Caveat Fuzzy

by Wolfgang Diehr

  “And maybe a few privileges while they are incarcerated?” Toyoshi asked. “Twenty years in protected custody is a very long time.”

  Coombes rubbed his chin. “Like what?”

  “Personal video feed, they get to be housed together, conjugal visits….”

  “The justice system of Zarathustra does not provide…certain services.”

  “Prisoners often become the target of the amorous attentions of certain women,” countered Toyoshi casually. “Should such persons choose my clients….” He let the sentence hang unfinished.

  “I would have to check with the chief prosecutor, but I think we can accommodate you.”

  Anderson nodded. “In that case, I think we can work with you.”

  Rippolone sputtered and shouted at his partner. “Tony, we can’t sell out the…you know.”

  “Or they’ll kill us? The line starts behind Mr. Coombes, Ripper. We very literally have nothing to lose and possibly our lives to gain. However, I will add one more proviso for our testimonies.”

  Coombes leaned forward. “And that is?”

  “The possibility of parole.”

  Coombes drummed his fingers on the table as he thought it over. “There is a problem with that. A parolee cannot leave the planet. You would be trapped here until you completed your sentence. One slip-up, no matter how minor and you would be back in Prison House.”

  “As opposed to staying there the entire twenty?”

  Toyoshi nodded. “Good point. Do you think you could sell it, Mr. Coombes?”

  Coombes stood up and said he would be back in a few minutes. Outside the secure room he met up with Gus Brannhard. “You heard?”

  “Yes. Do it.”

  “Really? I would have thought….”

  “I don’t blame the gun when it shoots me. I blame the son-of-a- Khooghra who pulled the trigger. These two are the gun. I want the bastard who pulled their trigger.” Gus looked through the one-way glass at the defendants. “Get everything you can out of them. Give them what they asked for and throw in an extra-large pizza every Saturday night, if you have to.”

  Coombes nodded and returned to the room.

  * * * * * * * * *

  Ask any cop what the worst part of the job is, they will tell you it is not the shoot-outs, which are extremely infrequent despite what is portrayed in police dramas, nor is it the occasional physical altercation that is also an uncommon occurrence. Any cop, anywhere, on any planet will say the same thing—stakeouts.

  It was officers Gilbert and Sullivan’s shift to watch the cabin in the hopes that Leo Thaxter would show up. Prior to landing on Zarathustra the two men had never met. Ray Gilbert was from Agni, and had the dark skin to prove it, while Thomas Sullivan came in from Odin. When the two men joined the Mallorysport police force the chief, Piet Dumont at that time, took one look at their names and proclaimed them partners. Fortunately, the two men worked well together and made a good team. Each was the other’s best man at their weddings and both worked to keep each other out of trouble. They went hunting together, bought neighboring houses and their families vacationed together on occasion. They even adopted Fuzzies at the same time.

  The two men had been on shift for forty-three minutes when Gilbert noticed camera three showed an aircar landing in front of the suspect cabin. He adjusted the camera settings to pan in on the vehicle operator as he stepped out.

  “Does that look like Thaxter to you, Thom?”

  Sullivan scrutinized the man’s face and sighed. “Not even a little bit. Hair color is wrong, face is wrong…” He twisted a knob and the next screen showed a read-out on it. “…and according to this he’s two inches taller than Thaxter.”

  Gilbert grunted in affirmation then said, “He could be wearing a synthmask, wig and shoe lifts.”

  Sullivan agreed. “Let’s call the Marshal and see what he thinks we should do. Personally, I’d like to roust this guy just to break the monotony.”

  “Brother, you said it!” Gilbert opened a secure channel and called Marshal Fane. Fane wasn’t at his office, but his receiver was programmed to automatically forward any secure calls. The Marshal’s face appeared on the small screen on the control column. “Marshal, we have an unidentified male approaching the suspect residence.”

  “Did you run a check on the computer to see if he has a record?”

  Gilbert inwardly winced. He should have done that before calling the boss. He glanced at Sullivan who gave the thumbs down signal. “None, sir. You want us to go have a friendly chat with this guy and see what he knows?”

