Galaxy Man

by Mark Wayne McGinnis

  “Good. What say we go work the crime scene now?”

  Chapter 8

  Frontier Planet, Gorman — Heritage Plains Township.

  Just keep it together . . . a mantra Gallic kept on constant replay.

  He felt the surrounding chill. “You cranked up the AC in here?” Gallic asked.

  “Oh yeah . . . all the way up,” Phil said.

  “Good.” Gallic helped Tori move the crime scene satchels in from the outside porch. He put down the equipment and closed the doors. Gallic began setting his own ComsBand to record video and sound. The record feature on a ComsBand was nothing like a typical camera. Full-spectrum micro sensors reached out to gather an immense amount of three-dimensional—relational—information. Later, playing back the recording would allow him to hear and view the events that transpired from a variety of viewing perspectives.

  “We don’t both need to do that,” Tori said as she did the same thing on her own ComsBand.

  Gallic ignored her. He didn’t like relying on someone else—hoping they’d be as thorough as he would be.

  Phil reached down for the FDS unit and Tori slapped his hand away, as if he was a petulant child. Tori said, “Hands off things you don’t understand. And stay behind me. This is a crime scene . . . one that has already been unduly compromised.” She glanced at Phil with annoyance before she reached down for her FDS unit. She powered it on and—with the sniffer pointed forward—she headed off deeper into the house. Five paces down the hallway the smell hit them hard—hit them like a city bus. Tori reached for her mask and covered it with an open palm. Phil looked back over his shoulder and Gallic realized, behind his mask, he was smiling.

  Decomposing human remains have a unique smell. Probably from a combination of things—like the human diet, which plays a big part. Humans consume processed foods that metabolize quickly into noxious gasses—and humans ingest all kinds of stinky spices that only exacerbate the issue. Not a smell one really gets used to, it was a smell one learns to deal with. More like compartmentalizing. One needs to stash away, not think about the implications of what was smelled. Tori’s head was lowering—as if she was trying to dodge the waft of stale air ahead of her. She hasn’t learned to compartmentalize—not yet anyway, Gallic thought. Up ahead, he heard her reflexively gag several times in succession.

  They followed the same route through the expansive house that Gallic had viewed earlier on Phil’s video. The hallway was wide, lined on opposite walls with a mishmash of framed family photos. He took in all the smiling faces. Some were posed—stiff backed school-age children of another time, having their yearly portraits taken. And there were portraits of an elderly husband and wife couple. Nestled between his two arms, she was wearing a dress: he, a suit and tie. The photograph looked weathered—most of the color gone now. Most of the photos were of Tami: Tami as an infant, wearing a pink onesie. Tami riding on the shoulders of her father. Tami wearing shorts and a bright-orange shirt, playing some kind of sport—maybe soccer. Tami, arm in arm, with another, less attractive, girl of about the same age. And there were plenty of pictures of the mother, Catherine and the father, Donald. But none of them together in the same photograph. Gallic slowed when he noticed there was an open space between photographs. The paint was a shade lighter here within a frame-sized rectangular shape—that of the surrounding wall.

  They passed by open hallway doors. Peering in each, he noted a powder room, guest room, and a cluttered-looking office. Gallic figured the girl’s room and the master bedroom must be on the other wing of the house. Each would have to be swept.

  Eventually they reached the main room—the great room. Where much of the house was a combination of drywall walls and timber walls, this room was all stacked timber logs. Above, giant roughly hewn beams crisscrossed and supported an angled A-frame ceiling some forty feet high. They’d entered from the hallway at the middle of the room. To the left was a large chef’s kitchen with an island you could land the Hound on, and to the right was a big family room with overstuffed couches and matching chairs. A broad river rock fireplace that reached up to the ceiling filled the wall to the right.

  Gallic stood and took it all in. Mentally categorizing his impressions, taking in dozens of details at once—details that he’d typically stack up against the hundreds of other crime scenes he’d processed over the years. But right now, he was only comparing this crime scene to one other.

