Six Shadows

by Nicole Grotepas

  “I read the threats,” I said, though I hadn’t. But I knew what the threats were. Graphic. Brutal.

  “I’m combat wounded, sir. Fogg took my money and when his product didn’t deliver, he wouldn’t give me a refund. I’ve been pissed about it. But murder?” He cringed. “No, no sir. Not to the point of fucking murder. Look at my military record. I’ve killed people. Could I do that again? No way. I play Utopia to get away from what I did in the Acallaris System conflict. It’s better than real life. In Utopia my body is whole again. I can forget the shit I went through.”

  Meg stepped in. “Alright Harry, last thing. You’re a suspect. So please don’t leave Kota until we’ve cleared you.”

  “Of course sir, wouldn’t think of it. I’ll wait for your word,” he said, turning to go back into the ramen shop.

  “Enjoy your dinner,” I said.

  We walked away, weaving through the crowds of convention-goers.

  “Think he did it?” I asked Meg.

  “Who knows,” she said. “He seemed angry enough. And an obedient soldier, like I’d expect. But still angry.”

  “Anger. Money. Jealousy. Which will it be?”

  “This one, if it was Harry, would be both money and anger.”

  “That complicates it.”

  ***

  “So Pierre Brock’s alibi checks out,” Miko said, dropping a stack of papers on the desk. “Daxan and I just questioned people who had checked into his panel and several of them remember him being on stage—they remember that chin, and his smirk. I don’t think he won the audience over.”

  “It’s an unforgettable chin,” I said, not looking up from my notes from the interview with the ex-girlfriend.

  I heard someone laugh, probably Daxan, because Meg had left to pick up our daughter Lucy from school. She’d pointed out some holes in the interview. Not many, just two. A perusal of the details now and I saw those holes that Meg had caught. They would require following up on. So I would need to go back.

  Daxan spoke up. “But a few people do have notes with quotes they liked.”

  “How many?” I asked, putting Brock’s photo up on the suspect chart. His face was tilted down, tucking that chin into his neck, his eyes looking out from the top half like he was annoyed.

  Miko shrugged. “Three, I think.”

  “Did anyone mention him leaving during the panel?”

  “I didn’t ask. They would have mentioned it if he had, right?”

  I shrugged. “Probably. It doesn’t hurt to ask for specific details like that, though.” And if she didn’t ask, that was something we’d want to know. One of us would have to track down the audience members now to find that out. I stood up and went to the board. “I need to follow up with the ex-girlfriend once more. I’m going to have her come in. We also need to check with audience members from that panel to ask if they recall Brock leaving. The question will jog their memory. Remember? Witnesses leave shit out.”

  Miko nodded like she was annoyed.

  The murder—blow to the back of the head, and likely with an object that came from the victim’s apartment—was beginning to strike me as a crime of opportunity as much as the expression of rage. It wasn’t one of outright revenge and it wasn’t very premeditated. Otherwise the weapon would have been thought out. The blow that killed would have been more likely to come from a gun or a knife, demonstrating that it was planned. I’d seen enough working homicide to know that when someone wants to kill, their method of killing reflected the emotional reasons for it. Revenge—they wanted to maim. To damage the person who had wronged them in a way that destroyed some part of the person. Killers that did it regularly often had instruments of killing at their disposal. Guns. Knives. A blow to the back of the head suggested that it wasn’t thought out. It said to me, I came by to do something, not sure what, the victim was unprotected, I grabbed something in the room and hit him, because I’m mad. Bam. Victim falls, dies. Clean up, take the evidence, run. Hide.

  Those were hunches. And they came from analyzing the evidence that was left behind, which wasn’t a whole lot. But my job required me to think it through, to put myself inside the scene enough to attempt to feel what the killer was feeling. And that’s how the murder scene of Lennox Fogg was developing in my mind.

