‘Uh, robot-girl here,’ Fox said, allowing herself to blush this time.
‘You are not a robot. Cyber-girl.’ Naomi rolled the ‘r’ sound, turning it into ‘grrl.’ Reaching down, she took hold of the strap-on’s shaft and pushed down, easing the bulbous base out of her with a shudder. ‘That’s a good design. Comfortable and very stimulating, and I’ll wash it in the shower. I need a shower before I lie on clean sheets.’ She got to her feet and padded toward the bathroom door.
‘Uh, I don’t suppose you could undo these cuffs?’ Fox struggled upright, her arms still fixed behind her back.
Naomi paused. ‘I’m not sure I want to. Maybe I should keep you as my personal sex slave. Chained up in the bedroom.’
‘I need to go to Fargo tomo– later today, and I’m going to have to sleep in my support frame tonight. You’re welcome to use the bed, but I’m going to need to plug in.’
‘Not hearing any incentive for me to unlock you…’
‘I can’t wash your… back like this?’
‘Good point.’ A pair of clicks sounded from behind Fox and she pulled her arms free, the electronic cuffs falling to the carpet. ‘Come along then. I expect a thorough… washing.’
Fox took a couple of quick steps to catch up and started the water running by remote. ‘I thought you were tired?’
‘I am, but I’m not dead. Fox… Would you call me from Fargo? At night. Let me know how your day is going.’
‘Uh, sure. I mean, unless something comes up, but I can… do that.’
Naomi stepped into the multiple streams of hot water and turned, smiling. She leaned forward and their lips met, Naomi’s tongue dancing against Fox’s. ‘Thank you. I’ll make it worth your while.’
Fargo Agri-Zone.
Fargo was living up to its reputation. Having landed her vertol at Hector International Airport, Fox took her Q-bug out to drive to the Civic Centre, where the police had their HQ, and got the odd strange look as she drove into the city centre. It was cold; the air temperature was hovering around minus four Celsius, a gusty breeze was taking that down to minus nine, and Fox was dressed in faded black jeans, work boots, and a leather jacket. However, Fox’s frame was designed for use on Mars, where the night-time temperature could get down to minus one hundred and forty-three. This was a summer day.
Well, a summer day with snow piled wherever no one had thought to clear it. The roads were clear, as were most of the sidewalks, but there was snow which looked like it had been there since December.
‘Average day-time temperatures do not exceed freezing here from December through until at least February,’ Kit supplied.
‘I was aware. Born in the Belt, remember? I was always kind of glad I didn’t live in this part, though they don’t tend to get the tornados Topeka sees. It’s not unknown, but it’s less common.’
‘Flooding is a major issue in the area. Flash storms in summer can be a problem. Our meeting with Detective Barren is not for thirty minutes. Did you wish to change before seeing him?’
Fox considered. Fargo, from what she knew of the place, had not changed a whole lot with the alterations in climate and the geological disasters which had changed a lot of America. It had taken a hit from the Yellowstone ashfall, but nothing like the land to the west had. In some ways, the volcanic ash had helped, boosting soil fertility when the country badly needed productive farms. There were a couple of high-rise buildings in the core of the city, including the Civic Centre which had been put up to replace the old one and consolidate government functions. The majority of the place, like Topeka, had stayed the way it was at the turn of the century. So, she was driving down North University Drive and the buildings around her were generally low, commercial, and surrounded by large parking lots.
Another of the larger buildings in the city was a hotel which happened to be right next door to the civic building, and connected to it via a glassed-in bridge. Fox had a room booked there. ‘Let’s see how efficient the hotel check-in is. We can drop off my bag at least. If there’s no time to change, Barren’ll have to live with me in scruffy jeans.’
Turning onto 2nd Avenue North, it was a straight run to the hotel, passing through what looked like part of the main shopping district. Covered bridges seemed to be the in thing; Fox noticed a number of them as she passed through the area, presumably meant to make it easier to handle the biting cold. There were people on the streets, however, wrapped up like Thanksgiving turkeys against the cold, and Fox got more weird looks from them. It was getting kind of amusing.
There was a multilevel parking lot beside the hotel with a small Q-bug bay on the ground floor. The cold probably cut down on the number of people who used the useful little vehicles. Maybe more were brought out for summer when the weather could get hot and humid. Fargo had actually won a poll once for the city with the toughest weather, and Fox could believe it deserved the accolade even before the climate shifts. Parking the bug, Fox took her case from the back of it and walked through into the hotel, and was immediately cleared for access to suite 2003 by the hotel’s AI.
