Jia offered Erik a warm smile. “I hope I don’t have to pretend to be an alien god anytime soon to impress you with my pil—”
“Dispatch is requesting your presence,” Emma interrupted. “There’s been a murder.”
“Uptown?” Erik asked.
“Yes,” the AI answered. “I’ll fly us there now.”
The lights came on, and the MX 60 broke out of the air lanes to barrel toward the new destination.
“So much for a quiet last few weeks,” Jia muttered. “Want to bet I have to declare myself Empress of all Orlox before the week is out?”
“Nah. If I put money down,” he looked over, “it’ll happen.”
Chapter Six
Erik gave a quick nod to the two uniformed officers keeping the small crowd of curious residents away from the crime scene, which was an apartment in the middle levels of a residential tower.
There was nothing distinctive about the tower, and the apartment, although large, wasn’t much more impressive than Erik’s. He kept an unnecessarily big place as part of his cover, but neither he nor the victim lived in a sprawling tower-top mansion.
Jia’s eyebrow lifted as they stepped into the apartment.
A well-dressed middle-aged woman lay on her side on the floor, sunken into her carpet. She was impaled through the heart by a small flat-topped flagpole. The normally blue-and-white UTC flag and the white of her carpet were half red with splatters of her blood. She’d also coughed blood over her chest.
The victim stared at the wall, her eyes wide with frozen terror and her lips parted, suggesting a final death scream.
“That’s certainly different,” Jia muttered.
“Yeah, can’t say we’ve ever worked a case where the vic was impaled by a flagpole.” Erik tilted his head, looking at the woman’s body. Her shirt was torn, but the rest of her clothing wasn’t. There was no sign of bruising on the face and no obvious broken bones. He didn’t need Forensics to know there hadn’t been much of a struggle.
Forensics drones hovered in the air, taking pictures and collecting samples. One slowly moved along a bookcase, extending a small arm with a sensor probe. Officers and other techs milled about in the room, carefully inspecting items with gloved hands and murmuring amongst themselves.
The smallest stray hair could be enough to lead them to their murderer.
Everyone talked about how the police had cleaned up Neo SoCal in the last year, but there was always someone out there ready to commit a crime.
Grand plans by syndicates and terrorists might be harder to pull off, but good, old-fashioned personal murder would always happen. The police could only do so much to prevent crime other than cure human nature, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t do their best to track the people responsible for heinous acts.
A forensics tech stood near the door, squinting at a data window streaming fluctuation graphs. A uniformed officer lingered behind him, her brow creased in deep thought. She looked at the victim and the detectives, waiting, discomfort on her face.
“What do we have here?” Erik asked the officer.
She turned and nodded to him. “Detectives.” She pointed to the victim. “Victoria Dwazil, age fifty. She’s a senior manager in the quality assurance division at a company called Luminous River. Her PNIU automatically contacted emergency services when her heart stopped, but apparently, it also contacted the company to—and I’m not joking—let them know she might not be in tomorrow. They contacted the police.”
“I’m sure her bosses love how company-oriented she was.” Erik snorted. “Let me guess, they want us to back off? They have some sort of important internal review to do before we’re allowed to investigate the crime?”
The officer shook her head. “On the contrary, Detective. They’ve already sent us a number for a contact, and they say they want to do anything they can to help solve this incident. The person I spoke to seemed really shaken up about it.”
“A cooperative corporation?” Jia took a few steps toward the body, leaning forward for a better look. “I’m not going to complain about the change of pace, but that doesn’t mean I’m taking anyone off the list of suspects just yet.”
Erik gestured around the room. “You pull security camera feeds yet? Access logs?”
The officer nodded. “Yes, Detective.” She gave him an apologetic look. “And they’ve got nothing.”
“Nothing? What do you mean, they’ve got nothing? There were no feeds?”
“No, she had security feeds for everywhere but the bedroom, and we’ve also got feeds from the halls, and we’re getting external feeds as well, but we already checked the hall and apartment feeds.” The officer glanced at the victim. “Two officers are re-watching them to be sure, but when we did a quick review, they showed that the victim entered her apartment yesterday, and she never came out. No one else was seen entering on any feeds, internal or external to the building. The access logs don’t indicate anyone came in, and her door was locked until Emergency Services overrode it. There’s a jump. She’s in her office, and the next thing she’s on the ground, dead, with the UTC flag sticking out of her.”
“No one was on the feeds?” Erik stared at the flagpole. “It sounds like someone spoofed them. We’re not dealing with some random Shadow Zone thug.” He gestured at the flag. “And where did that come from? It’s not like most people keep flags inside, even small ones.”
The officer pointed to a wide hall. “There’s an office back there. There were four flags: UTC, company, US, and California.”
“She probably uses them for remote meetings,” Jia suggested. “It’s not unusual for a company officer to do something like that. Even if they acknowledge they’re working from home, sending the appropriate image is important.” She looked around. “You should see my mother’s home office.”
