It Was Only on Stun!

by Declan Finn

  Kovach smiled, but said, quite flatly, “This isn’t a crime of passion.”

  “None of Eielson’s stuff is.” McGauren smiled. “This seems familiar. Should I ask—?”

  “Someone took the time to carefully run this staff through his chest, once,” Sean Ryan replied. “I would say it’s professional, but—”

  “But what professional would use such an unsightly weapon as opposed to bringing his own?” Kovach asked.

  Ryan nodded; he looked a little closer. “However, I can understand the method.”

  Kovach grinned without even looking at it. “Let me guess—flecks of blood on the cobra’s head that might not be the vic’s?”

  The bodyguard looked at him sideways. “Meaning that the cobra head was used as a blunt force weapon; but since there aren’t any obvious signs of blunt force trauma on the victim—”

  “That means the vic was using the staff as a weapon before he became intimately familiar with it,” McGauren interjected. “Sheesh, I could have told you this had you let me talk. God almighty, what is it with you two?”

  Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know, but I like him.”

  “Thank you kindly,” Kovach said. “Does that mean you won’t shove any more guns in my face?”

  “Don’t push it, kid.” Sean looked down at the floor to make sure he wouldn’t step in any blood. “Have the CSU gone over the floor?”

  McGauren nodded. “It’s safe to step on.”

  He stepped over to the body, peering up the victim’s nose. “Most of the cartilage is gone.”

  “Symptomatic of a cocaine user,” Kovach muttered to himself.

  McGauren nodded. “Pretty much what we found. At the moment, it’s possible he tried burglary, a vendor came back looking for something he forgot. Vic jumps vendor, vendor fought back, and vendor got lucky?”

  Matthew raised an eyebrow. McGauren shook her head. “I know. I said it’s possible, but I like thinking in the darkest possible light.”

  “Why, do you think better in infrared?” Ryan asked offhand.

  The detective cleared her throat. “Other than that, I don’t have one good reason why it would take place here. As you said, the wound seems to be clean, with one shot to the chest—you don’t find hesitation marks on a blow that punches through both sides of a man’s ribcage. I also wouldn’t want to meet this perp in a dark alley.”

  “I wouldn’t want to meet him in a well-lit prison, with him on the other side of the bars.” Matthew Kovach answered. “And you know what I’ve dealt with, so that's saying something.”

  Ryan looked inside the vic’s vest pocket, catching a little white powder. He had spent enough time in LA to not have to guess what it was. He looked at the empty wrist, noting the tan line of an absent watch. “I surely hope he doesn’t expect us to think this is a robbery, but he took the watch anyway. Did he take the wallet as well?”

  “Yes.” McGauren answered. “And frankly, if he didn’t, it would be stupid. If our vic was a dealer, he would have had a lot. And if he were just buying toys at the convention, he would have needed to carry at least a few hundred—most of them don’t take credit.”

  Ryan smiled. “You questioned them already?”

  “No, I’ve only seen five tables with credit card machines.”

  He nodded. “A lot of them have been burned on credit cards.” He stared at the tan lines again, and recalled why it looked familiar to him…he found a matching set on Matthew Kovach’s wrist.

  “Mr. Kovach, be so kind as to tell me what sort of watch you wear, because you seem to have a watch tan like our victim’s.”

  Kovach checked the comparison himself and then said, “I wear a Gadget watch.”

  “Come again?”

  “It's an 8-gig flash drive that connects via a short USB cable in the strap.”

  Sean raised a brow. “That’s a lot of information.”

  “Indeed.” Kovach looked at the costume of the victim once more. “So, do you know anyone in the bat-men community?”

  ***

  At 8:00 am, Morrie “the Jewish Vampire” answered the door in his nightshirt (a T-shirt proclaiming “I’m an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial”).

  Sean Ryan stood in the doorway, as though he were a vampire trying to be let in. Ryan looked down at him, amazed that he was still wearing the Dracula wig and cape over his corpulent frame…and his black flannel pajama bottoms.

  “Juan Alvarez, what do you know about him?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  Sean smiled. “He’s dead, as in ‘stake driven through his heart’. What do you know?”

  Morrie snapped his fingers. “Darn, he had some good, um, merchandise.”

