“Where are you taking me?”
The two Guardsmen looked at each other, and one shrugged. The other turned to Peabody.
“To the palace.”
The people mover made the short run to the palace, and the guards led Peabody across the basement to the old Imperial Guard cell block. He was placed in a cell by himself. The Guardsmen removed the handcuffs and left.
About fifteen minutes later, an Imperial Guard captain came by. He stood outside the cell and addressed Peabody.
“In a few minutes, you are going to be taken for interrogation.”
“I’m not telling you anything.”
“If you don’t offer the information we’re seeking freely, you will be drugged and interrogated.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
The captain considered for a moment, then left.
After another fifteen minutes, a Guardsman came and placed a padded straight-back chair in the hallway outside Peabody’s cell. What the hell?
Four Guardsmen arrived and took up station in the hallway. Then after several minutes more, the Empress arrived and sat on the chair. Peabody leapt to his feet in reflex.
“Be seated, Lieutenant Colonel Peabody.”
Peabody half sat and half collapsed onto his bunk in the cell. The Empress was wearing a somber business suit and sensible shoes. Her vivid blue eyes caught his and held them.
“Last night, Lieutenant Colonel Peabody, someone assassinated one of my staff members. This was intended to derail a project of mine, and thus it is an act of treason. I will find out who ordered this assassination, and when I do, their life is forfeit. The entire Imperial Marines want to draw straws to be on the firing squad, which I may allow if I pass on the pleasure of shooting them myself.”
Her tone was deadly serious, and, looking at those eyes, Peabody had no doubt she meant every word.
“Anyone who aids or abets this treason is also bound for the wall or the scaffold. That includes those who withhold the information I require to find the traitors. You and your squad of Imperial Police were very quick to arrive on the scene last night. Too quick not to have been pre-positioned. I will find out what your orders were, and who gave them. You will be interrogated. If you refuse to answer questions, you will be drugged and interrogated again. There are a succession of more and more effective drugs we can use until we in fact hear from you the answers to our questions. Ultimately, you will answer them.”
“But those drugs are illegal. They can result in brain damage.”
“This is an Empire, Lieutenant Colonel, and I am the Empress. Those drugs are illegal under my laws, but they are not illegal to me. They will be used, and you will answer our questions. As refusing to voluntarily answer the questions is aiding and abetting treason, such a refusal renders your life forfeit. Potential brain damage from the drugs is therefore of little concern to me, as you will be shot in any case. The consequences of your actions are on you, Lieutenant Colonel, and you shall not escape them. Answer our questions voluntarily or die, perhaps losing your sanity first. Your path is your choice.”
Her eyes held him in thrall, and he had no doubt his life hung on the edge of a knife.
“I will answer your questions voluntarily, Your Majesty.”
“Be certain that you do, Lieutenant Colonel Peabody, or you will not live another day.”
And with that, the Empress got up and left.
Analysis And Interrogation
The recording analysis team came in at their normal time that morning and were shocked, as the rest of the palace staff, to find out one of their own had been murdered the night before. They set to the task of analyzing the security recordings from the Imperial City PD.
The first thing they did was track the path of Vash Medved from the Imperial Park West entrance of the palace to her apartment building. This was easy to do, because her red hair stood out in the crowd. They had multiple angle views of her entire path.
They looked back and forth through the views, scrolling slowly in time, looking for the spotter or spotters. After two hours, they had gotten nowhere.
“Man, this is tough. Whoever these guys are, they’re good,” Seth Hersch said.
“Seth, we’ve got so many views, I bet we could render this in VR,” Kwan Shufen said.
“Do you think so, Sue? You may be right. Let’s try it.”
Seth set the system to the task and it could in fact resolve the multiple two-dimensional images into a three-dimensional VR rendering.
“All right,” Kwan said. “I’m going to go full-immersion in this, but I’m going to follow her path facing the other way. Seth, can you drop her from the sim, put me in her place facing backwards, and then scroll me slowly in time?”
“Sure.”
It was natural for a tail or spotter to avoid eye contact with their target as they approached, but to look at them after they passed. The human brain was very quick to pick eyes looking in one’s direction out of the scene. Kwan was trying to use that ability by facing the other way, and letting her brain pick out of the crowd the people looking at Medved from behind.
She went full-immersive in the rendering, and found herself staring into the Imperial Park West entrance to the palace.
“OK, scroll slowly, Seth. I’ll tag the possibles.”
“There could be a bunch of them. That red hair of hers attracted attention.”
“I understand. I’ll tag the possibles, and then we’ll have the computer track them in the crowd.”
“Got it. That should work.”
