“Defense mechanism.”
I grunted. “You don’t pull any punches. And I have to say this, you’re damn perceptive. You’d make a good officer in Security Division.”
“Homicide Section?”
“Don’t get too cocky. Maybe traffic or guard duty.”
She punched me in the shoulder. “You ass.”
I pulled myself to my feet. “Keep working on that—”
She put a hand on my arm and kept me from leaving. “Wait a minute. You didn’t answer my question.”
I blinked. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She pursed her lips. “It’s not that. With the others. You’re withdrawn.”
I paused. “You know, you should have been a psychologist.”
“You’re just realizing that now?”
“No. You had me pegged two days ago, in your quarters. Dead to rights.”
“I know I did. I did study psychology, if it matters.”
“Along with starship engineering?”
“And electrical engineering, yes. A little computer engineering too.”
I shook my head in wonder. I have always loved strong, independent, intelligent women, and she most definitely qualified in all respects.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“Nothing.” I sighed. “You’re right, of course.” How exactly could I tell her that my incompetence had killed a guy? A CCF officer. I was here on SOLEX to protect people; I couldn’t allow them to lose confidence in my abilities. And yet Michael Flemming was in my thoughts, when he shouldn’t have been.
“Go on,” she prompted. “It’s okay, really.” I couldn’t help but notice that her hand was still on my arm.
I clenched my teeth. “I’m not sure I—”
“Go on,” she repeated. It seemed like an order.
Staring at her in silence for a moment, I decided to bite the bullet. I told her the entire sordid tale about Flemming and Sirius. I stared at the dull bulkhead behind her and hardly took a breath during it. When it was over, I held my head in my hands. “It was my fault. He was my best friend. Really the only one I had. And now...”
There was a long silence. Finally, Shaheen said, “You won’t believe me, but it’s not your fault. You saw something that Flemming didn’t. It sounds harsh, but it was his failure that killed him, not yours. You don’t have any responsibility—”
“Dammit, I do!” I yelled. She jumped back and stared at me in shock. “Don’t you see that he was the only thing I had that bordered on normalcy? He was my last connection to what it means to be human!”
She waited a beat before saying, “You feel alone.”
“I prefer working alone, you know that,” I snapped.
“But still, everyone needs someone at some point.”
I got back to my feet and stalked to the hatch. Leaving her was against my better judgment, but I felt too exposed. Raw, like an open wound.
“Keep working, Shaheen. Let me know when you’ve found something. And don’t leave the cabin—I’m going to lock the hatch for your protection.”
I didn’t look back, but I regretted my coolness immediately; she had just tried to help. Still, it was difficult to open myself up to a stranger.
As I marched from the cabin, I stumbled across Bram O’Donnelly and Anna Alvarez in the corridor. They were near the ladder that led to the levels below. They pushed by me without a word.
“What are you two doing up here?” I growled at their retreating backs. The module we were in was officer’s country. Our quarters, gym and recreational facilities were located there. The two had no reason to be there, unless of course there was some sort of work to do. If they were just passing through, say, on their way from Module A to Module C, then they would be on level one, where the tunnels connected the modules. Our quarters were on level three, the cylinder’s uppermost deck.
I repeated the question.
They stopped at the end of the corridor and turned to me. “Work,” Bram said in a flat voice. “Malfunctioning ventilation fan.”
“Where?”
“First Officer Rickets’s quarters,” he sneered. “Anything else you need?”
I dismissed them and they continued on their way. Great, just what I needed. I expected their hostility; after all, I was the only outlet for their anger at Jimmy’s death. It didn’t bother me, because it came with the job, but I didn’t want to exacerbate it needlessly. Worse, Anna hadn’t seemed sympathetic at Bram’s outburst. I had hoped she would at least treat me with respect, especially after helping me earlier.
But her expression had been fixed and cold.
* * *
I left Shaheen alone for a few hours to research in private. I hoped I hadn’t hurt her feelings, but something she’d said had bothered me, and I wasn’t quite sure what it was.
Checking the time, I was shocked to see that it was almost lunch. I returned to the common mess, where Manny and Rickets were conferring quietly over a cup of coffee.
“Kyle,” Manny said. “How’s it coming along?”
“Interesting,” I responded as I grabbed a cup for myself. I didn’t want to say too much to him—the fewer people in the loop the better. I knew that as the captain, he might want to know everything, but in the end he would understand my need for secrecy.
“Where’s Shaheen?”
“Researching.”
He eyed me and considered what I had said. Rickets spoke up. “I thought we were to remain together, in pairs.”
“I confined her to a cabin. She’ll be fine.”
He grunted and didn’t look at all happy. “Why can’t you tell us how the investigation is going? You could be putting people in danger by not telling them what you know.”
I paused and watched him thoughtfully. I couldn’t blame him for being terse with me, but there was a limit to how much I could take. “You may be right,” I said finally, deciding to reason with him. “But it might also give the murderer important information. It could give him the upper hand.”