  The timber walls directly in front of him looked to be splashed with tar. It looked as if someone had used a bucket and sloshed copious amounts of blood—making a mountain rage effect with high peaks and low valleys. Flies were everywhere. The buzzing was constant.

  He let his eyes lower to the furniture before him. It had been rearranged to make room for the vics in the middle of the floor. Playing cards were strewn about, some on the floor, some abandoned atop the sofa. Splatters of blood dotted the two of spades.

  Tori was already using her FDS unit. Making broad sweeping motions with the sniffer end. She’d started in the kitchen and was methodically cataloging, high and low, every square inch of the room. The unit’s internal software was smart enough to reconstruct the surroundings. Building an internal, virtual model, of everything. Watching her, she was being overly careful—like over-steering when learning to ride a bike or a hovercraft—but Gallic wasn’t here to teach her how to use the damn thing.

  Phil was standing off to the right and was leaning against the wall with his hands crossed over his chest. Smirking, he watched her slow progression. Gallic figured Phil was thinking the same thing he was . . . she was avoiding moving into the main room.

  Gallic lowered down to his haunches and observed the scene from that level. Six feet in front of him, the mother and child’s feet were facing toward him. Both were bare foot. The two bodies were fully clothed—just as Clair and Mandy’s had been. Blood was everywhere, had saturated their jeans and T-shirts. But not their faces, which had been meticulously cleaned. The same had been done to his wife and daughter’s faces. Gallic wondered what the killer had used to do that. He scanned the floor and didn’t see anything like a towel or rag. He must have taken it with him.

  Tori had finished up in the kitchen and was now heading into the family room. She saw the bodies lying in front of Gallic. Startled, she dropped the FDS unit and it landed with a loud clunk—she pulled her mask up with one hand, retched once, twice, and—uncontrollably—threw up onto the crime scene. Specifically, onto the side of the young girl. The FDS unit continued to roll around on the hardwood floor. Eyes wide, Tori looked at what she had done. A whimpering sound emanated from her gaping mouth. She ran back to the kitchen and leaned over the sink. She continued to blow chunks. She turned on the faucet—which helped camouflage some of the retching sounds.

  Phil said, “She’s obviously in way-the-fuck-over-her head here, dollars to donuts; the kid’s never processed a violent murder scene before.”

  “I don’t know. But she’s definitely compromised the scene. Vomit on the bodies . . . vomit mist in the air . . . like a circling cloud . . . it’s already spreading her DNA all over the place. Phil . . . get her outside. She needs fresh air. I’ll finish up in here.”

  He waited while Phil ushered her out the way they had come in. No protest. No arguing that this was her crime scene. Both hands over her mouth, she ran out of there as if her pants were on fire.

  Gallic got to his feet and moved to the other side of the bodies. He picked up the

  FDS unit, checked to make sure it was still operational, and resumed the broad sweeping motions.

  It took him twenty minutes to completely catalogue both rooms with the FDS unit. Next, he began sweeping the furniture—couches and chairs. Backs, sides, tops. Then the- pushed-out-of-the-way, oversized coffee table. Then the hardwood flooring all around the bodies. Hundreds of disturbed—angry—flies swarmed upward as Gallic waived the air around his face. Fortunately, the FDS unit was proficient at discriminating between insectile and human DNA.

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nbsp; He’d avoided looking at the faces of the two victims. Gazing now down at Catherine’s and Tami’s bloated and discolored faces, he waited. Waited for the tumble and rumble of fast approaching vermin. For the slithering snakes to come crashing into his consciousness like a hurricane blasting through a grass hut—like a freight train crashing through a house. But all was quiet. All was calm.

  Still holding the FDS unit, he waived the sniffer over both of them—starting at the top of their heads and progressing over their bodies and ending up at the soles of their feet.