“I’m sure all the concentrated wealth would blind me,” Erik joked. “But you don’t think it means anything, then? The flag?”
She looked at him. “What would it mean?”
“It might be an insurrectionist message.”
“That’s a rather obtuse way of sending a message,” Jia suggested.
“Killing a person’s a great way to send a message.” Erik grunted in reply. “But, yeah, probably not. If it were about that, they probably would have left an actual message for us to find. It’s not like the kind of person who kills someone by shoving a flagpole through their chest is all that interested in being subtle.”
Jia walked over to the body and pointed at the tip of the flagpole. “There’s no point.” She waved to a nearby forensics tech to get his attention. “Was there another piece at the top of this?”
He shook his head. “Not that we’ve found, Detective.”
“We’ll check the feed later to confirm that, but let us know if you find anything.”
The tech nodded.
Jia turned back to the officer. “Give us the contact number, and for now, keep coordinating evidence collection. It’s not every day we get this kind of murder Uptown. I’m sure we’ll get a lot of pressure from above to solve it quickly.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the officer replied.
Erik wasn’t so sure about that. The level of political pressure on the department and their specific EZ had slowly ebbed. Between Erik, Jia, and the captain’s intransigence, the Council and other local politicians had learned not to bother.
They could even have been scared that Erik and Jia would turn their attention toward them. Shadow Zone gangs and syndicates might have been cleared out, but plenty of white-collar criminals waited in the shadows for their chance.
Jia gestured for Erik to join her back out in the hallway. She walked away, coolly surveying the murder scene. There were plenty of officers and techs to collect evidence. The short-timer detectives didn’t need to bother with anything but synthesis and follow-up.
“Without hacking anything,” Jia murmured, “is there anything useful you can tell us, Emma? Anything that might link her company to
something we should check out?”
“I’ve already performed a basic background investigation using publicly available sources so as not to affect the legality of your evidence collections,” Emma transmitted to both of them. “All the available records suggest the victim in there is Victoria Dwazil, an employee of Luminous River. The company focuses on chemical supply and is one of the leading competitors of Flamel Universal. They’ve been praised for their agile management style.”
“Flamel Universal?” Jia looked at Erik. “Isn’t that the company your brother works for?”
Erik nodded. “Yeah.” He smirked. “Should I check to see if he’s in town? I’d be pretty impressed if he killed someone by impaling them with a flagpole.”
“You have to admit that killing someone by impaling them with a flagpole, even a small one, does seem a very Blackwell thing to do,” Jia mused. “But I doubt it was him. What else do you have, Emma?”
“Based on the easily accessible public accounts, Ms. Dwazil was a model citizen and completely apolitical, despite Detective Blackwell’s earlier theory.”
Erik scratched his chin. “It was just a theory,” he admitted.
“There’s nothing to suggest she’s had any contact with pro- or anti-insurrectionist figures. Luminous River is a profitable company and a subsidiary of Hermes, but I’ve found nothing in my initial searches to suggest there’s anything unusual about the arrangement. The company was acquired, along with several others, ten years back as part of a financial realignment at Hermes. Their business is a necessary and profitable endeavor, but it doesn’t garner a lot of media attention. They also have an exemplary safety record, one of the best in the business.”
Jia lifted her hand, her fingers spread out. She dropped one finger. “Potentially a terrorist assassination, but unlikely.” She dropped another finger. “Corporate cover-up. Mildly likely.” She dropped yet another finger. “Corporate espionage and warfare. Also mildly likely.” She dropped another finger. “Personal. Was she married or in a relationship that you could find?”
“No,” Emma reported. “I’ve found one Luminous River newsletter article that mentions she was jokingly referred to as being ‘Mrs. Luminous River.’ They state she rarely took time off and enjoyed working, even on her days off.”
Erik looked at the open door. “She didn’t drop dead from overwork.”
Jia glanced into the apartment. “If she were that dedicated to the company, she might have become very disillusioned if she stumbled on some sort of high-level corporate malfeasance. That exemplary safety record might have been a lie.”
“Is that enough to kill someone over?”
“I don’t know. She was high enough that shutting her up before she called the authorities might be worth it. Potentially, she could have done real damage. The only thing I don’t get is…” she gestured to the flagpole, “that. Impaling someone? It didn’t look broken either, and if they didn’t use a pointed one, how did they pull that off? I’ve got theories, but I’d like more evidence before I waste time exploring them.
“Same here,” Erik offered. “And I’m thinking this isn't going to be a case for us as much as for Malcolm. Someone went through a lot of trouble to try to cover their tracks, which points to high-level corporate types rather than a stalker or syndicate types. We should get the feeds expedited to Digital Forensics. They left an impaled body for us to find, which means manipulating the feeds was about hiding who did it. It might just be as simple as recovering the original feeds and facial recognition.”
“One could hope.” Jia nodded. Her gaze cut to the residents at the end of the hall. “Even if she was married to her job, she still could have enemies. We’ll have the officers here canvas the building to see if anyone knew someone was targeting her. We’ll also contact Luminous River and see what they have to say.”