  “No, better not. If it is Thaxter in a synthmask, we need a warrant to yank it off of him, which means we need proof first. If it isn’t ol’ Leo, then this guy might be working for him, and since we have nothing on him to detain him with, he would just toddle off and warn his boss. Sorry, boys, you’ll just have to sit still for a while longer. Make sure to make a visual recording of everything this guy does, though.”

  “Roger, Marshal.”

  Max screened off and Gilbert reached for the self-heating thermos for more coffee. “Guess we’re still stuck here, Thom.”

  Sullivan shrugged. “At least now we have something to watch besides an empty cabin. Oh, Nifflheim. We forgot to run the aircar. Maybe we can get a name on who sold it to whom.”

  “Can we get the registration plate from this angle?”

  Sullivan flipped through the different camera feeds on the screen. “Damn. I can only get a partial. Z972—that’s all I can get.”

  “Z972.” Gilbert ran the partial. “The 972 range of numbers just started about three months ago. I see a couple dozen maybes here. Eric Shepherd, John Holloway, Brandon Murdock, Samuel Hitoshi, Ricardo La Rue—”

  “Wait. John Holloway? Isn’t that Jack Holloway’s kid? The one he had a duel with?”

  “Yup. Cost me a C-note in the betting pool. I thought Jack was going to drop him before the kid cleared his holster.”

  “Never count on a man killing his own son, even in a duel,” Sullivan grunted. “We can rule him out, at least. Who else we got?”

  Gilbert ran through several more names until one stuck out like a damnthing in a veldbeest herd. “Clancy Slade.”

  Sullivan leaned over to double-check the name. “Oh, we gotta call the Marshal back.”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Leo Thaxter emptied the contents of his aircar onto a small contragravity platform and hauled it into the cabin. It had taken several trips to get everything out of the vault and into the aircar at the B.I.N. building, and the deposit boxes were in a single unit. A very heavy single unit. Thaxter had been forced to sneak back into the B.I.N. hallways in search of a maintenance closet where he found, and appropriated, the contragravity platform.

  While Ivan Bowlby had been generous enough to give Thaxter access to the vault, he failed to provide the keys to the safety boxes. Thaxter didn’t mind so much. He bought a portable laser drill and a few other tools on the way home.

  Once inside the cabin, he peeled off the synthmask and dropped it on the bar along with the wig. He wiped his face with a napkin from the bar before sitting down and removing his shoes. The lifts inside of them made his arches hurt as though he were walking on his toes. After he rubbed his feet for a few minutes, Thaxter got up, poured himself a tall whiskey, neat, and drained half of it in a single gulp. Next, he tapped a hidden button at the base of the bar with the side of his foot. The bar slid back to reveal a hollowed-out section of the floor. Thaxter discovered the hidey-hole shortly after purchasing the cabin while doing a sweep for bugs or cameras. He wondered who had put it there and why, but not enough to find out.

  Thaxter tossed in the stacks of cash he collected from Bowlby’s vault before he went to work on the safety boxes with the laser drill. The drill made short work of the locks and Thaxter inspected each one in turn. A few held sunstones, which came as no surprise to Thaxter. The next held diamonds, some had single-ounce medallions of gold and silver. The rest held various illi
cit drugs; cocaine, opium, heroin, Thoran klinscha, a powerful aphrodisiac and finally dried zarashrooms, a local fungoid that, when ingested, acted like a hallucinogenic.

  Thaxter shook his head. Bowlby used way to much of his own product, he thought. Thaxter collected the drugs and threw them into the M/C converter along with the now empty safety boxes. The gems and precious metals he placed in a small duffle bag and stuffed it into the hiding place.

  After the bar slid back into place, Thaxter went to his computer and checked the security footage. The primary files showed that the cabin was undisturbed while he was out, except for a 0.5 second glitch in the time code. Suspicious, Thaxter went into the hidden back-up security archive. He set the back-up in case somebody did get in and Khooghra with the primary file. This time he saw a bunch of men going through his home and computer.

