by K. C. Sivils
Wasting no time, the conductor closed the doors on the coach’s vestibules and began the process of checking tickets. Finally reaching Josephson, the railroader smiled as the detective held up his comm to have it scanned for his ticket.
“Hope you enjoy the ride today. Not a lot of stops to switch today so we shouldn’t be too far behind the scheduled arrival time.”
As the words left the conductor's mouth, a loud bang sounded as a powerful impact rocked the coach forward. Startled, Josephson was thrown forward with the rest of the passengers as the impact pushed the coach forward nearly two decimeters.
“What was that?”
"Just coupling a few more cars to the rear of the train. Nothing to worry about," the conductor announced for the passenger's benefit. The brakeman made an appearance shortly afterward and nodded at the conductor while making his way toward the front of the coach, vanishing as he passed through the door to the vestibule.
Two long blasts from the locomotive’s air horn in the distance sounded and seconds later the coach eased into forward motion as the train got underway. Puzzled by the odd addition of cars, Josephson stood up and made his way to the rear of the coach to peer out the window. A quick count indicated three container flats had been added, each containing a sealed container.
Seeing nothing else really unusual, Josephson sat down, settling comfortably in his seat, leaning against the cold window to watch the train as it made its way toward Capital City.
---
Markeson sat in silence, staring at the striking creature sitting across from him. After ten minutes of polite sparring, the "Colonel" as he'd come to call her was no closer to telling him precisely what it was she wanted from him. Nor in the process of their back and forth banter had the detective learned any more about his mysterious host.
“Pardon me, Colonel,” he interjected, weary of the game and desirous to learn what was expected of him or to be paid and sent on his way. “Could we get to the matter at hand?”
"You're no fun," the redhead purred back before pouting, a delicious pout. Her lips pressed together, head tilted somewhat to the right, her right shoulder elevated ever so slightly higher.
The detective’s silence indicated he was willing to be labeled no fun. It was time for business. She sighed, the fun at hand having been spent. “Very well. It would seem there has been an unfortunate murder near the military base here in Brownstown. A fact I’m certain you already know.”
She paused, glancing out the window before continuing. “A member of the Shore Patrol no less. Needless to say, that sort of thing not only upsets the military in general, but it really tweaks the other SPs and the Marines.”
Glancing back at Markeson, she smiled her practiced smile and brushed a stray lock of fiery red hair back into place. "But then you know that already. A Major Kilgore is the officer commanding the Marine detachment. This puts him in control of the SPs and all of their law enforcement responsibilities.”
“We can agree that’s been stipulated to.”
“The Major has done something unexpected.”
“He sent for my Inspector Sullivan.”
“Yes, most unmilitary of him. Why do you think he did that?”
“Sullivan, who for the record I don’t like personally, is one of the best investigators I’ve ever known. I respect him professionally. He’s also ex-military. Served in the Space Marines, an SP himself to be exact. I don’t recall the exact specifics of his service record, but it’s possible Sullivan served with Kilgore at some point in their careers in the Corps.”
“That, my dear detective, would explain why he picked Sullivan. It does not explain why he went outside his own Shore Patrol unit to investigate the homicide.”
Annoyed someone as capable as the “Colonel” had summoned him to answer a question with such an obvious answer, Markeson was unable to hide his irritation.
“Really? That’s what you summoned me for?”
"Yes, a bit childish of me, isn't it Detective. Apparently, Major Kilgore doesn't trust his own investigative unit, or he suspects the murder is related to something going on at the base's ultra-secret research facility."
Shifting her weight in the overstuffed chair, the woman uncrossed her legs and recrossed them. Surprised Markeson's eyes had not followed her movement; she made a note to herself to wear a skirt the next time she met with the detective.
“It’s the goings on in the facility that you’re interested in,” Markeson observed dryly. “You want to know what you’re up against in Sullivan. You also want to get an idea of the price it will take for me to sell him out to you if it comes to that.”
“My, you must be in a hurry to return to Capital City. Who is she?”
“Speaking of that, why did you have some one break into my apartment? Leave me a message I might not have found warning me to be careful of who I trusted?”
All signs of feminine charm and seductive airs vanished at his words, replaced by a coldness that chilled the cynical Markeson.
"It would seem my competitors are involved. Well then. I'll get to the point. I have an idea of what goes on in that facility, an excellent idea. What I don't have a good handle on is who is funding the research and production. I know when but not where the shipments are going. Most importantly, I don't know who is receiving the shipments.”
Sensing an opportunity for a tidy consulting fee, Markeson leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner. “What, my pretty lady, just what might that merchandise be?”
---
Chief O'Brian leaned back in his creaky chair and for the umpteenth time, that day reminded himself to order a new chair. One like Markeson's. He looked down at the comm on his desk.
Sullivan had checked in, giving him a quick summary of the case in Brownstown. Of course, Sullivan had left out as many details as he could. Apparently, his best Inspector wanted the Captain of Detectives to know as little as possible about the case. He decided he could live with that for now.