“You’re saying—”
“No. Not that you’re the killer. But you could be. Or if someone overheard us talking, or you, talking to someone later.” I shook my head. “It’s too dangerous to talk about openly, Avery. Just relax and let me do my job.” I knew he was an officer who went by the book, and when things happened in the military that were contradictory to everything he knew and loved, it bothered him. It was a completely natural reaction in the current situation.
“But—”
“He’s right,” Manny interjected. “Don’t interfere. It’ll be over soon.”
I glanced at the captain and gripped my steaming mug tighter. I hoped he was right.
* * *
The others soon entered the mess and sat to lunch. Manny addressed them before we began and tried to reassure them. The scientists in particular seemed most concerned; they were once again quiet. No talk about the sun for a change.
I ate in the subdued silence. Rickets kept trying to say something, but stopped himself every time. He was still clearly frustrated. I ignored him.
Finally, Brick tried to engage me in conversation. “How many murders have you solved, Tanner?”
I cringed at his choice of topic, but decided to answer anyway. Some conversation was better than none. I shrugged. “Eight hundred.”
He looked shocked. “So many?”
“I’ve been in Homicide Section for eleven years. There’s a lot of crime in the system.”
The Council generally doesn’t admit how much crime there really is. They sanitize and monitor the news, and suppress knowledge about the true state of society. They don’t want people to lose faith in them, and I can understand that philosophy to a point. However, knowledge is the best
defense against crime, and when people simply don’t know the truth, it makes it all that much easier for criminals to prey on the weak. It’s wrong of the Council, but they’ll never admit it.
Brick continued, oblivious to my slip. “You’re young to have solved so many. You must be good.”
“Who knows? I’m thirty-four. I’ve been doing this since I was twenty-three.”
“How long does it usually take to solve a murder?” Malichauk asked.
I understood the unstated question: How long will it take you to solve this one? Inside, I felt angry. This case was different than most. I didn’t want them to know that, however; I needed to be the picture of a calm and collected investigator, one who’d seen it all before. So I lied. “No more than a week,” I said.
“Every time?” Brick said.
“It varies.”
“Can you tell us about one? It might be...interesting.” He looked around at the others.
People perked up at the question. As much as I hated discussing the suffering that I saw every day, I understood that they needed some kind of distraction.
I resigned myself to the inevitable. “The Torcher is my most famous capture, I guess.”
“You caught the Torcher?” Sally gasped. She hadn’t been with us the night I arrived, when the others had first asked about it.
I nodded. “As you know, he traveled the system and took his victims in distant locations. He kept them on board his private ship for up to three months.”
“What did he do with them during that time?”
I frowned. “Torture. Abuse. Everything, really. It was terrible what those people had to endure. Death, when it finally came, was a blessing. I wish I had caught him sooner.” I noticed Grossman say something to his friends. They grumbled and looked at me pointedly. O’Donnelly grunted and made a crass comment of some sort. The others laughed.
“And you were on the case?” Sally said. “Why did they give it to you?”
I tore my gaze from the crew. “I guess I had this reputation...I’d solved a couple of cases earlier that others had a hard time with.” I sipped my coffee. “Anyway, he killed them during torture, then burned them. He let them all burn for twenty-three minutes, then he left the bodies—charred and unrecognizable as human—on the colonies and stations he visited.”
She looked disgusted. “Why twenty-three?”
“No one knows. He was a serial killer, psychotic like most of them. People try to understand them, but you can never predict who will become one or why they do the things they do.”
Brick said, “I thought abuse as youngsters, bad families—”
“Sometimes that’s the case. But there are also a lot of people who grow up in hardship to become good, contributing citizens of the Confederacy. It’s difficult to generalize.”
“How did the Torcher grow up?” Katrina asked.
“Actually, he had a good family on Gagarin Station who treated him well. He had an education. No one really understands why he did it.”
“But I thought he—”
“Some people have written books about him, tried to theorize why he did it. What the twenty-three minutes meant and so on. We captured and executed him, and that’s what’s really important.”
“Don’t you think it’s important to understand a killer, to be able to predict when it could happen again?” Lingly asked with a meek tone. People turned to her and she avoided their questioning eyes.
“Of course,” I responded. “But my point is we can’t understand everyone.”
“Like our situation,” Katrina said.
I exhaled. “There’s reason behind this. There must be. I don’t think it’s random, like the Torcher’s victims. There’s a connection here somewhere.” I just have to find it. “One of you knows, and soon I’ll know too.”
Silence fell once again and I turned to my meal. Eventually it grew too great for Crewman Grossman to endure. He threw his fork down and rose to his feet. He fixed me with a glare that could melt lead. “Has it occurred to anyone else that he’s the killer?” He looked around the mess hall. “Jimmy’s death could have been an accident. The mutilation occurred after his death. Then this guy shows up, spouting off about how he’s going to solve this murder. Then three days later we have two more bodies! He’s keeping us occupied while he kills us one by one!”
