When it was his turn to be sampled, Monica said, “We’re screening for cancer susceptibility. There’s been a problem with lunar silicates on the stations.” She reached out to grab his cheek with one hand while holding her cotton swab with the other. As she did so, Chick and Rogers ran in behind Teach.
Teach heard their footsteps and he whirled to face them. In his right hand was a switchblade which he snapped open. Chick was closest and Teach slashed across his chest opening a nasty wound. I moved to within about five paces pulling my knife off my belt and flipping the blade open with the finger lever. I was deliberately slow because I didn’t want to fumble with the blade lever being on the wrong side. But I got it open without screwing up.
Teach heard my blade’s distinctive click and spun around to face me.
“You!” he hissed.
His expression looked like a mannequin coming to life, wrinkling in ways a human face would not. It hadn’t occurred to me that a 3D-printed face might not duplicate the suppleness of human facial skin.
Rogers moved in to restrain him, but Teach whirled back and slashed Rogers’ left shoulder. Rogers backed away fumbling for the night stick at his belt. Teach pursued him, his right arm drawn back to make a thrust for Rodger’s mid-section. As the blade was thrusting forward, Monica kicked him in the tailbone, then dropped back a half step and got into her fighting crouch. Teach howled from the pain and advanced on her grabbing her front coverall with his left hand, his right hand drawing the knife back for a thrust.
He presented a side view of his head. That was all I needed. My blade sailed true without flipping, striking him just below the right ear burying itself a full fifteen centimeters right up to the bolsters. He froze. I could tell the wound had severed his right carotid and either hit the spinal cord or maybe the medulla. He was dead only his body hadn’t gotten the message yet. Then his legs buckled and his butt collapsed onto his heels. He squatted there almost comical looking until I began to wonder if he really was dead. Then his body rocked back onto the deck with his skull making a loud thump. His arms spread-eagled, his right hand refusing to release his switchblade. A gush of crimson pulsed from the wound down the side of his skull, forming a crimson aura around his head on the deck tiles.
Rogers ran up and put his foot on Teach’s right wrist and used his night stick to skitter Teach’s knife across the deck toward me. I stopped it with my shoe and bent to pick it up with my handkerchief. It was my old Latama. The bastard had taken my fucking knife while he had me looped on flunitrazepam the night he killed Emily.
Even though Teach was obviously dead, Rogers was very tentative as he bent to check for a neck pulse. After some moments of probing around with his fingertips he said, “I think he’s dead.”
“Cuff him anyway.”
Monica ran over to Chick to render first aid. He had a nasty cut and he’d bleed out soon without attention. The slash was deep, cutting his left subclavian artery as it passes over the first rib before it hides under the collar bone. I kept that blade sharp as a scalpel, honing it regularly on a piece of ultra-fine emery cloth and stropping it on my pantleg. Monica put pressure on the wound with her palms and yelled, “Get some corpsmen in here, STAT!”
One of the guards made the call, “We have an officer down. Knife wound to the chest. Extensive bleeding… Yes, we’re doing that… Get here fast… It’s spurting.”
I reached down to retrieve my knife from Teach’s forehead.
Ciccolella, ever the cop, yelled, “Leave it!”
I looked at him. “Evidence,” he said, grinning.
Rogers asked, “We got our man, boss. Should we let the rest of them through?”
“No, this is a crime scene. Check them all. Nobody leaves the passenger area till their DNA clears. Start with that piece of garbage on the floor.”
SLS John Marmie
The headline on the newsfeed this time was not so classic. “Killer Cop Back from Dead.” Assholes. Couldn’t they at least say I was exonerated?
We had to wait a week before it was safe for Ciccolella to suit up for the ride home. There was a corpsman escorting us but her presence was mostly cosmetic. The shuttle interior was in vacuum and if his wound opened during the flight, there would be little she could do to save him. We had an escort flight technician also—company policy when you’re not an astronaut. I didn’t mind—there was still a lot I didn’t know about flying around in space in spite of my extensive ‘tourist’ experience.
“So what are you going to do next?” Ciccolella asked.
“I’m not sure. There sure as hell isn’t anything left for me on Earth. I’m told Emily and Devil were cremated. They said I can have their ashes if I want them.”
“That was a nice touch, Devil and all. They don’t usually make so much fuss over pets.”
“Yeah, I guess it was.”
“I heard Larson wants to talk to you when you get back.”
“Yeah, he wants me to convert the security force up here into a real police force. It’s a pretty good offer—I’d get to travel around to all the stations. Live out my days in space.”
“You know you could take Emily and Devil up to the lunar surface. Put their ashes someplace where you could see them anytime you looked up.”
“Yeah? Where would that be?”
“I dunno. Tycho Crater is easy to spot. You can see it with the naked eye. The Helium-3 crew could give you a lift—I hear they’re doing some survey work there.” He paused to peck away at the keyboard on his computer. His glove tips had little nubbins on the finger tips so he could hit the keys reliably. “Here’s a nice view of Tycho. Check out the mountain in the middle.”
I scrolled around and zoomed in on the depression at the summit. It had a pretty spectacular boulder that would be easy to see from CisLuna using an ordinary telescope. It could be their headstone.