Grinning, the Chief picked up his comm and typed in the number for the best office furniture outlet in Capital City.
---
Barely half an hour into the autopsy, Bones stopped his recording device. Removing his latex gloves, he made his way back to his office and fished around in the bottom drawer of his desk. After nearly a minute of looking, he found what he wanted, an older model, portable recorder for fieldwork. A quick check showed the battery still held a good charge.
He returned to the autopsy room and donned a new pair of blue gloves. Sitting the tiny recorder down on the autopsy table near the victim’s head, the Head Coroner of Beta Prime shook his head before pressing the record symbol.
"Sullivan, what have you gotten us into this time, bringing me a clone to autopsy?"
Thinking back to his stint in the Navy as a flight surgeon during the Expansion Wars, he shuddered at the memories of the slaughter he’d witnessed. Particularly toward the end when the Confeds had grown desperate and started using poorly engineered clones as cannon fodder.
It had been pointless. The clones were of such poor design many could not function even as basic foot soldiers, getting in the way of the few well trained Confeds remaining, leading to the deaths of many of them. Other clones had grown psychotic, turning on their masters in a blood thirsty, blind rage.
The outcome of the pointless exercise, a desperate last gasp of a losing government in a bloody war it had no hope of winning, had been for the practice of human cloning to be banned throughout the human occupied universe. The Confeds themselves had proposed the ban and enacted the harshest punishments for anyone caught breaking the ban.
Pressing the record symbol, Bones began his observations. “The deceased is a human male clone. The height and weight recorded in the official report. My best guess is the deceased is at most, three weeks old. Fully grown and developed. I have no means to determine the mental state of the deceased prior to death.”
Ten minutes passed as Bones continued his inspection. He pa
used only to stop recording with his portable device and to restart the official autopsy recording. Picking up a scalpel, he hesitated before making the Y-incision to begin the examination of the victim's internal organs.
---
Exhausted, I marshaled the last of my energy as I dried my hands. Alice and Joe both were sitting with Sarah in my regular booth. It was time to have a talk with Sarah and get to the bottom of a few things.
Stepping into the restaurant, I immediately looked at my booth and relaxed. Alice was sitting next to an anxious Sarah while Joe waxed poetic about something or another, pointing at one of his many posters of classical bands proudly displayed as part of the décor of his restaurant. Following the direction of Joe's emphatic pointing, I couldn't help but smile. Like Joe, I have a weakness for the band once billed as The World’s Greatest Rock ‘N’ Roll Band, back when humans only occupied the planet Earth. The print was a reproduction of artwork for their classic work Exile on Main Street.
“Carrying on again about your fascination with The Rolling Stones?”
Joe grinned, knowing I was a fan of the classic group of musicians.
“Fascination,” Alice laughed. “More like obsession.” Standing, she stood up and touched Sarah on the shoulder, smiling at the anxious girl.
“Whatever,” Joe complained, standing on cue to leave me alone with Sarah, the job of keeping her from fleeing over.
I sat down across from the moody child-woman. She glanced at me and then back at the plate that held her barely touched sandwich.
“Sarah, we need to clear the air.”
She looked up at me and nodded in agreement.
“Not here though. Somewhere my secrets can’t be heard by anyone.”
Usually, her insistence on being secretive would have rankled me a bit. Not now. Not with a dead clone lying on the slab in the morgue and someone sneaking around the military base. My former commanding officer, with whom I'd parted on bad terms, had requested my presence on the case.
Sarah was right.
“I have devices that can sweep for bugs in my apartment and create background white noise for any listening devices across the street. You know as well I do the place is secure, as secure as it can be made.”
She thought about it for a moment. “Okay. But if I need to go, you’ll let me?”
“When we’re done. When I’m satisfied the air has been cleared.”
After a moment of silence spent looking out the window, she looked back at me. "Okay. But I want the door to the balcony open. Just in case."
I answered by standing up and tossing a couple of hard credits for Alice on the table. Joe ran a tab for me, so Sarah and I left.
We had a few things to talk about.
CHAPTER TEN
Sitting and watching the train could only hold Josephson's attention for so long. Once the mixed train had left the Brownstown area and the few indigenous trees that grew in the area, the scenery was a bland, dull white with a few rolling hills. It was a beautiful day without a cloud in the sky, a rarity for the planet.
Rather than don his glasses to avoid snow blindness from the bright light reflected off the white landscape, Josephson decided to busy himself going through the notes he frequently took in his attempts to learn as much about the detecting business as he could from his boss Sullivan.
One of Sullivan's mantras and that of several of the older detectives kept playing itself over and over in the young detective's mind. With near maddening clarity, Sullivan's voice kept repeating the detective's proverb over and over; I don’t believe in coincidences.
Remembering seeing his supervisor, Captain Markeson in the airport in Brownstown, departing in the company of the man he was certain was ex-military, if not currently serving. Josephson realized his subconscious had made a connection. There was no reason for the Chief of Detectives to be in Brownstown, not having just sent his best team, with Sarah in tow no less, to investigate the murder.
