by Sean Parsons
“She was strangled?” he said.
“Evidently. We are awaiting the toxicology report to determine if the needle was inserted before her death, or after. And any drugs that were in her system will be revealed.”
Erin closed the file. He would have to wait for the toxicology report to be sure.
“Acting Director Grossman told me you have several hundred ODs a year,” he said. “Why so many?”
“I’m sure he told you of the economic difficulties faced by the residents of Eden and the other stations?” Cho said. “You can think of this station as a low-income city. We have all the criminal problems of an equivalent community. Drug usage is worryingly high, but we are working on the problem.”
“Where do they get the drugs from?”
“They are smuggled in – despite our best efforts.”
“In complete form?”
“What do you mean?” Cho said.
“I’m asking you if the drugs are smuggled in complete or if they are cooked here.”
“Detective Bradley, are you implying that there is some way the residents could be synthesising illegal substances on board this space station?”
“How else could they be disseminating those substances? Grossman never told me what drugs you deal with specifically. What are they?”
“Heroine, primarily.”
“That will show up on the toxicology report?”
“Yes, if Susan Grior had injected heroine into her system, it will show up in the report.”
“What if it was injected after death, by someone else?”
“No. It would not be absorbed the same way. The bodily processes would have stopped, including blood flow. It would tend to pool in the limb and not be absorbed. But we have checked for that. The results will be forthcoming.”
“When exactly was she found?”
“9pm last night, when her husband, the director, got home from work. He was admitted to hospital within the next hour.”
“Where is he now?”
“In the intensive care ward. His condition is stable.”
Erin jotted down all of these details. While he did so, Cho sipped his tea and stared evenly at him.
“I wonder what you must be thinking, detective,” he said. “Is this your first time on a station?”
“It is,” Erin said, looking up.
“And how do you find it?”
“What I’ve seen so far is very impressive. But I’m primarily focused on this case. I need to determine how exactly Susan was killed, and why. And by whom.”
“Of course. I’m sure the staff will be more than accommodating during your investigation. We were all fond of Susan. She was a very intelligent woman.”
“Who do you think killed her?” Erin asked, suddenly.
Cho seemed taken aback. “I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Do you have any suspicions?”
“I’m a doctor, detective. I deal in facts, not suspicions. Get me facts to make a judgement with, and I will do so.”
“Even so, you must have an idea?”
“Yes. Director Grior took a hard-line stance against the drug traffickers. There is a well-known operation here, a gang if you will, which has considerable influence amongst the residents. I believe they targeted him deliberately.”
“Why his wife and not him?”
“You’ll have to ask them that, detective.”
“Where can they be found?”
Cho stared at him. “You can’t be serious? I strongly encourage you not to go looking for them. They have murdered before.”
“Why don’t the security forces weed them out?”
“There have been attempts in the past. But the security forces are ultimately too few, and the residents shelter the criminal gangs in the sublevels. It’s rather a maze down there, and very dangerous. Even if you aren’t killed, you’ll likely be robbed.”
Erin was amazed. “I find it hard to believe on a multi-trillion dollar space station there would be such a degree of crime and lack of control.”
“Initially there was not,” Cho said. “But that was a hundred years ago. Times have changed. As the populations became more entrenched on the stations, the old behaviours came out. The administration grew lax. Again, we are the equivalent of a small city. We have all the problems of one. Your tea is getting cold.”
Erin hadn’t noticed Cho pour it for him. He took it up and sipped it. It was bitter and refreshing and woke him up a bit. He needed to be awake. This case was beginning to look sticky.
“You see,” Cho said, sitting back and putting his fingers together, “the Life Stations project was ambitious. Take millions of people off the surface of the Earth, where resources are too few, and put them on liveable habitats in orbit around the planet. Self-sustaining habitats, where waste is recycled, and most of the food is grown in hydroponic vats. Of course, the Chinese, Indians and Africans were the nations most in need of the project. As you can see here. We have a hundred thousand people on board. Roughly forty percent are Chinese, the rest are Indian and African. We have some Caucasians from various countries, but not many. I myself am Chinese-American. I don’t identify much with the culture, although I do speak Mandarin.”
“You speak English very well.”
“I was born in Shanghai, and I came to New York as a child. I spent most of my life in America. I studied medicine in Boston. To be honest with you, I was driven to do so out of a desire to break away from the traditional medicine that had failed my family for so many years. But you don’t want to know all of this. Can I be of further assistance to your investigation?”
“I want to speak with the director, Grior.”
“That will be acceptable. He is conscious. You must remember he has undergone a traumatic experience and he may not respond well to questioning. I can have an orderly take you to his room.”
“That would be fine,” Erin said, standing up.
Cho shook his hand. “No one wants you to succeed more than I, detective. Susan was on my staff. She and Felix were close friends of mine. If there is anything more I can do to assist you while you’re investigating, please let me know.”