  Thaxter broke out in a cold sweat. They know I’m here on Zarathustra, he thought. His first impulse was to get the Nifflheim out of the cabin and run. He checked the impulse. Thaxter spent a lot of years as a free man by thinking things through before acting. That the men in the security feed were cops was not in doubt; he could spot a plainclothes cop a light-year away. The feed showed no cameras being planted inside the cabin. No doubt some were planted outside, but when he came home he was still wearing his disguise, so even if the cops did see him enter, they had no cause to come busting in. The fact that nobody had come in already since he came home supported his theory. From now on every time he went out, he would have to wear the synthmask, at least until he could be sure he gave the police the slip.

  Now how did they find out I was still on-planet, and locate this cabin? He put that aside. It was time to move things forward. First, kill Dane and Murdock. Second, get facial reconstruction. Third, get the Nifflheim out of Dodge.

  Thaxter was distracted by a beeping sound from his computer. The relay he planted back at B.I.N. had finished performing its function of transmitting all of Bowlby’s security footage to Thaxter’s computer. Thaxter knew there were cops outside, somewhere, looking for an excuse to come in and that made him want to get out. Instead, he sat down and sped through the video file to the day Bowlby died in his office.

  Thaxter was mildly surprised that Bowlby would keep a recording of his own activities. Then again, he did run a prostitution ring and was known for sampling his own products. No doubt he kept a library of his ‘conquests’ somewhere. Plus, a record of his dealings with others made for pretty good insurance should they decide to double-cross him and rat him out later.

  The feed ran through the events of Bowlby’s day. As Thaxter suspected, he entertained a few of his call girls in the office. Thaxter sped through that part. Adult films were one thing; Bowlby’s chubby self in his birthday suit was quite another.

  Thaxter stopped the forward motion when he caught a glimpse of something. He backed the feed up until he found what he was looking for. Ivan Dane and Brandon Murdock entered Bowlby’s office.

  The feed had a soundtrack, but Thaxter didn’t need it to know what was going on. The two men were telling Bowlby that they were taking over and Bowlby wouldn’t play ball. There was some back and forth until finally Murdock grabbed Bowlby and forced him back against the wall. Dane walked over to the helpless man, pushed up a sleeve and jammed a needle into his arm. Murdock released his burden and Bowlby fell forward onto his desk.

  When Bowlby stopped moving, Murdock set the body into the chair while Dane staged the scene to look like an overdose. Dane rolled up Bowlby’s sleeve, tied it off and placed the needle carefully into the same puncture hole he made before. Since Bowlby was known for using his own merchandise nobody would bat an eye when they found his corpse.

  “Oh, Christ! Bowlby, you poor dumb bastard.” Thaxter sighed, then put on a sad smile when he thought about Bowlby’s earlier guests. “At least you had a last roll in the hay, pal.”

  On the screen Dane and Murdock went through Bowlby’s desk and file cabinet looking for something, which they apparently failed to find, then they wiped down everything they had touched and sprayed the room with some sort of aerosol. A DNA degrading agent, most likely, Thaxter surmised.

  Thaxter planned on looking over some more of the video-feed later. For now he had to make plans. A new hideout, a little premeditated murder, a new face, a ticket off-planet: It was going to be a Nifflheim of a good-bye party.

  * * * * * * * * *

  “Marshal Fane, with all due respect,” said the incredulous Officer Gilbert, “Are you out of your freakin’ mind?”

  Ordinarily, Colonial Marshal Max Fane would not take that kind of insubordination. Neither in person nor over the viewscreen. In this case, however, he understood the sentiments behind it.

  “I wish I was, Ray, because then I would be able to disregard orders and go with my gut, which is telling me the same thing yours is telling you. I was even ready to go so far as to ask the real Clancy Slade to file a missing vehicle report so that we would have probable cause to roust the driver.”

  Max lowered his head and shook it. “Mr. Brannhard said the risk of it blowing up in our faces was too big. We can only stretch a legal fiction so far. Sorry, guys, but you’ll just have to keep watching the cabin through the cameras. But if that guy comes out and goes for a joyride, I want you tail-grabbing his ass wherever he goes. Get him on a moving violation if you can.”

