State of Decay r-1

by James Knapp

  “You did.”

  “That man sitting next to you is not your friend,” the killer said.

  I scanned up and down the street, but didn’t expect to see him. He was close, though. He had to be; he could see us.

  “Why did you kill them? What did these people do?”

  “If I tell you, you’ll tell him,” the voice said. “You’ll tell him everything. You’re going to have to figure it out yourself, but to do that, you’ll have to wake up.”

  You have to wake up…. The revivor had also said that to me.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Have you imagined being with him?”

  An uneasy feeling grew in my stomach. I looked over at Shanks and remembered my dreams. The dream I had been having just before the first call woke me up that morning.

  “Have you imagined him touching you?”

  “He’s close,” Shanks said.

  “It’s happening. Don’t get in the way,” the voice said, and the connection dropped. I looked to Shanks, but he shook his head.

  “Close,” he said. “That’s the best I can do.”

  The arm barring the ramp rose and I squeezed the car through the gate, curving down the lit tunnel into the underground parking area. The complex was in a pretty good neighborhood, and there were a lot of nice cars down there. Shanks normally would have ogled them, but this time he didn’t.

  “What did he say?” he asked.

  “He warned me off the case again.”

  “Anything else?”

  His expression was one of concern.

  “He’s taunting me,” I said. “I’ll have them run it again and see if they can get anything else from it. In the meantime, our best lead is inside.”

  None of the doors were forced, so he either had duplicate keys or some kind of electronic lock pick. Security cameras were spaced regularly, and there were plenty more inside, but not one of them had recorded a thing as the killer walked right into the place and took three more victims not even six hours after taking the last.

  I parked in the visitor’s area and we headed inside, following the path the killer had taken. The door to the apartment hung open and was crossed with yellow tape. A police officer stood outside.

  From the looks of it, the door had been forced in from the outside, leaving a clear shoe print next to the knob. On the floor outside the door were boot tracks, and maybe another set of footprints in sneakers. I ducked under the tape, and Shanks moved in behind me. There were three investigators left inside: one taking pictures down the hall, and the other two sweeping for forensics. Near the officers sat a man in a sweater who looked like a civilian. One of the investigators broke off and approached as we entered.

  “Detective Dasalia?” he asked, looking from me to Shanks. I shook his hand.

  “I’m Reece. Bodies are down here, off the living room….”

  He led the way down the hall, which opened up into a spacious living area with a massive sectional sofa on carved wooden claw feet, arranged so that it was facing a flat-screen television with what must have been a fifty-inch screen mounted on the wall. A home theater sound system was arranged around the room, and there was a fireplace with a brick hearth and bronze fixtures on the wall to the left of the sofa.

  “Nice digs,” Shanks said.

  “They have any personal security?” I asked. Reece nodded.

  “Yeah, but it was bypassed.”

  “How?”

  “Not sure yet, but whoever did it has some know-how, because nothing got tripped. These people never saw it coming.”

  He led us to what looked like a playroom, where another television was mounted in front of a smaller sofa. Wires trailed to gaming devices and audio equipment. It was easy to imagine a group of younger kids in there, sitting on that sofa and playing, but instead something terrible had come to an end in that room.

  “Who were they?” I asked.

  “The Valles,” the officer said. “The father, Miguel, the mother, Rebecca, and daughter, Kate.”

  Lying on the carpet in between the sofa and the television were the three bodies, a forensic examiner kneeling over them. Each was lying facedown, as if they had been on their knees and arranged in a circle like they had been facing one another. Their wrists and ankles were bound with plastic ties, and each of their faces lay in individual pools of blood that had joined in the middle. What looked like castoff and various arcs of arterial spurt had painted the carpet, the sofa, and even the walls. Whatever happened there had gone on for a while.

  My eyes went to the young girl and stayed there. Anger and frustration welled up from out of the fog, and as I looked at her face, my throat burned.

  “This is different,” I said to the examiner. “He takes single victims.”

  “I understand,” she said, “but we found traces of the chemical signature you keep finding, the one for the explosives. It matches the one you found in the vehicle earlier. The wounds are a match, too. They were made by your mystery weapon.”

  “Can they be moved?”

  “Here,” she said, grabbing the mother by the sleeve of her shirt and pulling her over onto her side. “This is different.”

  Rebecca Valle had been mutilated in a way that none of the previous bodies had been. There were cuts on her face, neck, and chest. Her sleeves had been rolled up and there were similar marks on her forearms, cut down to the bone in some places. Her belly had been slit open neatly, but not deeply. Just enough.

  “He knew what he was doing,” Shanks said in my ear, and I nodded. The mother hadn’t just been killed; she was tortured extensively first.

  “No one heard this?”

  “Noise screen,” the officer said. “Might be why he picked this room. You could throw a party in here and not hear it in the bedroom. They could scream all they wanted; no one would have heard them.”

  “I get it. Was the place searched?”

  “Tossed,” he said. “Yeah, especially the bedrooms.”