  He moved back to their upper torsos and leaned in close. He leaned over—within inches of Catherine Bower’s face. This close, he now could see the postmortem frothing that occurs from a body’s natural orifices—both nostrils and mouth exhibited this. He looked at the nail head protruding up a quarter of an inch above her right eyelid. Driven through the lid and into the pupil behind. He tilted his head and squinted his eyes. The nail head was the right size: definitely a two-penny nail. Since the murder of his wife and child, Gallic had become an expert on nails. The manufacturing—the various types and sizes. The various kinds of metal used. From his research, the whole strange measuring of nails seemed to have started as early as the fifteenth century. The ‘d’ measurement symbol came from Latin denarius. That evolved to the French denier and is also the symbol for the monetary penny today. A 2d nail is one-inch long. Each 1d increase is one-fourth inch increase in length up to 10d followed by a 12d, which is three and one-fourth inches long.

  The nail used here was what is considered a 2d box nail. Not used as often as a common nail. A common nail is slightly tapered just below on the underside of the nail head. This nail was thinner and not tapered at all—and it was made of steel. This was definitely a box nail. Gallic sat up and considered the implications. It was the exact size, type, and material of nail as the ones used by the murderer of his wife and daughter. It could be a coincidence.

  Flies were becoming too friendly, and he swatted them away from his own face. Phil reentered the room.

  “What are we looking at, here?” he asked.

  Gallic looked at the two bodies. He wasn’t sure how much Phil knew about crime scene forensics. “As you may or may not know, there’s basically five stages of decomposition. Fresh, bloat, active and advanced decay; and finally, dry remains. Coupled with that . . . there are two stages of chemical decomposition . . . autolysis and putrefaction.”

  Gallic repositioned himself lower on the woman’s body. He took her left foot in his hand and manipulated the ankle in a circular motion. He repeated with the right foot. Holding the leg higher up, at the thigh, he raised the leg and watched how easily the knee bent. He let go of the leg and moved back up to her upper torso. Gently, he moved the head from side to side. It moved easily.

  “Yeah . . . we’re way past the rigor-stage . . . and well into bloat. Normally I’d want to get a temperature of the liver. But I’m already pushing things . . . an observer here. In reality, based on what I see, the state of decom of the corpse is consistent with the eye-witness last seeing them riding horses in the pasture on Thursday afternoon. The timetable works that they were killed a few hours later . . . that night . . . it coincides with what I’m seeing. There again . . . I’m no ME.

  Phil, the lines on his forehead bunched together, said, “This tied to what happened to . . . you . . . your family?”

  “Could be. Help me turn her over?”

  He didn’t answer but moved closer and, being careful to avoid the surrounding pools of blood and vomit, Phil lowered down to his haunches.

  “Let’s bring her right shoulder up and over—away from her daughter, Gallic said. He gave Phil a nod, and together they carefully lifted her over onto her stomach. Her back was relatively free of blood. He stood and used the FDS unit—again waving the sniffer up and down from head to toe. Setting it aside, and with one hand, he lifted the woman’s hair away from the back of her neck. Steadying himself, Gallic held his breath—not sure if he wanted to see what might be hidden there. What might be carved into the flesh—there at the napes of both their necks. It was something that had purposely never been made public—and never entered into the official case file. Here, the hair was matted with blood, and he needed to use his thumb to wipe away the gooey residue. And there it was. The killer had most likely used the sharp point of a nail.

  TCW

  The speculation had been that the initials were most likely that of the murderer himself. That this was some kind of branding of his victims. Three and a half years earlier, criminal databases had been scoured for perps with the first, middle, and last names beginning with the letters T, C, and W. But Gallic suspected they wouldn’t lead them anywhere. He also suspected the letters were not the initials of a person. He thought they stood for something else. Just as RM stood for the Royal Marines—the three initials perhaps designated an organization. Gallic had served in the Royal Marines for four years. He leaned back up straight. The implications were tremendous. This was, in fact, the work of the same killer. Adrenaline was coursing through his veins. He felt a building sense of both trepidation and excitement.

  Chapter 9

  Frontier Planet, Gorman — Heritage Plains Township.