  “If you’re trying to tell me he was a dealer, we already know. I’m trying to figure out who might know him around the vampire sect. He was wearing an outfit like yours when he croaked.”

  “Oh, in which case, head over to the vampire ball tonight—it’s on the schedule. He was…very popular.”

  Ryan grimaced. “I bet. Anything I should know about tonight?”

  “Wear black.” Morrie looked him up and down. “Try not to stare at the horns… And the fang implants, of course; never stare at the fang implants, they’ll think you’re coming onto them. That’s been a big problem in Hell-A Blues.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Hell-A Blues,” Morrie repeated. “It’s a vampire club, part of the scene a few years ago. LA has the Meat Shop, Hell-A Blues, and Hellish Endeavors. Ever hear of the Receiving Room? It's not called that because it’s next to Cedar Sinai.” He smiled. “Well, whadda ya want? You’re talking to a person who used Klingon to satisfy his language requirement growing up.”

  Ryan sighed. “At least you didn’t tell me your real last name is ‘the Jewish Vampire’.”

  Morrie laughed. “At cons, with the right amount of cash, you can register as whatever you like. Have you seen Buffy S. O’Brien, or ‘James T. Kirk Varswashki’ on the register? James T. Kirk Smith sort of scares people, though; she dresses like a Man in Black. We even made sure to have a Peter Rabbit to annoy the Fluffy, Demon Slayer group.”

  “You’re telling me the entire convention is either Irish Catholic or Jewish?”

  Morrie grinned with razor-sharp teeth. “You’ve heard of the book, The Catholic Imagination? Have you ever heard of one called The Protestant Imagination? No, because they don’t have one!”

  Sean paused, wanting to answer that, but just sighed. Oy.

  ***

  “Sean, my boy!” Mitchell Scholl said in that thick Brooklyn-German-Jewish accent called Yiddish. “How do you like wearing costumes?”

  Sean Ryan smiled at him as he walked into the hotel room. “You’re talking to the man who can do gymnastics in a Wookie suit. Why?”

  “Have I got a deal for you!”

  Ryan smiled. “Mitch, some Californian Liberals at Berkeley might think such a statement is a bad anti-Semitic stereotype.”

  “Bah! Whadda they know!” He opened a closet. “Whadda ya think?”

  Sean Ryan looked at the monstrosity of a suit and gave Mitchell Scholl a long look. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  Scholl laughed. “Who’s joking? You'll blend in with the Martians, and this TechnoCop suit will fit you fine, I promise. Steel beams go up and down the suit, out into the arms, and give support to the limbs. Should you grab someone and haul them off the ground, for example, the weight of the person you’re lifting will be distributed throughout the network of metal. The visor I replaced with old IR goggles.. You'll basically be Iron Man. Try it!”

  Ryan managed to fit into the steel suit with a minimum of distress, and Mitchell sealed him in, locking the silver-plating over his torso and limbs. “You said this thing had a holster?” he asked.

  Mitch nodded and tapped a button on the side of his leg; a panel slid to one side, and a gun slid out. “Why do you think the legs are so bulky?”

  “Because you wanted it to b
e for you?”

  “Funny man. Let’s see how funny the bad guys are as they break their fists on your torso.”

  “No one punches at the torso unless it’s at the stomach; otherwise they would break their hands on my breastbone.” Sean looked down at all the metal and frowned. “I feel nice and safe and protected, like a sardine. My problem is, can I throw myself in front of Mira to, you know, protect her? All of this stuff is cool, but will this help me keep her alive?”

  Scholl waved it off. “If you’re alive, she’s alive. If you’re dead, she’s on her own anyway. You’ve told me this before. You’ll make it work. Besides, the steel network doesn’t hinder movement too much. It supports itself, and the plates are papier-mâché, not body armor, and you can remove them at any time, if you can get a better covering for the structure.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Hand me the helmet.”

  Mitch hefted the weight. “This, on the other hand, isn’t silver mâché, but real metal, and comes with infrared. Be careful who you head butt, because he won’t be getting back up.”

  “I’ll be sure to remember that.”