  “He was looking for something this time,” I said to Shanks. That was different too; in fact, it was the closest thing to a motive I’d ever been able to attribute to him.

  “The father and daughter didn’t show the same signs of abuse,” the forensics investigator said.

  “What was the cause of death?” I asked. “For the other two, I mean.”

  “Actually,” she said, “the mother’s cause of death was a puncture wound to the heart via the sternum, made by your guy’s weapon. The other two were killed with the same weapon, but they were struck at the base of the skull.”

  Why the mother? I thought. Why not concentrate on the father, the one most likely to be a problem?

  Maybe it was to make him talk.

  Then why not the kid?

  Maybe he has half a heart.

  No one with a functioning heart did this.

  “So she was tortured; then all three were killed.”

  “Other way around,” the investigator said. “Blood patterns indicate the father and daughter were killed first, and then he went to work on the mother.”

  She was the key, the voice nagged.

  Whatever he was searching for, he thought she had it or knew where it was. He killed the others in front of her. When she still didn’t talk, he tried to torture it out of her …

  …but she didn’t know.

  “I saw footprints at the door,” I said. The investigator nodded.

  “Yes, but I’m not sure they belong to the killer.”

  “You matched them to the family?”

  “No, but we were able to get an approximate shoe size from impressions in the carpet,” she said. “The placement makes them the killer’s. They don’t match either of the sets of prints at the door, and neither do any of the victims.”

  “So someone else was in here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before or after the murders?”

  “I can’t say for sure, but I think after.”

  “Why?”

&nbs
p; “The boot tracks left traces leading to and from the bathroom, and that’s it. Whoever they belong to didn’t go any farther into the apartment. The sneaker prints do, but only as far as this room. They were faint, but it looks like whoever they belong to came down the hall, through the living room to this room, stood in the doorway, then turned around and walked back the way he came.”

  “Then they should be on the building’s security cameras.”

  “That’s the other weird part,” she said. “The logs on the cameras had been tampered with.”

  “Tampered with how?”

  “The system was breached remotely. A section had been wiped out, but the strange thing is, I don’t think it was the killer trying to cover his tracks. The time of death puts his arrival hours before the section that was missing.”

  “So what was he trying to cover up?”

  “I’m not sure it was the killer at all.”

  “The two who came in after?” I asked, and she shrugged.

  “It fits, time-wise.”

  Maybe for some reason the visitors who came after the murders—the pair of sneakers that found the bodies and the friend with the boots who used the john—didn’t want anyone to know they had been there. Whoever they were, they didn’t call the murders in.

  “You said the killer didn’t force his way in,” I said. “Who kicked the door?”

  “The tenant next door,” Reece said, nodding toward the man in the sweater. “He said he got a call for help from the father, but it was over by the time he got in. He didn’t see a thing.”

  “A phone call would have been a neat trick, tied up like that. Do you believe his account?”

  “I think he believes it, but again, it doesn’t fit. We pulled the call records, and the call he got came after the section of missing security tape was erased. We traced it to a public phone, paid for with a drugstore phone card.”

  “It was a tip,” I said. Someone wanted the bodies found, without having to come forward.

  A witness, the voice inside said. That’s promising.

  The witness didn’t see anything.

  He talked to whoever made that call. You should go talk to him. Have Shanks look around the apartment while you do it.

  I sighed, my face suddenly flushed, and straightened my jacket. Maybe it did pay to listen to your gut, to trust your intuition. Things could hardly go much worse.

  “Shanks, check around. I want to talk to him.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The man in the sweater looked visibly disturbed when I approached him, although I didn’t see any blood on him and there wasn’t any sign he’d been attacked. I waved the officers away and knelt with him.

  “What’s your name?” I asked him. His eyes darted over to me.

  “Roger. Roger Hammond.”

  “Bad night, huh?”

  He nodded.

  “Did you know the victims?”

  “Yes. I mean, as neighbors.”

  “That’s pretty brave, breaking in here like that.”

  He shrugged.

  “Did you witness the attack?”

  “No. They were already dead by the time I got inside.”

  “You said you got a call from the victim?”

  He nodded.

  “When he called, what did he say?”

  “He was whispering. He said, ‘It’s Miguel Valle. Someone’s in the apartment …they killed them.’ Then the line cut out.”

  “Why would he call you? Why not the police?”

  He shook his head back and forth slightly, staring at the floor.

  “It wasn’t him. I know it wasn’t him.”

  “Who do you think it was?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Someone who wanted me to find them.”

  “You gonna be all right?”

  “Yeah. Were all four of them dead?”

  “Three.”

  “There’s four,” he said. “Miguel, Becca, Kate, and Luis.”

  “Luis?”

  “His son.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Luis? Maybe nineteen or twenty.”

  The second set of footprints. The son, and someone else …a friend? He was gone for whatever reason when the killer entered the apartment, and came back after the fact. He found the bodies, and he ran.

  “Thanks, Mr. Hammond. That helps.”

  Shanks was heading back into the room from down the hall, and I rejoined him and Reece.