  They’d used the FDS unit in all of the other rooms in the house. In total, another forty minutes had passed by the time Gallic and Phil emerged from the front of the house. They were carrying the shorter of the two chryo, temperature-controlled body bags between them. Gallic saw Tori sitting half-in and half-out of the passenger seat of her cruiser. Elbows on knees, her head was supported in her hands. Evidently, by the wet stain on the concrete at her feet, she hadn’t fully recovered—she’d been sick again.

  Gallic yelled over, “Let’s get the back hatch of that cruiser opened up.”

  She reached inside and a moment later the back of the craft lifted up, revealing a large, empty cargo hold.

  Gallic and Phil hefted the remains inside and together returned into the house. When they returned again, they had the larger chryo body bag with Catherine’s remains inside. They placed it right next to the smaller one within the hold. He secured them both down with available straps.

  “I’ll grab the equipment,” Phil said and headed for the front door, one more time.

  Gallic approached Tori from around the side of the cruiser. He lowered down to her level but didn’t say anything.

  She stared at the mess on the ground. “I’m so fucked,” she said.

  “And why is that?”

  She turned her head just enough that one eye peeked out through a tangle of hair. “A novice investigator that can’t stand the sight of blood . . . not to mention that god-awful smell . . .” she cut her words short, looking like she might be sick again. “I’m going to be fired.”

  “I don’t see it that way, Tori. In fact, I imagine you’ll get a commendation.”

  She lifted herself up and let out a stale breath. “What are you talking about?”

  “Come on . . . no one needs to know about the puking. Happens to everyone in the beginning,” he lied. “What I can tell you is the perp was no copycat.”

  “Oh really . . . you’re that sure of yourself.”

  Gallic nodded and proceeded to tell her about the carved letters on the napes of the vic’s necks and how that information had not been made public, or even provided in the official case file. Only a handful of people at D-22 knew about it—including Chief Superintendent Bernard Danbury. There’d been too many department leaks, so holding back that kind of information was not uncommon. “So, it’s him . . . it’s the same one who killed Clair and Mandy.” But even as Gallic spoke those words, he was trying to figure out how that could be possible after all this time.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch to you,” she said. “I’m surprised you’re holding it together. This is a big revelation . . . that the murderer is still out there . . . somewhere. How do you process something like that?” she asked.

  Gallic shrugged. �
�I mentally shelve it. I keep busy.”

  “That doesn’t sound healthy.”

  “It’s how I survive.”

  She nodded then suddenly was distracted by the approach of something gargantuan heading in their direction. “Isn’t that your ship . . . the infamous Hound?”

  “Yeah . . . AI’s at the controls. I called for her soon after we arrived.”

  “You mean when I started hurling my breakfast . . . right?”

  Gallic said, “Look, I want you to head back to D-22. You have the bodies . . . all the evidence picked up by the FDS unit, plus I’m sending you the data from my own ComsBand. Additionally, you’ll see a full audio report I made inside . . . all of my initial findings. I want all of that being worked on as soon as possible,” Gallic said.

  “I still haven’t gone through all the rooms . . . collected physical evidence . . . grabbed their personal AI devices. And what about the neighbor? You wanted to interview her. It should be me that does that.”

  “Not necessary. I’ll speak to her and forward the recording on to you.”

  “It’s not your job . . . I feel terrible.”

  “Just assure me, that as far as Superintendent Danbury will know, I was simply an observer here.”

  “Deal. I’ll be quiet as a church mouse.”

  “I better get going . . . give that monstrosity of yours a place to land.” She stood and walked to the back of the cruiser. She stared at the two matte-black body bags. “It’s so sad. It makes me want to cry . . .” She reached in and tapped something within the hold, and the hatch began to close. “I’ll be back here tomorrow to finish.” She motioned toward the house. “Obviously, this is where the trail begins . . . again. I’m thinking . . . maybe we can work together? Unofficially . . . of course. I promise not to be . . . you know, like how I was.”

  “Sure. I’d like that,” he said. “Oh . . . one more thing, can you push for them to start cutting on the two vics right away? And cue me in on the ME’s autopsy findings?”