  Ryan stood, surprised to find the costume didn’t actually limit movement, and the weight was negligible. He nodded his approval and beamed, walking out of Scholl’s hotel room and down the hall to his new room (he found that the shattered window created an awful draft; he spent his restless energy the night before moving his luggage and his client into a different set of rooms). He opened what was officially his door and—careful to step over the tripwire—walked inside, moving past Mira and Goran as though he were wearing normal dress. “Are we all ready?”

  Mira turned, having just slipped on a gray, long sleeved T-shirt, and she blinked. Sean reached up to the strip of a visor and pushed it up, revealing his eyes bracketed by metal. “It's just me.”

  She smiled beatifically. “I believe we’re ready.”

  “Good, because I’ve got an hour to deliver you to the autograph table. After that, we can go wherever you wish for a while before I have to get you to another G5 panel. You get to be on the same stage as Mr. Eielson, so don’t worry about having to speak. He’ll take the time just introducing himself.”

  Mira sighed gently. “Yes, I am familiar with the way he talks—he did it quite often around the set, and I’ve heard stories from conventions. I cannot say I approve. It must be an American custom.”

  Ryan shook his head. “No, he’s too mean and nasty—more a professional atheist, like Richard Dawkins or Bill Maher. As opposed to the Mad Russian; he doesn't believe in God, but G5 is the first science fiction show in years that didn’t outlaw religion.”

  ***

  Galadren, Middle Earth’s Most Wanted Elven Assassin, kept his distance from Mira and Sean Ryan. Revealing his presence to the Ranger was probably not the smartest maneuver in Middle Earth, but he did not exactly have a choice in the matter. He considered leaving his quiver behind, but he couldn’t imagine walking through the grounds of C-Con unarmed. After all, he was still wanted, and now that the Ranger knew of his presence, the chances of escalation were almost certain.

  He was running out of time.

  Therefore, he needed to strike and finish it.

  And thanks to the printed schedule, he knew exactly where she had to be.

  ***

  Sean led Mira onto the track of the sports center a few minutes before the crowds swept into the area to grab her autograph and that of the celebrities around her, as well as moving on to the vendors beyond them.

  I just wish I could do something about the arrangements.

  He looked up along the catwalk and was worried about the arrangements this time. There had been something wrong about last night’s attack—if the Serbs after Mira merely wanted her dead, they could have done that months ago. The attack from last night was too aggressive to be the same group who tried firebombing Mira twice. And then there was Middle Earth’s Most Wanted Whacko.

  The autograph “booth” against the wall was really an arrangement of cafeteria tables linked together to form an L around the celebrities, leaving one side open so they could get in and out easily. Ryan parked Mira at the end of the table farthest from the entrance, putting her at the opening, and stood his ground behind her so he had total control over who went into the booth, while being able to easily step out if need be. He would have preferred Mira to be separated from her fans by a sheet of bulletproof glass, leaving a little slot for someone to slip in the object to be signed. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t work for Mira, nor would it do for anyone who wanted casts, appropriate body parts, or any large objects signed.

  “Hey, tin man, you going to let me in?”

  Sean glanced behind him, noting the “guest” badge on the breast of Matthew Kovach’s shirt, which read, Join a Proud Minority… Read. “Oh, yes, you’re a writer, aren’t you?”

  “Good guess. You want to frisk me, too, or can we skip that?” Matthew asked, amused.

  “For now. I'm not the TSA”

  The guests began to pour in soon enough, and he gave mild consideration to the yellow crime scene tape just down at the other end of the track. Granted, the body had been moved perhaps an hour ago, and the crime scene unit finished up not long after, but the yellow tape was still there, as were the little red droplets of blood.

  He smirked. They had been lucky—the blood didn’t pool onto the floor but seeped into the victim's clothes. That would have been interesting to explain to the convention goers.

  And as long as the crime scene tape doesn’t cut them off from anything they want to get to, I can’t imagine any of them actually complaining.

  Most people would probably dismiss the crime scene tape as a gag put on for show by the C-Con workers…but then again, as he remembered some of the merchandise, maybe science fiction fans were probably the most surprisingly educated civilians. As he searched the T-shirts, he had found a “Schrödinger’s Tequila: Drink outside the Box” shirt with the picture of a drunken cat on it. There was also a black T-shirt covered with scientific equations sketched in green, and the caption read, “Yes, I am a rocket scientist”—a shirt he had seen on several guests wearing name tags ending in “PhD”.