Erin thanked him and left. An orderly, paged by Cho, was waiting outside to take him to Grior. He didn’t know what to expect.
Felix sat upright in his bed with tubes sticking out of his nose. He was bleary eyed and despondent. Erin sat by the bed, watching him. The orderly hovered by the door, looking in. He was worried.
“Mr. Grior,” Erin said, “I need to ask you some questions.”
“Who are you?” Grior rasped.
“I’m Detective Bradley. I was called in to investigate your wife’s death.”
“Go away,” Grior said, turning his head.
“Mr. Grior, it’s important I speak to you. Your wife’s killer may still be on-board the station.”
Grior looked at him. “Do you think she was a user?”
“No. I’m just waiting on the reports to prove it. Mr. Grior, someone doped her and strangled her. I want to find out who.”
Grior choked back a sob. Tears came to his eyes. “She wasn’t a drug addict. I don’t care what Cho or Grossman say. She had never used drugs in her life before.”
“I believe that, director,” Erin said, deliberately using the man’s title in an attempt to bring him back to rationality. “Tell me, did she say anyone was bothering her, following her home, that sort of thing?”
“No, nothing like that. She always came straight back to our room after work. There’s security cameras on all the upper levels. I would’ve checked out anything she told me. She didn’t say anything.”
“Who has the tapes for the cameras?”
“The security officer, Bob Rickard. He’s in charge of security here. He was there when–”
He trailed off and sobbed quietly for a while.
Erin gave him a moment before continuing. “I was told you had cracked down on drug pushers?”
Grior nodded. “Yes. I
’m sure you’re well aware how bad the problem is here. The lower classes are out of control with the stuff. I got sick of them running it right under my nose. When I get out of here I’m going to make them pay. I’ll go down there with a hundred troopers and turn them all out.”
“Down to the sublevels?”
He nodded.
“What’s going on down there, sir?”
“The sublevels are overloaded with people. There’s no security. It’s not safe to send anyone down there. It’s been a hundred years since the station was built – more than enough time for a slum culture to develop. I stopped going down there a long time ago.”
“You’re telling me there is an area on this space station where administration staff are kept out, and you haven’t reported this to the police or had your security team act on it?”
Grior gave him a long, hard look. “Let me tell you something, detective. From day one the priority of the world governments was the rights and protection of these people. That’s still my goal, believe it or not. But a necessary caveat to that was a loosening of control. People complained about the cameras, about the security patrols. They were scaled back. When I went down there last, it was to investigate why the cameras had all gone blank. Turns out they had ripped them out of the ceiling and used the parts to make weapons. I mean real weapons – guns.”
Erin felt a chill. “What kind of guns?”
“Electrical guns: Tasers. Kill a man.”
“And you still wouldn’t go to the police?”
“How can I make this clear to you, officer? There are no police for us. You’re the first police officer that’s come up here since before I was born. What do you think would happen if I picked up the phone, and made that call?”
“We’d come, in whatever numbers were necessary. And we’d clean it up.”
“That’s not your job and you know it, detective. You’re a footpad. You stalk killers in the hallways. That’s it. You don’t change social structures. The government was clear to me when I took the job: you’re on your own. And I’ve acted in accordance with that policy.”
“So that’s why you started cracking down on them?”
“Correct. I had just started recruiting a task force, and made the first arrests, when this happened.”
His face turned again. Thinking of his wife caused him pain.
To take his mind off it, Erin went on rapidly. “You already arrested someone?”
“Several persons, guilty of possession and trafficking. Only minor-leaguers, but it’s a start.”
“I may need to speak with them. Can I do that?”
“Of course. Why do you want to?”
“I think your wife was murdered to send you a message. To back off from the sublevels. To turn a blind eye to the drug use.”
“Well they can all go to hell,” Grior said, in a sudden rage. “After what they’ve done, I’ll kill them all.”
The orderly half-entered the room, looking worried. Erin waved him off.
“I can understand your anger, director, but please, let me investigate first. I need to get into them before they know what’s happening. If they get spooked, the murderer will be the first person sneaked off this station, or killed by his own people. I want to bring him in to face justice.”
Grior calmed down a bit. “I want that too, detective.”
“I need security stepped up at the docks,” Erin said. “Twenty-four hour watch on everyone coming and going. Can you approve that?”
“Not while I’m in here. You’ll have to see Grossman about that. Be warned, if it interferes with trade and supply, he might turn you down. That’s all he’s interested in these days – money.”
“Well, I’ll discuss that with him.”
Erin stood up.
“Thanks for your time, Director. I promise you I’ll do whatever I can to get who did this.”
“Please,” Grior said, looking pleadingly at Erin. “Please-”
That was all he could say.
Erin left, shaken up by the exchange.
3.
The security office of Eden covered the whole floor on the 48th level. It was packed with personnel – most of whom, Erin couldn’t help noticing, were white. Bob Rickard emerged from the pack. He was a tall, muscular man with a military hair-cut and a dangerous look. He wore a blue security uniform with the badge of chief.
