* * *
Flight Surgeon Cooper Murdock was born and raised on a cattle ranch in West Texas. Finished college in Austin, then moved to Palo Alto, California for medical school. Did his residency at the VA Hospital. Got picked up by SpaceCorp shortly thereafter.
“How long had you been seeing Flight Nurse Marks?” I thought I’d try to catch him off guard. It sorta worked—he was startled by the insinuation.
“Seeing her? What do you mean?”
I just stared at him.
“I haven’t been ‘seeing’ her, although if I’m to be honest I guess I would have liked to.”
“So why didn’t you?”
He twirled the wedding band around his finger. “I have a wife Earthside. She’s going to be joining me in two months—you’re not going to reveal any of this, are you?”
I looked at him for a few seconds. “Let’s start over, how long had you been working with Nurse Marks?”
He seemed relieved at the new turn in the conversation.
“Two years.”
“Tell me about her.”
“She was professional—”
“Tell me about her, not the flight nurse.”
He paused, “Well, she kept to herself mostly. No social life. Never went out with anybody that I know of. Went to mass regularly. Couple times a week.”
“How do you know that? Did you see her there?”
“Sometimes. I’m Catholic also.”
“A practicing Catholic?”
“Uh, not really. I guess I mainly went to see Melody. She was intoxicating!”
I stared at him again. “Can you tell me anything about her behavior or whereabouts on the night she was killed?”
“Not really. She and Madeline helped me with an appendectomy. I left. They stayed to settle the patient in. Didn’t see her after that.”
“Where did you go?”
“I walked up to the observation deck—good place to relax after you get done carving on someone.”
* * *
Flight Nurse Madeline Klein was an attractive woman, mid-forties, kind of a baritone voice—very sexy that—and a faint European accent.
“How long had you known Melody Marks?”
She smiled. “Ah, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes. A long time, I guess. Four years on the station, four and a half maybe. And another year Earthside—we were in flight training together.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Nothing to tell really. She was about as lively dead as she was alive. Her big thing was being sweet all the time.”
“Was she really that sweet?”
“Oh, yes. She was the genuine article.”
“Did you like her?”
“She didn’t give you much to like, unless you like diabetes. We worked well together. That’s about it.”
“Why do you think she came up here?”
She chuckled. “I guess that’s one area we had in common. She came up here to be closer to heaven. I came up here to be farther from hell.”
“Can you tell me anything about her behavior or whereabouts on the night she was killed?”
“Only that she finished her shift the same time I did. We both went to the cafeteria. I stayed to eat and visit with friends. She got a sandwich to go and left.”
“You didn’t see her after that?”
“Actually, I did. She was leaving the shower area as I was entering.”
“Anything unusual about her?”
“No.”
“What was she wearing?”
“White bath robe, towel around her head, slippers, toiletries bag under her arm.”
“Did you say anything to her?”
“She just smiled. She was in a hurry.”
“A hurry?”
“Her hair was wet. She was not comfortable bathing coed.”
“Were there any guys in the bathroom when you went in?”
“Two or three.”
“Names?”
“I didn’t look at them.”
I looked at her quizzically.
“I’m not comfortable bathing coed either.”
I couldn’t help liking her. Tough, on the cynical side, woman-with-a-past, seen-it-all. She reminded me so much of Emily, Earthside. I thanked her and she got up to leave.
“Oh, one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Is that your natural hair color, platinum?”
“Yes.”
I gave her my nice-guy smile. “Would you mind dying it some other color?”
“Yes, I would mind.”
“Would you do it anyway? Just till we find this guy?”
“You’re telling me he likes blonds?”
“Yes.”
She stared at me a second, then walked out.
God, I hoped the next time I saw her she would be right side up.
* * *
True to form on Borucki, the door to the victim’s room had not been sealed. It was locked but anybody with the code could have gone in.
The place was neat, not a thing out of place. There was a stationary box and ink pen lying on top of her desk. I opened the box—she’d started a letter. But I couldn’t read it, not much of it anyway, because it was in cursive. Have to put Lijuan on that one. This chick had to be the only person in CisLuna that used cursive. Well, maybe two, counting Lijuan. Surely she didn’t expect those letters to get home anytime soon. I checked out her laptop. Mak had cracked the password for me—JesusSaves. She had a file for letters. Ah yes, she imaged what she wrote and sent it home that way. A bit of a personal touch. Certainly harder for some machine overseer to read her mail. Clever girl.
I scanned all the surfaces for prints. There were a ton of them. We’d check ‘em all out, but I already knew they’d be mostly her prints and a few prints from the goofs that recovered her body. I was doubtful there’d be prints from any other people, and definitely not the prints I was looking for.
