slang changed these days, she felt she needed a dictionary.
“How old are you, grandma?” Bradet laughed, then suddenly sobered. “Oh, wait. Clones don’t live that long do they? That must have sucked goat balls living in a lab and never getting out. How are you supposed to have a conversation like a normal person if you never see what human culture is like?”
Sam’s eyebrows went up. “Once again, you have me confused with someone else. I’m not a clone. I’m a CBI agent, and I need to talk to you about your roommate. When’s the last time you saw Henry?”
“But you are the clone!” Bradet protested. “My boss at the radio station was the one who started the petition to get you removed from our district last September. Remember? I know all about you. Go ahead, ask me anything. I had the whole file memorized, and let me tell you, whoever made your fake backstory did a lousy job. There are holes in it a mile wide. Kills me.”
Now she wished she’d brought Mac along. He’d have either glared Bradet into submission or made a not-so-subtle threat that would shut the idiot up. “Mr. Bradet, I really don’t have time to indulge in your conspiracy theories. Can we talk about Mr. Troom now?”
“Okay.” Bradet leaned forward in his chair, elbows balanced on his knees. “How about tit-for-tat. I tell you everything I know about Henry, and you give me the exclusive interview with the only known clone in the bureau? How’s that sound? Pretty stellar, right? Am I right? You know I’m right.”
What she knew was Bradet had had one too many cups of java this morning. “First, let me make this perfectly clear: I am not a clone. There is no conspiracy. There is nothing unusual about my birth or upbringing. Two, if you don’t want to talk here, I can and will take you down to the holding cell and interrogate you there. That requires extra paperwork . . .” and the sheriff’s permission to borrow a holding cell “ . . . and I hate paperwork. If you make me do extra paperwork, I will make it worth my while by not only asking about your roommate, but also putting you at the top of my suspect pool. How do you feel about a complete and thorough examination of your finances? Did you pay taxes for these lovely games donated to you?” Sam nodded and smiled. She tried to make it a sweet, nonthreatening sort of smile that she’d always used to make people want to agree with her.
She was pretty sure it looked more like a grimace.
Somehow, she’d lost the knack for smiling like that over the past year. Edwin once said it was something about the look in her eyes—the one that threatened excessive amounts of imminent pain.
“Um, no. I mean, it’s legal. The games and stuff I get to review because I’m paid to talk about them on air. The more people who listen to my station, the more ads we sell, the more freebies I get. That’s it. Swear on my dad’s grave.”
“Good. Then the bureau doesn’t need to recommend you be arrested for tax fraud.” She flicked her tablet open. “But maybe it will need to look into obstruction of justice. Let’s talk about your roommate, shall we?”
Bradet rubbed sweaty hands on his khaki shorts. “Oh, right. Um, Henry’s a nice guy. Real quiet, pays his share of the bills on time, doesn’t leave dishes in the sink. That’s crucial to being a good roommate. He was the real deal, you know?”
“When did you last see Henry?”
He shook his head and squinted. “Sunday afternoon I guess? There was a beach volleyball game and barbecue I went to. Judged the bikini contest . . . and let me tell you we all won that day, if
you know what I mean.” She remained impassive. “Uh, guess not. Then I went to work. I clock in around midnight, go over my script, record any ads or whatnot, check the news. My show comes on at six and I’m off air at eight. I usually leave by nine, and Henry left for work early.”
“Do you always work nights?”
“Yeah, I started with a midnight show. Liked to play some cool Indie stuff, music the college kids could relate to. I got popular enough, and they bumped me up to the morning show for weekends. I work Saturday, Sunday, Monday at the morning slot, then Tuesday and Thursday I do the midnight show. Go in to work and go on air first, do everything else after. Friday nights it’s all about the clubs, you feel me?”
“Not really.” Spending her free time surrounded by sweaty, inebriated college students never appealed to her, not even when she was younger. “When you saw Henry on Sunday, did he seem upset at all? Worried? Distracted?”
“Nah. He did his thing like usual. Probably did breakfast before I woke up, I saw him when I had lunch, and I saw him making some noodles when I left for the beach. I asked if he wanted to come, but I knew he’d say no. Parties aren’t his wiggle, you know?”
“Wiggle?” Sam tried not to say anything unprofessional, settling for, “I’m going to pretend that didn’t come with a dance move. How long have you known Henry?”
“Three months or so? He got here just before the holidays. Knew an old buddy of mine who told him to look me up. I needed a roommate who could pay rent, he needed a place to crash, it seemed ideal.”
“Did he have any friends? Girlfriend? Boyfriend? Family? Anyone ever come over?” The questions were textbook, but they made her squirm. Someday an agent would ask her neighbors the same thing, and what would they say?
“Henry? Nah, man, no.” Bradet shook his head. “Henry never deviated from his schedule. He went to work, he came home, he went to his room, he came out for dinner at eight on the dot every day. Every day. Grocery shopping was Thursdays. I think he did laundry on the weekends. A man’s shorts are none of my business, you know?”
“So, he didn’t have any friends?”