“Detective,” he said, extending a meaty hand. Erin took it and had his hand crushed in the man’s grip. “Bob Rickard, Head of Security. I suppose you want to see the tapes?”
“Of course,” Erin said.
“Well, they’re no good.”
Before Erin could respond, Rickard marched off to a bank of monitors on the wall, displaying the video feeds. A cluster of security staff stood surveying them. He clicked his fingers and a weedy looking kid with glasses came over and tapped at a computer. On one of the monitors an image flicked up of a grey, featureless hallway.
“This is the hallway outside the director’s suite,” Rickard said. “An hour prior to the murder, at 8pm. The camera’s positioned above the director’s door, so he can use it to look down the hallway while he’s inside. Run the tape forward at one-and-a-half-times-speed.”
The kid did so. The hall was still while the timer ticked up, until Susan Grior, in nurses’ whites, came down the hall. The timer read 8:15.
“The director’s wife enters the suite at 8:15. Nothing much happens until 8:30.”
The timer continued to tick – then, suddenly, the screen went blank.
“What the hell happened?” Erin said, stepping forward.
“The feed went dead,” Rickard said in a flat voice. “We tried everything to recover it, but it’s gone. The time period from 8:30 to 9:30 is missing.”
The kid continued to run the tape forward. At 9:30 the screen suddenly populated with images, of the hallway packed with security personnel, and, later, the wounded director carried out on a stretcher.
“The director placed a call to us the second he got home at 9:00,” Rickard said. “It took ten minutes to get there. The director was being interviewed by security when he grabbed the gun and tried to shoot himself. Then the medics came up over the next ten or fifteen minutes. The whole time, the camera wasn’t recording.”
“Why the hell not?” Erin said.
Rickard shrugged. He didn’t seem too concerned. “Some bug in the system. Some of my staff think there was a breach around the same time, an injection of some malicious code into the system. It may have run for an hour and shut down this specific camera. We don’t keep feeds for every camera up at all times so we didn’t notice it.”
“So there’s no record of who entered the apartment after Susan got home at 8:15?”
“None. Except the director.”
Between 8:15 and 9pm, Susan Grior was murdered. But who had done it?
While Erin was musing on these details, he noticed a whole row of monitors was blank.
“What’s wrong with the feeds for these monitors?” he said, pointing at them.
“Those are the sublevel feeds,” Rickard said.
Erin recalled the words of the director, how the cameras had been destroyed on the sublevels and the parts used for weapons. He also remembered the director’s statement that he hadn’t been down to the sublevels since.
“How long ago were the cameras destroyed?” he said.
“Two years ago.”
“And the patrols? When they did they stop going down there?”
“Two years,” Rickard said, flat as ever.
Erin raised his eyes to the fluorescent-lit ceiling. Two years without any record of activity on those levels. Anything could be going on.
“May I speak with you, somewhere private?” Erin said.
“Sure,” Rickard said, sounding aggravated.
Rickard led him to a corner of the floor with a knee-high bar extending around it as a demarcation point. In it was a desk, a couple of chairs, and an old, outdated computer. They
sat down.
“Sir,” Erin said, leaning forward on his chair, “do you mean to tell me there’s been no monitoring of the sublevels, in any way, for two years?”
“Yes,” Rickard said. “Do you want to criticise us for that, detective? Before you do, I’d like you to take a look at the assault statistics against security forces on the sublevels. They’re very impressive.”
He waved a piece of paper in front of Erin’s nose.
“But if you don’t have time to peruse that nice piece of info, then fine, judge away. And I would think twice before telling me the police could do any better.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Erin said. “I know you have a problem here. I just want to understand it. Because it got someone killed.”
“By all means,” Rickard said, waving his hands expansively.
“So the sublevels haven’t been monitored for two years?”
Rickard nodded.
“What kind of contact is maintained with the citizens down there?”
“They come to the upper levels for treatment at the hospital. Food is sent down there weekly, by the cargo elevators. Otherwise, that’s about it – now.”
“What are their attitudes when they come up to the hospital?”
“They’re mostly on drugs, so it’s hard to tell,” Rickard said, humourlessly. When Erin didn’t respond, he continued, “They only come up here for births, deaths and ODs. And then they go straight back down: the babies, to their homes; the corpses, to the furnaces.”
Erin made a note of that. It was yet another feature of the station that he had been unaware of. He wanted to understand the layout and function of the station better.
“Where are the furnaces located?”
“On the lower levels, between the prison level and the sublevels.”
Seeing Erin’s blank look, Rickard explained. “There’s the admin levels, the upper levels, the mid-levels, the lower levels, and the sublevels. That’s how we define it. You’re on the admin levels now. Security, to be specific.”
Erin ignored the smart-ass comment.
“So the furnaces are on the lower levels, just above the sublevels?”