  My ideas were turning, and led me to believe that Fogg’s killer was quite unlikely to be the ex-soldier. Harry Akhtar was right about one thing: as a former soldier in the Acallaris System conflict, Akhtar would have been familiar enough with killing to do it in a way that guaranteed completion.

  “I’m leaning away from Akhtar. He was a soldier. He knew how to kill. A blow to the head doesn’t always mean death. It seems like a crime of opportunity. A burst of passion at the last minute.”

  “So you think the weapon was pulled from the vicitim’s home?” Miko asked.

  “I do. And that’s why I want you and Daxan to go search the trash receptacles near the victim’s buildings, quickly too, before they get removed. We also need to check any security footage again.”

  Miko frowned. She didn’t love to look through the trash. It was one of the unfortunate parts of the job.

  “I’ll let you two decide how to do it,” I said. Daxan seemed to be deliberately avoiding looking at me or Miko.

  “I’ll take one of the beat guys with me to check the trash around the area. I think we uploaded the security camera footage from the area already. Daxan, you stay here and check it.”

  Daxan nodded. “Can do.” I got the sense that was what he’d prefer anyway.

  ***

  “Heading back to the ex-girlfriend,” I said into my communicator. Meg was on the other end. I could hear our daughter chattering away happily in the background. She’d just gotten out of school. One of us usually waited outside the school to walk her home. She was old enough to walk alone, but Meg and I knew human nature too well. We gave her enough space to figure the world out, but not too much. Seeing the dark side of life in the city day in and day out had chipped away at our blissful ignorance. That is to say, neither of us were able to bury our heads in the sand and didn’t want our girl to be a casualty of complete idiocy.

  Lucy was our responsibility and we shared it, even though Meg and I couldn’t live together, we could do what was best for Lucy.

  “To fill in those questions?” Meg asked, referring to the holes that she’d poked in the testimony.

  “Right.”

  “You’re getting a sense of who it was, aren’t you? I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Yes,” I said, getting off the gondola and heading to the elevator down to the city street.

  “Let me get there in my own head real quick.”

  “Go for it,” I said, grinning. In the background I heard Lucy ask if she could eat something.

  Meg answered in the affirmative, then went silent. “It wasn’t the ex-soldier. He would have used something more efficient. A gun. A knife.”

  “My thoughts, yes.”

  “So it was either the ex-girlfriend or the coder, because both of them would have done it as an opportunity-killing.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “The weapon should turn up somewhere near the condo-tower or the convention center. Or, depending on how your interview goes with the ex-girlfriend, near her flat.”

  “Yes. She’s meeting me at a place called Bolt Kasé and Espresso. She doesn’t want me to show up at her flat.”

  “Why? That’s suspicious,” Meg said.

  “I know. Seems to be something about her current boyfriend not knowing she went to the victim’s condo.”

  “But Gabe, are you getting a blind spot on this case? It could have been the boyfriend.”

  I’d made it down to the street and a block closer to the girl’s flat. I scanned the street and saw the sign for Bolt. I crossed over behind a bike taxi and a quietly moving convertible vehicle.

  “That had occurred to me. The only reason I’m not convinced of that is because the victim wa
s logged into the Holo-R game. It had to be one of the players.”

  “But you haven’t interviewed him. He may have been logged in.”

  She was right. And it bothered me to have not considered that. That was something I could clear up in this interview: did Trixie’s boyfriend play the Holo-R game?

  “If the victim wasn’t a Druiviin, I’d wonder if he was the father and not the boyfriend.”

  “I’d wondered the same thing. Which may be why I hadn’t considered that the ex-girlfriend was protecting her current boyfriend.”

  I opened the door to the cafe and went in. Trixie was inside already, sipping a glass of water at a table. A jacket was draped over the back of her chair. I finished up my call with Meg and approached the ex-girlfriend as I pulled my notebook out of my pocket.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” I said, sitting down across from her.

  “Thanks for calling first, Detective Bach.”

  “I don’t want to waste your time, so I’ll get right down to it.”