“I doubt they’ll be as eager to help us as they initially said. I’m thinking it was a strategy to make sure we don’t double-down on the pressure.” Erik patted his PNIU. “We should go and meet them in person. It’ll help shake the lies loose.”
“Good.” Jia inclined her head toward a drone just inside the front door. “And it’ll give Malcolm more time to go through the security feeds. We could get lucky, as you said, and be knocking on someone’s door with a warrant by dinner tonight.”
“’Lucky’ for us is not getting shot at by the time this is done.”
“Oh, in that case, we probably won’t get lucky.” Jia patted her slugthrower.
“Just making sure it was there?” Erik asked.
She nodded. “Exactly. You never know when you’re going to need to shoot someone.”
Chapter Seven
September 29, 2229, Neo Southern California Metroplex, Luminous River Headquarters
The somber-faced young receptionist rose from her seat and gestured toward a long corridor. “If you two would accompany me, he’s ready to see you now.”
The detectives followed the lady. Thus far, everyone had been cooperative, from Security to the receptionist. If they commented about the case at all, they expressed regret.
Erik wasn’t ready to trust the company, but it was a welcome change from the instant lawyering up he was used to when dealing with a decent-sized corporation. The nature of her death suggested something far more than a scorned ex-lover, but eliminating suspects from her job would help.
Erik almost laughed despite the situation.
This murder case might very well be the last case he ever worked for the NSCPD. Hunting down leads for Alina, let alone Talos or other conspiracies, would rely on similar skills, but he held no illusions that his coming career wouldn’t represent a radical change. It wouldn’t be about carefully collecting evidence to submit to the court. Jia and Erik would become true hunters in darkness. Their trip ended in front of double doors at the end of the hall.
“Sir,” the receptionist greeted, “the detectives are here to see you.”
“Send them in,” a deep male voice replied.
The doors slid open, revealing a stern-looking man sitting behind a desk so large, Erik could have used it for cover during a war. He gave a curt nod to the receptionist, and she walked away without another word.
“Please come in.” The man gestured to two ornately crafted wooden chairs in front of his desk. They both looked so expensive that Erik hesitated for a moment. The detectives advanced, and the doors slid closed behind them.
The suited occupant hopped to his feet behind the desk. A smile consumed his somber expression. He smoothed his hair, then thrust out his hand. “I’m so glad you came. Terrible thing, this murder, but it’s good that you two are on it. You’ll solve it before I even know what’s going on.”
Erik shook the man’s hand. After a few pumps, the man turned to Jia, repeating his performance, his smile growing larger and more obnoxious.
It was inappropriate given the situation, but it was better than him threatening legal action or shouting about warrants and dragging his feet about aiding the investigation.
“I’m honored to meet you, Detective Blackwell and Detective Lin. I wish it were under better circumstances, but a man can only react to life, not guide it.”
“Thank you for taking this time to meet us, Vice-President Deng,” Jia replied.
He bobbed his head before gesturing to the chairs in front of his desk. “Please sit. I had these chairs brought in specially for this meeting.”
Erik glanced down at the chair. It almost sounded like a threat, but he took a seat. Fortunately, it didn’t explode. His day was looking up.
The gentleman took his own seat. “You don’t need to be so formal. Call me Richard.”
“Okay.” A slight look of discomfort played across Jia’s face. “Richard.”
“Some people call me ‘Dick,’ but only those who don’t like me.” He laughed, but when Erik and Jia didn’t join him, he stopped and looked disappointed. “Yes, there’s a time and place. I get that. We should move on to the matter at
hand. I’m sure you’ve got a busy schedule today, filled with important detective matters.”
“Something like that,” Jia replied. “You were suggested to us as our primary company contact in the matter of Victoria Dwazil’s murder.”
“Of course, of course. Terrible situation. Terrible.” Richard’s breath caught. “Before we get started, just let me say I’m a big fan of yours. Big fan. You’re like movie characters come to life. And I don’t buy into that anticorporate rep of yours. I know you’re just taking down the bad guys.” He threw a few awkward punches at the air. “I never thought I’d get to meet you without committing a felony.” He let out another quick laugh.
Erik and Jia exchanged glances.
They were used to more resistance from corporate types, but Richard’s playful banter was more unsettling in its own way. Was it part of some sort of strategy, or did the man honestly feel that a murder investigation was the best time and place for that kind of behavior?
Erik would let Jia handle the initial questioning until he had a firmer grasp on what was going on with Richard.
“We appreciate your cooperation in this matter.” Jia tapped on her PNIU and settled her hands in her lap. “The quicker we gather the initial evidence, the quicker we can solve the crime.”
“I’ve heard that,” Richard replied.
“It’s our understanding that you’re her immediate supervisor. We wanted to talk to you about possible trouble she might have been in before we start talking with her coworkers. I’ll be blunt; in most murder cases in Neo SoCal, if it’s not a personal matter. It’s related to the victim’s work.”
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