It was strange, but so was Sarah’s claim the dead SP was a clone. It was also strange the military had requested Sullivan handle the investigation. Josephson decided it was all strange and beyond him to figure out.
He pulled out his comm and began typing in a message. Knowing Sullivan would chide him for the delay in letting him know about Markeson’s appearance, Josephson included as much detail as he could from memory about the stranger who’d escorted Captain Markeson out of the terminal.
Josephson hit send and settled back in his seat for a nap. Between the cot and the fact Sarah had scared him half to death with her odd behavior, he'd not slept well. With any luck, the train would be late, and Sullivan would have calmed down about his delay in messaging about Markeson's puzzling appearance in Brownstown.
---
Walking through streets the average person would not venture down out of fear of being mugged was nothing new for Father Nathan. A big man and still fit despite the streaks of gray at his temples, the priest's collar did little to send a message of weakness to any would be thieves looking for easy prey. Given his mood at the moment, Father Nathan seemed to convey the opposite vibe, that he, in fact, was the predator seeking prey.
He’d lost three of his charges months ago to the streets. Every day in his morning prayers he begged for God’s forgiveness for failing Toby, Lucy, and Anna. For not getting them off the streets before a bigger animal on the food chain found them.
The Father had focused his efforts on the string of pickpockets who worked the working class neighborhoods around his parish church. He’d managed to convince nearly two dozen of them to take advantage of the vacant dormitory space the parish had to get out of the cold at night. Built for just this reason, the vicar before him had done nothing to reach out to the needy, and those who lived on the streets and the dorm space had gone unused.
In fact, the vicar before Father Nathan had not done much of anything in advancing the Kingdom of God in the Southeast Quadrant of Capital City. As a result, the Archbishop for that region of the galaxy had seen fit to install the priest no other diocese wanted as the vicar. It seemed to be a good solution to the problem of what to do with Father Nathan.
God may forgive a man’s sins and forget his past; people had a much harder time living out the concept of grace. If Father Nathan failed, at least it would be in a parish that had no congregation to speak of.
He’d known all of that when told of his assignment. Knowing he was expected to fail had made the fledgling priest all the more determined to succeed. He had to succeed. God might have forgiven him, but he hadn’t forgiven himself.
Despite providing a haven and a warm breakfast each morning, despite the growing bonds of trust between him and the street urchins, Father Nathan had not been able to discover the identity of “the Boss Man” who seemed to possess some unbreakable hold over the kids. If his kids wouldn’t tell him, he would find the man himself.
---
I handed Sarah a glass of lukewarm water. She looked at it and then me, her long brown hair hung in front of her face. Sarah looked a bit worse for the wear and her hair, in particular, showed it. Despite living on the streets most of the time, I’d never seen her hair disheveled like it was at the moment.
“You need to drink more water, Sully. You can dehydrate in a cold environment like this just as well as a hot and humid one.”
She cut her eyes at me, watching me through her hair as I made my way around my apartment, checking for bugs of any type. I didn’t expect to find any, but I also didn’t want Sarah flitting out the door to the balcony and disappearing. Finished with my sweep, I put my device away and retrieved a really nifty device I had picked up when I first entered civilian police work.
It generated white noise, a series of signals across just about every frequency imaginable that could be used to eavesdrop, audio or video, in my apartment. I set it up on its tripod near the balcony and made a show of adjusting it before I activated it. Sarah observed every movement I made, her demeanor not changing.
&nb
sp; I sat down and looked at the source of my current misery. Her expression wasn't quite a pout, though Sarah did have her lips pressed together causing them to protrude slightly. Furrows were present in her brow, just visible through the long locks of brown hair still obstructing my view of her face.
Sarah had finished her glass of water and set it aside. Still dressed in her warm, black leather trench coat, I had little doubt she would make good on her threat to flee if she didn’t like the way our talk went. So much so, she’d gone to the trouble to make a show of placing her backpack, with all of her few possessions, right by the open door to the balcony.
“It’s cold in here,” I told her.
“So,” was her petulant response.
“I’m going to close the door to the balcony.”
“I’m leaving then,” she said flatly, rising quickly to prove she meant it.
“Not all the way, just enough to stop the wind from forming ice on the walls of my place. Do you mind?”
Sarah thought about it for a moment and then strolled over to the exit, watching me over her shoulder to see what I would do. I let her walk.
With a firm tug, she managed to slide the heavy door over, closing off most of the opening but leaving enough room for her to slip through and easily make good her escape.
Not saying a word, Sarah sat back down, placing her forearms on the table. She shook her head from side-to-side once, moving the hair from in front of her face.
“Do you believe me now?”
“The part about you being a clone?” I watched an expectant look form in her eyes. My answer was important to her. More so than I had realized.
"I'm not sure." It wasn't the answer she wanted to hear, and her sour expression let me know it.
"I am positive you believe you are a clone, and, let me say this, I believe other people think you are a clone. I'm just not sure what to think, okay?"