  “OK,” she said blinking and shifting. She reached a hand down and touched her pregnant belly like it was bothering her.

  “Is everything ok?” I asked.

  “Yes, just a contraction.”

  “You’re in labor?”

  “No, false contraction. I’ve been having them a lot lately. Especially when I get stressed.”

  “You’re stressed?”

  “No, interviews with a detective are my idea of a great date.”

  Point taken. “So previously you’d mentioned that you went to Lennox’s condo to return some items that belonged to him.”

  She nodded.

  “What were they? And why didn’t you leave them at his apartment?”

  She glanced around the cafe, then shifted in her seat and touched her belly again. “Ok, so that’s not entirely accurate.”

  I sat back, not surprised to hear that a suspect had kept something from me. “Why don’t you tell me what is, then?”

  She sighed and slumped in her seat. “Lennox had asked me to come by. He wanted to show off how well he’d been doing with his business. I didn’t want to go. I told him I was with someone new and that I was about to have his baby. Lennox asked if I was happy with the guy. And I said, ‘not precisely.’”

  “Not precisely?” I repeated, lifting an eyebrow. Around us the conversations buzzed in the air. The sound of a grinder chewing beans filled the cafe. People laughed. Though I didn’t want the soon-to-be-new mother to be the killer, I was also prepared to bring justice to light. It was one thing to kill a violent human or Constie in self-defense. Quite another to off a defenseless Druiviin.

  “No,” she sighed.

  “Why aren’t you?” I asked, studying her face. I noticed that her eyes were puffy. That could have simply been from being pregnant and unable to sleep well. Or it could be stress.

  “Nash isn’t exactly the sweetest to me all the time.”

  “‘The sweetest.’ What does that mean?”

  “He has a bit of a temper. He doesn’t like it that there were other guys before him and he never wants me to mention them. He’s the real reason I stopped playing Utopia. ‘Live in the real world, Trix.’ He knew that I dated a guy I met in there before I met him. But he doesn’t know I went to Lennox’s that day to see if maybe Lennox would want me back.” She lifted her chin and stared out the window over my shoulder, as though she was seeing something hopeful in the distance. “I was hoping that even though I’m pregnant with Nash’s baby, that Lennox would ask me to move in with him.”

  I felt the ire rising in me. A swirling cloud of protective instinct for a pregnant woman. I studied her again, scanning her body for signs. Today she wore a short sleeve shirt. From the extra photograph I’d taken of her from our last interview, I knew that she’d been wearing a long sleeve jacket because that day, there’d been an eclipse, and they get cold. There were fading bruises on her upper arms, with a yellowish tint. Suddenly the puffy eyes seemed more likely to be a result of living on edge and unable to sleep.

  “So you were hoping he’d rescue you?”

  Her cheeks flushed and she cupped her glass of water with both hands, her shoulders curving in slightly like she wanted to disappear. “Yeah.”

  ***

  I was back on a call with Meg, heading to the convention center. “The ex’s story has changed slightly.”

  “Oh?” Meg said.

  “Not that way. She was pretty convinced that Lennox was going to ask her to move in with him and he’d even alluded to that pretty strongly on the communicator call she had with him—she wasn’t taking things to his condo. She was going to see him, to perhaps set it all up. To go back to him. Her current boyfriend, the father of her baby, is abusive. According to her.”

  “Didn’t see that coming.”

  “Neither did I. But this time she was wearing short sleeves. She has fading bruises around her biceps that are consistent with a grabby man. The kind of dick that takes a girl by the arms and swings her or moves her around forcefully. I’d suspect that we’d find other bruises on her.”

  “I’ll destroy him,” Meg said, her voice icy.

  “Join the club. I’m going to have Daxan check her medical records to see if there’s more to back this up. Because if it’s true, then she’s definitely not our suspect.”

  “But the boyfriend could be. He could have followed her.”

  “That would make sense if she had any reason to protect him.”

  “She does.”

  “He beats her.”