There were some religious artifacts and some Christian-themed pictures hanging on the walls. I checked the picture frames to see if there was anything hidden in them. Nothing. Medicine cabinet had some basic makeup and a standard issue analgesic. Hmm… even God’s little angels get headaches. I found some hairs between the bed sheets. I tweezed them into an evidence bag even though I knew they’d be hers. Dresser drawers held the usual undergarments, socks, tops, and scrubs. There was one dress folded up neatly. Another funny thing about space stations. Nobody hangs anything up. Everything gets folded and stuck in a drawer. No closets, no hangers. I guess they save volume that way.
I checked the vent by removing the cover and looking inside both directions. You could tell it had been scraped clean from something that filled up the space about a meter back on either side. Beyond that you could see the usual grit and grease that fills up air vents. Yep, the killer had set up his apparatus in the vent. How did he get his apparatus onto Borucki? His coffin would have been awfully cramped. Did he ship it by other means? Did he manufacture a new one? Floor boards revealed nothing but empty space between the joists.
So what have I learned about you, Melody Marks… age 29… sugar sweet blond virgin?
“You coulda been a nun, but you decided to be a nurse.”
Chapter Sixteen
The war room
I’d sent Martin back to Einstein with the hope that we would not be needing him again. In his seat looking very uncomfortable was Security Chief Rogers.
“Mak, let’s start with you. What do you have on the bug situation?”
“We are clean for bugs. But I plan to keep looking—we only just set up house here and this guy may not have had time to set anything up.”
“Good work. What about eavesdropping viruses, Lijuan?”
“Found several that match his signature. Also some standard shit for knocking out security cams and another little gem for playing with door codes.”
“Hmm… insipid little bastard, isn’t he?”
Only got a couple of chuckles out of that one.
“They are not. Every time I try to sponge one virus it morphs into another one.”
“What can we do? We have to be able to communicate.”
“I suggest we remain very guarded in our communications for now.”
“Meanwhile,” Mak said, “I’m working on a counter-virus. If we can’t eliminate his virus, maybe we can get it to tell us where he is.”
* * *
I was sitting at my desk in my new digs enjoying a Scotch and having an almost real-time video session with Emily. The watering hole here was affectionately called the Billy Bee and the barkeep didn’t mind if we walked off with glasses so long as they were filled with product. He’d said most folks were pretty good about returning them. Meanwhile, Emily had sent me a picture of herself as a brunette.
“Does this look silly?”
“Nope. Brunette becomes you.”
“Mind telling me why I did this, apart from making my tips go way down?”
“Perp likes blonds. He’s racked up three so far.”
“But he’s 370 thousand klicks away!”
“I know, but… this just takes away one thing that I don’t have to worry about. Things are getting pretty tense up here.”
“What about Devil? Won’t I be safe with him?”
“Devil’s pretty ferocious, but no. This perp takes out his victims with CO2 asphyxiation. Last time I checked, German Shepherds are not immune to that. Where is he now?”
“He’s with me. I’m still at Becky’s. I told her about Hanna.”
I paused a moment.
“Was that necessary?”
“You’ve been gone a long time. How long can I take advantage of her on the excuse that I’m afraid of the dark?”
“I guess you’re right.”
“How much longer do you think this will take?”
“I wish I knew. The guy thinks he’s a vampire plus he seems to be a shape shifter and a station shifter. Whenever we think we’re close, he changes IDs and jumps to a new station.”
“Great. I’m married to Professor Van Helsing chasing vampires on the Moon.”
We rang off and I was about to shut down and get some rack, when a pop-up appeared on the screen.
IP TRACE: WIFI CONNECTION QUAD IV, DECK 1, C-WING, BOX 7.
Chapter Seventeen
War Room
I showed Mak my pop-up message.
“It worked!” he said.
“What worked?”
“My counter-virus. I just got it up for the first time late last night. You were being eavesdropped from someplace over in Quad IV.”
“How precise is this location?”
“We can’t tell precisely where the laptop was located, but we can tell precisely which WiFi transceiver it was using.”
“So how far away would the laptop have been, say, maximum?”
“Maybe fifty meters, perhaps less. But you can’t tell which direction.”
“And how do you know it was our boy?”
“I don’t. I just know that whoever eavesdropped on your conversation was using that virus.”
“So what do we do with this?”
“Well, for starters, I’d say this greatly reduces my door-to-door search space.”
I looked at Chief Rogers, “Looks like this is your baby.”
“We’re on it.”
“Oh, Chief, a reminder—knock! If no answer, back away. Get an engineer to remote probe the room and—”
“And use a robot for access. Got it, boss.”
* * *
Room C105 was less than twenty meters from WiFi Box 7. I arrived at as fast as I could, but riding in on the people mover from Quad II took some time. By the time I showed up there was quite a crowd gathered in the hall.
I noticed they were keeping their distance from Room C105—good. People were taking this case and the killer’s lethality seriously.
I walked over to Chief Rogers, “Whatcha got?”
He motioned me over to a monitor that was about twenty meters from the door. A piece of fiber optic cable trailed from the computer setup down to the door. The monitor showed a piece of wire inside the room. It was attached to the door knob and went to the cabinet under the sink passing into the cabinet through a small hole in the cabinet wall.