Kwan found herself moving through the crowd, backwards, at about a quarter of the speed Medved had walked at. She looked around at the crowd in the VR as she went, looking for eye contact. There! Hard contact. A little further on, another. The next one was a woman. Could go either way with that. Less likely to look at the red hair out of attraction, but more out of envy. An ‘I wonder where she gets her hair done’ look. Another. Then a couple, man and woman. Could be a “what would you think if I did my hair that color?’ thing. Or could be the spotters.
By the time she entered the apartment building in the simulation, Kwan had fifteen hard contacts. She dropped out of the simulation.
“OK, Seth. Now go to an overhead 2-D, and have the computer follow the movements of those contacts. Leave a track.”
They were watching on a shared VR channel. Hersch manipulated controls, and the computer progressed through the simulation, drawing tracks on Kwan’s contacts as they moved during Medved’s progress.
“Well, that’s sort of obvious, isn’t it?” Kwan asked.
“Yeah, it has to be one of these four, counting that couple as one,” Hersch said.
“All right. Well, in some ways that was the easier job. Now let’s see if we can find the shooter.”
“OK, so let’s look at the apartment building from the time stamp of the VR notice of death and see who exits the building.”
“Actually, start a couple minutes before,” Kwan said.
“Why? Death was instantaneous.”
“Yes, but you have recognition lag in the VR, system lag in the transmission, lots of little bits that add up, and they said he was in the elevator when he shot her and would have made it to the street in seconds.”
“OK. That makes sense. Back up a couple minutes.”
The scrolled through the video slowly in time.
“Whoa. Stop. Back up,” Kwan said. “There. What about him?”
“The delivery guy?”
“What’s he doing carrying a box out of the building? It’s an apartment building. Shouldn’t the box be going in?”
“Ouch. You’re right. Let’s follow him.”
They followed him along the arcade, but it was clear he knew there were security cameras. He tended to pass through voids in their coverage, and then he disappeared altogether.
“He’s changed out of the delivery outfit or something. We lost him,” Kwan said.
“I wonder if I can find the box,” Her
sch said.
Hersch selected the box in the simulation, and had the computer search for it in all the videos. They didn’t get any later hits, but they did get earlier ones.
“OK, so here he is coming out of that security camera blind spot,” Hersch said.
“Follow him.”
They rolled forward until they saw him go into the apartment building.
“OK, so a delivery guy with the same box going in and coming back out,” Kwan said.
“Yup. I think that’s our boy. Now let’s go back and look at that blind spot. Run the sim backwards and watch the trails of our spotters.”
Hersch ran the simulation backwards, and two minutes before the delivery guy emerged from that blind spot, the young couple did.
“OK, there’s your spotters. They met in a known blind spot in the security coverage, then they left to go over to the palace entrance and follow Medved to the apartment building. He waits two minutes in the blind spot, then walks to the apartment building with the package.”
“Inside which is probably the gun,” Kwan said.
“Inside which is probably the gun.”
“OK. Let’s get the best facial shots we can on all three of them, and the best shots we have on his uniform and the box. We can tell the guys out at the airport to look for that uniform and that box, and tell them which direction he left in so they know which trash bins to search. Leave out the trash bins he passed. Just tell them the ones past the point where we lost him.”
“Got it.”
“All right, everybody, listen up,” Major Becker said. “The people working on the security recordings have something for us. One potential for the killer is a guy dressed in a delivery uniform carrying a box. We have pics of the uniform and the box for you to look for. We also have the locations of the twenty-five trash bins that were in this guy’s path when they lost track of him in the recordings. So we are prioritizing those trash bins at this point. I just sent you everything in VR, so let’s ID those trash bins in the grid and switch to working on them.”
The forensic teams started scanning the marks on the bags for the twenty-five specific trash bin locations identified, and then set to work sorting through them. It wasn’t long before they hit paydirt.
“We have the box,” one team member called out.
A few minutes later, another find.
“I think we have the uniform over here.”
Several more minutes went by, and then another find.
“We have the gun, Major.”
“All right. Let’s concentrate on those three trash bins and find anything else that might belong to our target. We don’t want to miss anything.”
“What is your full name?”
“Winston Lewis Peabody.”
“Who is your employer?”
“The Imperial Police.”
“What is your rank in the Imperial Police?”
“Lieutenant Colonel.”
“What is your position in the Imperial Police?”
“I am the head of Investigations for Imperial City.”
“Who is your direct superior?”
“Colonel Rachana Patel.”
“What is his position?”
“She is the head of Imperial Police for Imperial City.”
“Who is her direct superior?”
“General William Kershaw.”
“What is his position?”
“He is the head of Imperial Police on Sintar.”
“Who is his direct superior?”
“Assistant Chief Patrick O’Grady.”