“That’s preposterous,” Manny said. He could have stopped the outburst in a second, but had decided to debate him rather than order silence. I wasn’t sure I agreed with his decision, but there was little I could do. “Jimmy lost his head before Tanner arrived. Reggie and Lieutenant Bertram lost theirs after he arrived. The method is the same. The killer is the same. It can’t be Tanner.”
Katrina, in a calm voice, perhaps deliberately trying to soothe Grossman, said, “Maybe you can tell us what you know so far, Lieutenant.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m investigating every lead. When I know the truth, so will you.”
“But you could fill us in on what you’ve discovered so far.”
Beside me, Manny sighed. “He can’t, people. It would compromise his investigation. You’ll have to accept that, as I have. Let’s just continue with our work, and hopefully this will all be over soon.”
They weren’t happy, but it stopped the argument. We finished our meals in silence.
* * *
“They can’t take much more of this,” I said to Manny after lunch.
“That’s for sure. I’ll do my best to keep them in order, but you have to hurry.”
“I can’t rush it. The pieces have to fall together naturally.” I hesitated. “But I understand what you’re saying. I’ll do my best.”
I remained in the mess hall after Manny and Rickets left and considered what had happened. This was just a taste of things to come. It would get a lot worse as the hours—or days—dragged on.
I had to figure this thing out, fast.
Chapter Thirteen
After a few minutes, I followed Manny and Rickets to the command center and reviewed the security situation with them. The killer had locked out all the station’s cameras; presumably he had accessed the system just prior to murdering Reggie and Bel the day before.
“However,” Manny said, “there’s a chance the cameras might have been shut down after the murders.”
“Then whoever did it would have had to erase the video to just before the killings,” I said.
“That’s right. The same thing might have happened with Jimmy’s death.”
I thought that over. “What you’re saying is that Jimmy died outside, the crew brought his body in and Malichauk put it in the freezer. Then the killer accessed the security program, shut off the system, erased the tape to the point just before Jimmy’s death, then went and cut off his head and hands. As a result, we are still unsure if it was accidental or not.”
Rickets said, “But why erase the tape of Jimmy’s death if it was an accident?”
“Strategically, it’s a good offense.” Whoever was doing this was intelligent. They knew exactly what to do to keep me off balance and on the losing side of the contest. I could only hope that at some point, hopefully soon, I would learn something that would tip the scales in my favor. Once I had that, it was just a matter of time. It was locating that critical piece of evidence that was the problem. I might have already found it, but unless Shaheen could help, it was useless.
The importance of that droplet of blood was incalculable.
“You’re saying the killer wants us confused,” Rickets continued.
“Think about it. If you’re spending all your time investigating the death itself, you won’t be on the lookout for a murderer, will you?”
“I see what you’re saying. But there’s no doubt anymore, is there?”
“Not after
Reggie and Bel. But it did work, to an extent. Even Manny here thought Jimmy’s death might have been an accident and the mutilation of the body a prank.”
The captain scowled. “Unfortunately, you’re right. It tricked me.”
Until the discovery of the two new bodies, I had come to the conclusion that Jimmy’s death was an accident. Now it seemed likely it was a murder after all. There was no doubt about it—the killer was good at this game.
“Is there any way to recover a video that’s been erased?” I asked. I knew the killer wasn’t that dumb, but if there was a chance of retrieving it, I had to know for sure.
“I doubt it. But I’m not the station systems officer. That’s Shaheen.” He shot me a pointed look.
“I’ve got her working on something right now.” I sighed and took a moment to study my surroundings. The video screens cast flickering light around the cabin; it was more than a little eerie.
“Hey,” I said. “How are those cameras working?”
“Those aren’t security cameras. They’re not tied into the system.”
“Are we recording those images?”
“No.”
An idea suddenly occurred: perhaps we could use them for the security system, adapt the program for them? I would have to ask Shaheen about that too.
A light began to flash on the information officer’s console. Rickets moved to it.
“Incoming FTL transmission,” he said. He pushed a button and an elderly man appeared on the screen over the console. He wore a lab coat and had white hair. He also had a puzzled expression on his face.
“This is Dr. Higby from Mariner Hospital on Mercury,” he said. “I received a message three days ago to contact a Lieutenant Tanner. Sorry it took me so long. I’ve been busy.”
Rickets peered at me. It took me a second or two to realize who this man was. When Captain Fredericks told me about the crewman who had left SOLEX due to mental instability, I had grown immediately curious. When I learned the man had died on Mercury in the mental ward, I’d become even more so. That man was Jarvis Riddel.
Four weeks earlier, Riddel had left SOLEX, and CCF HQ had shipped Godfreid Grossman in as his replacement. It had been the only transport on or off the station since SOLEX began operations nine months earlier. When Manny told me about Riddel’s death, I’d asked him to contact the charge doctor and have him call with the complete story. After the attack in my cabin and the two new murders, it had slipped my mind. Now, however, the call had arrived.
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