“Think they’d give me a lift to the summit?”
“They might. You might be the killer-that-got-away-on-a-technicality in the eyes of the press Earthside, but up here you’re like Jesus. You died so you could come back and save them.”
“Jesus? That’s a stretch. Maybe I could be one of the lesser saints. Besides it was a team effort. And we both know the result is at best temporary.”
“You take Larson up on his job offer and you could stretch ‘temporary’ out quite a ways. Decades maybe. Give him a call when we get down.”
“Maybe I will.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Vandenberg
It was a week after returning Earthside before I was able to collect Emily and Devil’s cremated remains. It was painful. Predictably, I felt like it was my fault they were dead. If only I’d had my .357 when I caught him in my room. If only my knife hadn’t missed his bowel. If only I’d caught the bastard before he returned to Earth instead of following his false trail to the lunar surface. If I really wanted to beat myself up, and it seems that I did, I could play the if-only game with Patty and Melody as well. It was always a race with serials. Stop them before they kill again. A race where you’re trading bodies for clues. A race where the more you gain on the perp, the greater the odds he will circle back and bushwhack you.
I decided Tycho Crater would be Emily and Devil’s final resting place. The logistics of getting them interred up there would be good for me. Booze was too easy to come by Earthside and there was nobody down here to keep tabs on your consumption. Joe was good that way up at Albert’s.
Down here on Earth, I could see them anytime the moon was visible, well almost. I would need at least a gibbous moon, and of course a clear night for Tycho to show up. The crater is pretty distinct down in the lunar southern hemisphere with lots of rays sticking out. Maybe I’d get myself a telescope. If I was lucky, I’d get to place them on top of Tycho’s 2-km high central peak right next to the soccer-field-sized boulder. As far as I knew nobody had named it, so I decided I’d call it Devil’s Peak. For some reason it sounded better than Emily’s Peak. The boulder didn’t need a
name—you don’t name headstones. On the other hand, there were no clouds in CisLuna.
* * *
Larson’s office was in the head shed on the Base. It was big and he’d filled it up with charts and hardcopy books—Jesus, did that man have books. They must have been worth a fortune! There were long sidebars along the windows where he had placed numerous models of space stations and shuttles of various configurations, plus a coffee service. He also had some interplanetary craft and several nuclear rocket motors in exploded view. There was a sitting area consisting of a couch and a coffee table and a couple of overstuffed chairs. On one end of the coffee table was a thick folder, no labeling, very heavy paper. It had accordion edges and a string to secure the flap. I hadn’t seen anything like that since the Army.
“I hope you’re here to bring me some good news, Roy.”
I took a sip of coffee from the porcelain coffee cup he’d given me, trying not to rattle it when I put it back in its saucer. I’m used to big beefy mugs. Saucers are for sissies.
“Depends,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Name it.”
“I want to take Emily and Devil’s ashes to the moon and put them in Tycho Crater up on top of Devil’s Peak.”
“You mean the central uplift in the middle of Tycho?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t have a name, so I named it.” I hesitated, then shrugged. “I’m sentimental.”
Hank nodded. “I guess you earned it.”
“Earned what? The sentimental, or the I get to take Emily and Devil up there?”
“Uh… all of the above?”
“You didn’t ask me what you get in this bargain.”
“I didn’t know we were bargaining,” Hank said, “but okay, what do I get?”
“I’ll go up to CisLuna and be your Chief of Police. And I’ll do that until I die in the line of duty or rem out or you fire me, whichever comes first.”
“Deal.”
That was easy. He stuck out his hand and I shook it.
“I’m gonna need some support—a cop, maybe detective sergeant level, on each station and another one on the lunar surface. That’ll mean three cops for moon duty cause they can only work for a month at a time. The two that aren’t on the surface can manage the policing chores on Borucki. We might be able to do that with some of the security types that are already up there. Rogers and his crew all seemed pretty good, just need some training—make that lots of training—police procedures, forensics, criminal law. They’re going to need to be armed with more than blades and saps—I’m talking real firearms.”
Larson laughed. “That’s gonna go over like a pregnant pole vaulter.”
“Emily would still be alive if I’d had my piece up there.”
He quit laughing. “Okay, but I’ll want to see strict controls about their usage.”
“You’ll get it. And I figure we could use Monica’s primate lab as a forensics lab from time to time. She’ll probably bitch about being overloaded and behind schedule trying to make rad-hard space monkeys. Probably hit you up for more lab techs.”
Larson smiled at that. “She’s up to monkeys now? Last report I got was she was still doing rats.”
“And we need some kind of judicial system. This business of Captain’s Mast for every little thing is a bit too Captain Bligh—”
“Bligh?”
“Book I read once. Guy was a real asshole back when navy ship captains had the authority of God. Hang ‘em from the yard arm!”
Larson chuckled. “That could be a problem up there. A lot of our captains like having the authority of God.”
“Don’t take my word for it. Ask Sam. Captain King. She was none too enthusiastic when she asked Earthside for guidance about trying a murderer, and they told her to figure it out her own damned self. Including executing the perp if we caught him.”