“What is his position?”
“He is the head of Imperial Police Operations.”
“He reports to Chief Stanier?”
“That’s correct.”
“Do all the planetary heads of Imperial Police in the Empire report to Assistant Chief O’Grady?”
“Yes, but not directly. They report to the provincial heads and they in turn report to the sector heads.”
“And that would be because there is so much Imperial activity on the capital planet, and on the other planets most police work is not Imperial matters?”
“That’s correct.”
“All right. So let’s talk about last night. You were in the Imperial Park West area last night when the call came in, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Were you ordered to be there in advance of the call coming in?”
This was it, Peabody knew. These were the questions that mattered. If he started answering them, there was no turning back. And if he didn’t, he would be drugged, they would get the answers anyway, and then he would be dead. But it was clear to him as well that the people who had committed this crime would never take the drop for him, so he didn’t see why he should take the drop for them either. But his career in the Imperial Police was over either way. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. What happened from this point happened. It was out of his hands.
“Yes.”
“Who gave you that order?”
“Bill Kershaw.”
“General William Kershaw?”
“Yes.”
“What were those advance instructions?”
“That I was to be in the Imperial Park West area between five and eight o’clock, because he was expecting something might happen.”
“Those were his words? He suspected something might happen?”
“Yes.”
“But he didn’t tell you what it was?”
“No. I assumed he didn’t know.”
“Do you get those kinds of instructions often?”
“Not often. Perhaps once or twice a year. Intelligence says something is getting hot, or there’s some sort of threat made. That sort of thing.”
“So someone makes a threat that on such-and-such a day, we’re going to carry out some action, but you don’t know in advance exactly what it is or where it will happen. Is that it?”
“That’s my understanding. Intelligence is very closed-mouth about such things.”
“Would those kinds of advance orders usually come from General Kershaw?”
“No. Usually they would come through the chain of command.”
“From Colonel Patel?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“So this was unusual in that it came from General Kershaw, is that right?”
“That’s correct.”
“When did you get that call?”
“I don’t recall exactly. About two in the afternoon, I think.”
“So maybe three hours in advance of the time you were ordered to be available in Imperial Park West?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Switching to when the call came in, when was that?’
“A little after 5:30.”
“Did it come in on VR?”
“Yes.”
“Did that VR call to you come from the Imperial Police dispatcher?”
“No. It came from General Kershaw.”
“Was that unusual?”
“Yes.”
The interviewer picked up on Peabody’s tone.
“Was it very unusual?”
“It was unprecedented, in my experience, at least.”
“What did General Kershaw say in that call?”
“He told me there had been a murder of a young woman and transmitted the address.”
“Did he say anything else in that call?”
“Yes. He said there was a squad of police nearby being directed to the scene, and that I should take over the investigation from the Imperial City Police Department when I got there.”
“He told you to supersede the local police?”
“Yes.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Not if there are Imperial implications.”
“Did he tell you the name of the victim, or that the victim was an employee of the Empress, or anything like that?”
“No.”
“So you had no reason to suspect Imperial implicati
ons at that point, is that correct?”
“That’s correct. I assumed he knew there were, though, and that’s why I was told to take over the investigation.”
“Did General Kershaw say anything else in that call?”
“Yes. He said I would find that it was a random violent crime, and I wouldn’t find any evidence to the contrary.”
“This is before any Imperial Police had arrived at the scene?”
“Yes.”
“What did you take him to mean by that?”
“That he wanted me to say it was a random violent crime in my report, regardless of the circumstances.”
“What did you take him to mean by the reference to no evidence to the contrary?”
“That if I found any evidence to the contrary, I should destroy it and not mention it in my report.”
“Were you going to follow those implied orders?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“It’s a difficult question. Sometimes you have to go along with the system as you find it. Sometimes when confronted by the situation, you learn that’s a bridge too far. I never actually saw the crime scene, and don’t know anything about it. So I can’t tell you now what I would have done.”
“As it turns out, you were intercepted before you could reach the crime scene. Is that correct?”
“Yes. The Imperial Guard beat us to the scene.”
“And then refused you access to the crime scene itself, and instead took you into custody, is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“That’s all the questions I have for now.”
Fairfield
Bruce Fairfield arrived at work that morning with no suspicion that anything unusual was up. It was about an hour into the day when things took an unexpected turn. One of his subordinates, the supervisor of the group handling test plans for rifles and accessories, stopped by his office.
“Did you hear the news. Bruce?” Abby Trumbull asked.
“What news?” Fairfield asked.
“You remember Vash Medved, don’t you?”
“How can I forget her? That fiery red hair. When she quit four years ago, she told me to go fuck myself.”
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