  “Your guys searched the place room to room when you got here?” I asked Reece.

  “Yeah,” he said, making a face. “Whatever your guy was looking for, either he found it or it wasn’t here.”

  “Fair enough. It looks like the Valles also had a son, Luis Valle, who may still be alive. We need an APB out on him immediately.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Reece stalked off to rejoin the others when I knelt down with Shanks.

  “You think the kid had something to do with this?” Shanks asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Maybe …maybe. The thought nagged at me. But maybe he’s what the killer was looking for….

  “Maybe he’s not running from us,” I said.

  We need him alive.

  “We need him alive.”

  “If he’s alive, they’ll find him,” he said.

  “You dig anything else up?”

  “Yeah. It looks like someone was on the computer when the attack occurred. You’ll want to see this.”

  He led me down the main hallway to a room at the far end that was dark except for the illumination from the computer screen. The chair in front of it had been pushed back, leaving trails in the carpet.

  “They didn’t find any prints but the family’s,” Shanks said, “but look what I found on the system.”

  A little instant message window was sitting in the corner of the screen. There were entries still sitting on it.

  “One of them was talking to someone,” I said. One of the names read RVALLE0107. “Rebecca Valle. The mother.”

  “The killer must have shut it down, but didn’t exit out completely. He probably thought he got rid of it.”

  Leaning closer, I read the tiny text on the screen.

  CRAIGH01: Where is it now? RVALLE0107: With him, I think. CRAIGH01: Good. RVALLE0107: Cross was detected, though. CRAIGH01: Yes. RVALLE0107: Hold on a minute. CRAIGH01: What’s the matter? RVALLE0107: Hold on. RVALLE0107: Sorry, we have a visitor. I’ll get back to you. CRAIGH01: Who is this? CRAIGH01: Who is this? RVALLE0107: I have to get back to you. CRAIGH01: What have you done to them? CRAIGH01: Why are you doing this? CRAIGH01: Why are you doing this to us? RVALLE0107: Because someone has to.

  You know what that is, the voice said.

  Yes. A connection.

  These two knew each other.

  But the other one isn’t a victim.

  Yet.

  He said, “us.” “Why are you doing this to us?” Who’s “us”?

  If I were you, the voice nagged, I wouldn’t inquire too deeply.

  Shaking my head, I stepped away from the screen.

  “We need the rest of the conversation,” I said. “Everything on this computer.”

  “It’s gone,” Shanks said.

  “Gone?”

  “Either the victim wiped it when she heard the intruder, or the killer did it. Maybe the techs can pull something off of it, but everything’s gone. The message pane just happened to still be up. If you shut it off, you’ll lose that too.”

  That’s not the important thing, Faye.

  Then what is?

  The only living connection we have right now.

  “Craigh,” I said out loud. “Or Craig H? He knew. He knew what was happening over here.”

  I headed back out to the living room, Shanks in tow.

  “Reece, did anyone else call this in?” I asked.

  “Someone else?”

  “Besides our witness, did you receive any other calls about a possible disturbance over here?”<
br />
  “No.”

  I turned to Roger, the witness, who was still sitting with the officers.

  “Does the name Craig mean anything to you?” I asked. “Craig H? Or H Craig?”

  “Harold,” he said. “He’s a friend of Becca’s. I’ve seen him around.”

  Harold Craig.

  He’s in trouble, the voice said. You need to get over there.

  Why didn’t he call it in?

  I don’t know, but there isn’t time. Go.

  “Shanks, we need an address for Harold Craig….”

  We’ll get it on the way down. Go now.

  “Are you okay?” Shanks asked in my ear.

  “We’ve got to go,” I said.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m so tired….” I whispered.

  You’re almost there …just keep going …

  “I know, Faye,” he said. “We’re going to get him. We’ll do it together, got it?”

  He put his hand on the small of my back, guiding me. It was the second time that day he had touched me like that. It felt firm and reassuring. Somehow, it made me feel like what he said was true, and that we would succeed, and that when we did, everything would be okay and I would finally get to sleep.

  5

  Voodoo Proper

  Nico Wachalowski—Heinlein Industries, Industrial Park Drive

  Heinlein Industries was situated well outside the city limits, taking an hour even by bullet train to get there. It got dark early that time of year. The sky had turned gray already. As the rail approached, the complex was visible in the distance like a huge disc cut out of the suburbs that surrounded it. It was as if a comet had struck there, leaving nothing but black glass. Only when you got closer could you begin to make out the flat, rectangular structures there, but Heinlein was built largely down, not up. It kept low to the ground, hidden behind the security fence and guard posts that surrounded it.

  I picked up a car and headed in through the maze of narrow streets. The structures there were tightly packed, built from sturdy concrete that was now weathered and defaced. Businesses tapered off as the main road crossed the perimeter and gave way to VP Industrial, which was Heinlein’s main campus. VP stood for Verhoven-Pratsky, the names of the facilities’ two primary donors, but everyone called it Voodoo Proper. I opened a channel back to headquarters.