“That was my doing. Think she would have done it?”
“Yeah, I do. She was all set to waste Rodriguez. I think she was frustrated because it was taking so long to catch the real perp. It was kind of a ‘do something, even if it’s wrong’ reaction. And that’s not right. A separate law enforcement agency and judicial system are needed to keep station captains respectful of due process. Anyway, I could set all that up.”
“You expecting a crime wave?”
“Hope not. Although the last one was a dilly. Look, it’s not like you don’t have the room up on those stations. And lastly, I want improved IT security. Your network has more holes than a… well, it’s not very good. And I’ll be the first one to tell you that no IT network is 100% secure—and I don’t want to hear about your new quantum computers—but I at least want to make it harder for some evil fiend to compromise us.”
Larson sat there arms splayed along the back of the couch and nodding as I spoke. Then he said, “Okay, take care of your wife and dog’s remains and then let me know what you need.”
I don’t think he quite realized the commitment he was making with me being chief of police. Then he changed the subject.
“How do you figure to get your wife and dog’s remains up to Devil’s Peak, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I was going to bum a ride from one of the helium crews.”
“Hmm… that might be a tough climb for them. They just have their lunamogs and that slope might be too steep for them. Besides, it would probably be quicker if we flew you up there with a chopper.”
“Chopper?”
“Yeah, they’re new. They’re not really helicopters, there being no air for rotor blades, but they take off and land vertically and have a mission radius of 250 km. Run on four cold gas rocket motors stuck overhead on a mast—LH2 propellant and a plutonium heat source. They don’t spin like rotor blades, but the assembly swivels to give you pitch, roll, and yaw, just like the rotor head on a chopper. They don’t have a very big payload—about six EVA-suited crewmen plus spare O2. We mostly use them as ambulances for the helium crews and anybody else who gets lost wandering around up there.”
I listened politely—the man had just given me what I wanted most right now. I guess he noticed me keeping my mouth shut and nodding.
“So when do you want to leave?” he asked.
I thought a moment. “I guess I’m ready right now. Just grab Emily and Devil’s urns and some clothes.”
“And you’ll want this.”
He shoved the thick envelope that had been lying on his end of the coffee table over to me. It must have been old, being paper and all.
It was heavy as it looked. “What’s this?”
“Old files we dug up based on the DNA sample you collected on your perp. It’s interesting reading, but I’ll need it back before you leave.”
He looked at his monitor and swished a few windows around with his finger. “There’s a flight leaving for SSS Nathalie Cabrol in two days. That enough time to pack a change of socks and underwear?”
“Yeah. Two days. Sounds pretty good.”
“Cabrol is in LEO. I’ll send you the rest of the flight connections this afternoon. You should be back up in Cisluna in less than a week. You can make your own arrangements to get to the moon and take care of your business. Tell anybody that asks it’s on my authority.”
“Can I use that for about twenty firearms and assorted knives and saps?”
He laughed. “I’ll need some time to brief the captains about the new sheriff in town. How about you just take what you need for yourself for now. After you get settled, you can send back a materials list and we’ll ship it up.”
“Okay.”
He stood up and we shook hands. Then I turned and left, the heavy folder under my arm.
Epilogue
That night back at the house I treated myself to a steak cooked on the grill in the back yard. Judging by the date on the package, this was the one Emily was going to feed Devil. While it was cooking, I made myself a gin martini on the rocks with a couple of oversized cocktail olives. Funny. I only ever eat one, but I made the martini with two
out of habit since Emily liked olives but not martinis.
I opened the file Larson loaned me while I was eating. After I finished my meal, I cleared the dishes off the dining room table and started spreading all the papers and pictures out so I could see them in toto. There was a lot of shit and I ended up sticking a bunch of them on the dining room wall with map tacks.
He was born Gaddo Ugolino, 2045. Family from the Sea Cliff district of San Francisco. IQ 160. No wonder the fuck was always a step ahead of everybody. Graduated high school in 2057 at the age of twelve. Instead of college, he went into an institution for the criminally insane—seems he and his maiden aunt had a thing going, and he was dissecting her in the basement when his father walked in on him. His father described him as very matter of fact about what he was doing, even going so far as to ask his father to pass him a surgical saw.
The aunt’s body was laid out on top of a plastic drop cloth. He’d bottled up all her major organs in formaldehyde. Her blood was in a large clear plastic gasoline can. Cause of death was strangulation with a garrote made of steel wire with two large D-rings on the ends big enough to fit your whole hand in. The evidence was unclear how a twelve-year-old boy could be strong enough to overpower a grown woman. Young Ugolino told the investigators how he did it several times—no two alike.
The name Ugolino struck a chord in my mind, so I checked it out. There was a Count Ugolino of Pisa, Italy in Dante’s Inferno. Gaddo was the name of one of the Count’s sons. Accused of treachery, the Count, his two sons, and two grandsons were locked in the Muda Tower and left to starve. If your family name was Ugolino, why in holy hell would you name your kid Gaddo? It’s like they were asking him to go nuts.
CisLuna_Hard-boiled Police Procedural_Murder Mystery Page 16