“Now we know where he’s hiding his Christmas presents.”
Chief Rogers said, “We’ve evacuated C-Wing as well as B-Wing and D-Wing in the vicinity of the room.”
“Good thinking.” I asked Lijuan what she had on the room.
“Vacant.”
“So somebody was just squatting there?”
“Looks that way. Fiber optic shows a few personal belongings on the bed. Bed covers are ruffled. Toothbrush in a glass on the sink. Somebody is living here. They’re just not there right now.”
“Good work.”
I turned to the engineer, “What’s the best way to get inside without disturbing that wire?”
The engineer said, “The door is nanocellulose. We can just cut a hole in it with a laser. Shouldn’t be too hard for somebody to wiggle through.”
“Whoa! Nobody is going near that room until that device—whatever it is—is defused. Also, let’s keep in mind that we’re dealing with a tricky bastard. That cable from the door knob to the cabinet could just be a distraction. The real device might be under the floor boards, and activated by your foot pressure. Or maybe he’s rigged a heat sensor. You can’t allow yourself to be narrow minded with this guy. So only the robot goes in the room for now, and then only when all the people are well away.”
An hour later the robot entered the room through a hole in the door. It was equipped with a drill and carried a fiber optic cable to pass through the hole it was going to drill into the cabinet. I was breathing down the engineer’s neck to see what was inside the cabinet. The hole completed, the robot inserted the cable. Inside we found some random cleaning stuff, some extra toilet paper—some folks insisted on paper up here—and the end of the wire wrapped around the sink drain. Nothing else. No explosives, no detonators, no fancy mechanisms. Just a lousy piece of wire going from a door knob to a sink cabinet. A great big ‘Fuck you!’
“Okay,” I said. “Nobody goes into that room until the robot has drilled holes in every drawer, ceiling panel, air vent shaft, wall panel, and floor panel.”
“That could take days, boss,” the Chief said.
“I know.” And so does the killer.
About then Captain Nation showed up.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he asked.
“What’s the meaning of what?”
“Why have you displaced thirty of our good citizens while you pursue one of your wild goose chases?”
I took slow breath before I answered. “We found an unregistered room where apparently, someone has taken to squatting. It might be the killer and I’m worried that he may have boobytrapped it.”
“Boobytrapped?”
“Yes, a special kind of bomb or incendiary device—”
“—I know what a boobytrap is, Mr. Stone.”
“Good. Then you can see the need to take precautions.”
“I can see that I have people with no rooms.”
“It’s for their safety.”
I guess he ran out of ways to piss me off at that point. He just stood there fuming, his nostrils flaring with every breath.
“Well, be quick about it.”
Then he turned and stalked off. Prissy little fuck.
* * *
When I got back to my room I was the kind of beat that comes from waiting for hours for a bomb to go off, only it never does. I’d stuck around for several hours while the dissection of the killer’s room took place. I knew we’d come up dry, but mostly I wanted to be sure no one on the team took any short cuts.
I was ready to crash, but I thought I should check my computer one last time before turning in. When I opened it, there was a pop-up waiting for me. No IP TRACE, just
a fucking pop-up message.
NICE TRY
Chapter Eighteen
War Room
I showed everyone the “Nice try” pop-up on my computer screen. “Anyone else get one of these little gems?”
Everyone shook their head.
“What’s it mean?” Lijuan asked.
“It’s his way of laughing at us… well, me anyway. These demented minds are actually proud of their kills and how they elude capture. It’s the excitement of the chase. Sometimes they feel a little bored with just killing people in bizarre ways, so they raise the stakes by saying ‘catch me if you can.’”
“Well, he’s doing pretty well at that,” Mak said.
“How so?”
“My counter-virus no longer works.”
“At all? No graceful failure? Just gave out altogether?
“Yeah, boss.”
“Well, keep trying. We gotta make the perp feel the pressure so he’ll make a mistake.”
“Lijuan, how’s the duplicate ID search going?”
“I think he’s on to us, boss. I think he’s coopting IDs just to eat. Then after he eats or maybe during the meal he goes in and resets that person’s cafeteria attendance.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t actually know that, but what I’m seeing is him eating in quads that are completely unrelated to the IDs he steals. The ones he’s stealing are from people who live or work in different quads.”
“How do you know he’s eating at all?”
“I had the hostess at each cafeteria keep a manual count. The computer counter keeps coming up shy by one.”
“Is there a particular quad he favors?”
“Quad IV. There’s two cafeterias there plus a couple of sandwich kiosks near the work areas. He doesn’t seem to go for the kiosks—maybe too personal, not enough traffic to hide in.”
At that moment Nation barged in and started flaming all over me. I interrupted him in the middle of his tirade.
CisLuna_Hard-boiled Police Procedural_Murder Mystery Page 9