  “Does she have a job? Does she have her own money? If he’s the only thing keeping her and her future baby clothed and fed, she has a reason to protect him.”

  “I’m going back to ask some of the people who were present for Brock’s panel if they remember him leaving his panel early.”

  “Great. I’m going to go try to get an interview with Trixie’s boyfriend.”

  “He’s an abuser.”

  “I’m not afraid of that dick. I have an aether gun, thanks to the Centau and their genius inventions.”

  “Do me a favor.”

  “I’ll consider it.”

  “Have him come into the precinct for the interview.”

  She sighed. “I’ll try. Lucy’s at Charm’s for the rest of the evening.”

  “Thanks for taking care of her. Did she tell you we ran down to a Centau dessert place?”

  “Yes. Kind of expensive don’t you think?”

  “Lucy’s worth it.”

  “Sounds like something she’d do with her dad. Lucky girl.”

  The taxi let me off at the convention center. I sighed and got out, taking a deep breath. The enclosed space of a car always made it hard to breathe. But it was quicker than the Spireway. And time was ebbing away as the convention came to an end. I needed to get these questions asked before people started to leave.

  Inside the convention center, I had no other option than to simply ask random people if they had been in the Holo-R currencies panel.

  “Hi, I’m Detective Gabriel Bach with the Ice Jade Precinct. Were you in attendance at the Holo-R currencies panel two days ago?” I flashed my badge and asked stranger after stranger.

  The conference had had a huge pull, according the numbers Daxan had given me about the number of panels and presentations, plus the sheer number of admissions. So it took me over twenty, maybe thirty people to finally find one person who’d been in it. A guy with an unhealthy complexion, perhaps related to hormones. I felt a pang of compassion or him, remembering my own late teenage years. But, he was clean and well-kept otherwise. I showed him the photo of Pierre Brock. The guy remembered him.

  “Do you recall if this man stayed for the entire panel?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Can I get your name? This is part of an ongoing police investigation.” He gave me his name—Stan Lewis—and I scribbled it in my notebook.

  “Thank you for your time.” I said, then began to walk off.
“Wait.” I turned and went after him.

  “What?” Stan said, sounding impatient.

  “Do you remember if he said anything memorable?”

  “No.”

  “So he might have not even been there?”

  “I guess. I mean, maybe he left? Maybe? I wasn’t even there to hear him. I was there to hear someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “Well, I thought the Fogg’s Toggs guy would be there.”

  “But he wasn’t?”

  “I guess he was never going to be there, which was disappointing. I’d heard there was a chance he’d show up last minute.” Stan’s gaze was focused over my shoulder, like he was remembering something. “Wait, hang on. Oh yeah.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Oh, wait. I do remember. It seems like that guy in your photo, he started coughing. He drank some of his water, and then kept coughing. And finally he excused himself and went out the side door, coughing the whole time.”

  “Did he ever come back?”

  “Not that I remember. Like I said. I didn’t even care to hear what he was saying. I think his in-game business just got lame after Fogg’s took off.”

  I copied down Stan’s contact info and let him go. Then I found two more people, eventually, who recalled similar things. As I was wandering around the convention center corridors, Daxan called.

  “Gabe, so at the moment, Miko is checking a specific trash bin in an alley not too far from the convention center. I uncovered some footage of a cloaked figure wearing a hood and carrying a bulky armload of refuse. The suspicious figure put it in a bin. She’s checking the bin.”

  “Keep me updated—I’ve found three witnesses who remember Brock coughing until he left the panel.”

  Across the room, I caught sight of Pierre Brock wearing a long black coat, a white dress shirt, and a pair of Holo-R goggles on his forehead as he talked with some people. I tailed him, hoping that Daxan or Miko would get back to me soon, though what I had was enough to question him further.

  As I tailed him, Meg called and let me know that the boyfriend was heading into the precinct for an interview. I mentioned to her that the Brock had left the panel early, and she implied that one of us was going to crack the case soon. She bet on herself.