  I wonder how many people went into NASA because they watched Trek growing up?

  He then remembered Steven Hawking was a fan of the show, and that NASA had tried to make the symbol for a recent space project look remarkably like that of Starfleet.

  Short answer: don’t ask. Ditto the next generation of forensic scientists after the strings of CSIs and friendly rip-offs.

  “I loved your show!” some fan spouted. Ryan looked down at the guest sliding Mira’s photo for her to sign. In the photo, Mira wore a black robe that hung on her a lot like her alien ambassador robes did on G5, and she carried a long silver staff that looked remarkably like those on her old show.

  Hmm, I wonder if that’s why she got this part? At least they got the color scheme right if she’s supposed to be a Jesuit nun…but then again, the Jesuits don’t have nuns, but this is science fiction. Then again, most of the bastards in Hollywood would say that having a Jesuit as a good guy would be science fantasy.

  I wonder who had actually written such a show in LA of all places?

  Before he could answer that question for himself, he heard a scream from across the room. Sean leapt over the table and the guests crowding around Mira, hand reaching for the holster-release button as he dashed to the sound of the screaming, ready to do all sorts of things to some poor bastard.

  “Did you hear?” someone asked at the back of the line. “The bunny took two to the back of the head. They found him face down in the duck pond.”

  “No! Really? Oh well, it’s all right I guess, he was a vet of the Great Bunny War after Watership Down. What about the rat who snuffed him?”

  “It was a fox, and she accidentally committed suicide when she wrapped the bolo around her own neck.”

  Ryan cocked his head. Odd.

  Mira looked
up at him and smiled. “Something, Sean?”

  Someone screamed, “A body! A body!”

  Another one?

  Sean Ryan made it to the center of the floor, where a man had been almost hysterical as he pointed to the floor, two feet sticking out from underneath a costume table. He blinked a moment, recognizing it and sighed, lifting the skirt of the tablecloth. They were both hairy, matted with brown fur on top, and neither was connected to a human being.

  “Congratulations, sir, you just found prosthetic Hobbit feet for Lord of the Rings.”

  Strike one. He was about to turn when he spotted Eric by a jeweler's stall, his arm around a woman with long black hair in a ponytail. He was wearing a shirt that said, “Blood is thicker than water—sweeter, too”; hers proclaimed “Put the romance back in necromancy.” He considered going over, just to say hello, when yet another scream caught his attention.

  Tell me it’s not the IRA again. What he found instead was a tribble moving of its own accord—or at least, that’s what it looked like at first. He then noted that it had legs. Sean turned on the infrared vision Mitch had installed in the helmet. It revealed nothing underneath the tribble that he could see, so it wasn’t a rat. He grimaced, pulled Eielson’s book of poisons from the table and tossed it at the tribble, knocking it over; underneath it was a robotic toy of some sort.

  Strike two. Ryan picked up the book and strolled back towards the autograph booth, where the crowd had finally thinned out. Mira stood and stretched, graceful in her T-shirt and blue jeans, even in infrared, stepping outside the table to meet him halfway.

  Good time for a stroll after you’ve been sitting for a half-hour.

  He was about to shut down the IR goggles when he caught something odd—a little patch of off-color red on someone’s body, shaped like a blade. He turned off the IR vision, noting that the darker shade of red was a knife; the knife itself was black, and he wouldn’t have seen it had it not appeared first on infrared, because it was being held tightly against the side of a short figure in black with deep brown eyes—Zorro!

  Ryan growled and increased his pace towards Mira, hoping not to alert Zorro to his knowledge of the weapon. Zorro’s stride didn’t increase, for which Ryan was grateful. With only a few feet remaining, he leapt to Mira’s side, presenting Zorro with the back of TechnoCop’s broad armor plating, and whirled Mira around as he pulled her along the floor towards the exit. The man in black turned and gave chase. The pursued were halfway across the comic book table as Zorro leapt on Ryan’s back, stabbing down into the sliver mâché with one hand, the other grabbing the metal collar of the interior steel network.