  “Yes, sir, Marshal,” Gilbert said. The screen went dark.

  “You know,” Sullivan said, “people shouldn’t leave their aircars outside like that. Something might happen to it. Graffiti, bird droppings, vandalism….”

  “…tracking devices,” finished Gilbert, catching on. “Whose turn is it to violate some suspect’s civil rights?”

  “Flip you for it,” said Sullivan, holding up a quarter-sol coin.

  It came up tails.

  XXIII

  “Is that everything?”

  Rippolone shot back, “What? Ya want the juvie records, too?”

  Anderson put a restraining hand on Rippolone’s shoulder. “That is everything we know, Mr. Coombes.”

  “Very good.” Coombes opened his briefcase and extracted some papers, which he gave to Toyoshi. “This is the plea agreement signed by the Chief Colonial Prosecutor and approved by Chief Justice Pendarvis.Please look them over and sign at the bottom. You will be transferred to Prison House and placed into protective custody first thing in the morning. Your adjoining cells have been equipped with the agreedupon equipment; vidscreen that will only receive feeds, not call out, mini-fridge and—”

  Coombes let out a small sigh as he glanced at Rippoloni, ‘the pizza maker.’ “You’ll have to use Prison House-approved ingredients.”

  “Beats none at all.” Rippolone accepted the proffered documents from Toyoshi and signed where the lawyer pointed. He then passed the papers to Anderson, who also signed with his free hand. The other was strapped down to a veridicator seat.

  “Do you have any statements to add before we shut off the vidfeed?”

  “Yeah,” Rippolone said. “I want it on record that this is our last will and testament. We’re dead men. You might as well put us in good suits and save the undertaker some trouble.”

  “Every precaution will be taken to assure your safety,” Coombes said. “We might need you down the line for additional testimony.”

  “Fine. Now can I please get out of this damned veridicator?” Anderson asked.

  Coombes nodded and an officer unstrapped the prisoner and reshackled him to the table.

  “Ripper’s right, you know,” Anderson said. “I’ll be amazed if we live past the first week.”

  “In general population, I would agree. But nobody has ever been murdered in protective lockdown.”

  The video-feed was cut off and the tech extracted the data spool and turned it over to Coombes. Coombes placed the spool into his briefcase and locked it. Before he left the building, the spool would be copied ten times and placed in as many different secure locations.

&nb
sp; “Nobody murdered, you said,” Rippolone said. “What about suicides?”

  “I don’t have those numbers at the moment, though I imagine there have been a few,” Coombes admitted.

  “Hah!” Rippolone snorted. “How do you know they weren’t just staged to look that way?”

  Coombes shrugged as he collected the documents. He quickly checked to make sure Anderson, Rippolone and Toyoshi all signed in the correct locations. They did. “Even security guards can be placed under veridication in the event of a suspicious death.”

  “Well, tell the warden to keep his veridicator dusted off,” Rippolone said. “He’ll be needin’ it soon enough.”

  * * * * * * * * *

  Gerd landed the aircar in his usual spot on the compound. Grego had all but chased him away from the “Fuzzy Rocket” with a shotgun declaring that the naturalist needed a break.

  “Go spend some time with your family, then come back in a couple of days and tackle the job with fresher eyes,” Grego had ordered.

  Technically, Grego wasn’t his boss, even though he was signing the checks for the duration; Ben Rainsford was. Still, Gerd decided it was a good idea and flew back to the reservation. He stepped out of his aircar and took in the scene; a sizable extension was being added to chez Holloway. Gerd noticed Jack coming out to meet him and said, “Is Morgan moving in?”

  Jack took a moment to make the mental connection, then shook his head. “That’s not for my son. He’s building himself a small castle a little south of here. This”—Jack waved a hand at the construction—“is for my Fuzzies.”

  “Ah, starting to feel a little crowded.” Gerd nodded. “Yeah, with my gang, I know what you mean.”

  “Wrong again, Gerd. This wasn’t my idea. And no, Morgan isn’t doing it either. Little Fuzzy came up with the idea all on his own.”