‘I don’t really need a suite,’ Fox commented as she headed for the elevators. ‘I’m just a cop, sort of. I’m–’
‘You are Palladium’s most senior sort of cop,’ Kit replied. ‘Helen is technically your superior when you work on non-terrorist cases, like this one, and I am technically your superior in the hierarchy of the company, but all three of us know how the system really works. Practically, you are our top cop. Ergo, you get a suite. And that’s why I think you should wear a suit to see Detective Barren.’
‘Yes, boss.’
The elevator was fast and the hotel’s efficiency continued since Fox was registered with the room’s security by the time she got to it. The suite had a large lounge and bedroom, and a bathroom and office which were almost as large, but Fox basically ignored it all. She dumped her case on the bed, opened it up, and pulled out the suit she had brought along because it was more appropriate than jeans with tears over the thighs. Business fashion had decided not to change in the last six months, though Fox doubted that would last past spring; the dark pantsuit was still in and Fox put it on over the silky black thong and push-up bra she had decided worked better with the leather jacket. She added heeled pumps, checked herself in the mirror, and headed straight back out to meet with Detective Barren.
~~~
The Fargo Civic Centre took up an entire block and ran to fifty-eight storeys. As arcologies went, it was not a big one, but it housed all the local administrative staff, police HQ, and a few other offices for businesses and agencies with a civic bent. Lawyers. There were six lawyers listed in the building directory.
The cop shop occupied the entire fifth floor, just above the public-facing administration offices. There were labs and a morgue in there, but it was still a pretty big area for a relatively small operational police force. Despite this, it seemed that Detective Barren was unable to find a free conference room to talk to Fox in. He pulled a chair over from another desk in the detectives’ bullpen, waited for Fox to sit down, and then he said, ‘You do know you have no jurisdiction in this area, right?’
Fox frowned at him. Barren was shorter than she was, maybe five-nine, but heavily built. Broad shoulders stretched his suit jacket in a manner which suggested some custom tailoring might have been useful. His waist and hips were narrow, but his thighs stretched his slacks, ironing out the knife-edge creases which fell below his knees. He was attractive in a ‘boy off the farm’ way, kind of rugged, an outdoorsman in the city. He did not pay much to his barber for the regulation-style short cut, but it worked with his sandy hair. Fox placed him in his late twenties: his blue-grey eyes lacked the disillusion of age.
‘I’m down here looking for information which might help me find a murderer in New York Metro, Detective. I don’t expect to be making arrests. You were assigned to investigate the death of Kent Killian in October.’
‘And you requested the case file,’ Barren said. ‘What’s t
hat got to do with someone killing people in a big city out east?’
‘From the autopsy and forensic data, Killian was the first of four murders by the same perpetrator.’
‘Four? When you asked for the file, I looked you up. You’re working the deaths of two vote brokers in New York.’
‘Yes. Thomas Jefferson Winsford and Barrymore Ashburton, but there’s another one. Steven Deloit, in Detroit just before Christmas. The MO isn’t exact, but there are definite indications that the same person is responsible.’
‘This guy doesn’t like vote brokers?’
‘Maybe. However, these four men have something else in common. They were all involved with a fact-finding tour Wayden Executive Services organised here last May.’
Barren gave a grunt. ‘That thing. Damn waste of time that was. For us, I mean. I’m sure the people on it and the upper management enjoyed themselves, but for most of us it was just two weeks of having to mind what we said and making sure the company looked good.’
Fox nodded, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. ‘You’re ex-NAPA.’
‘Yeah. How can you tell?’
‘No great love for Wayden, and their basic plan for handling investigations was to hire as many NAPA detectives as they could get. Plus, you get to know the look. Did anything out of the ordinary happen while this tour was in town?’
Barren paused, then frowned. ‘No. About two weeks after it, there were a couple of bodies found. Two women, naked, washed up on the shore of Lake Lida. Wasn’t much to be done about it by the time the bodies were found. One of them wasn’t even identified. Must’ve been in the water for a while and the labs can only do so much. We don’t get that kind of thing happening in Fargo.’
Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘Naked women washing up on lakeshores?’
‘Probable sexual assault and murder cases.’
‘Oh… sure.’
Barren seemed to miss the sarcasm. ‘Then the detective assigned to the case got killed about four months after. Morrie Guthrie. He died two weeks before Killian did… Look, you know how it is. One of us gets hit, we all want the bastard responsible. And Morrie was taken down hard. Whoever got to him, they tortured him until figuring out who he was under the blood was a tough job. So, maybe when some rich vote broker gets killed… Maybe I was distracted. Maybe I didn’t give Killian my best work. On the other hand, the lab got nothing to identify the killer. Guy was a ghost. No prints, no fluids, and Killian’s security system was taken out by a professional.’
Fox gave a nod. ‘It’s been the same in New York. The only thing the killer leaves behind is the way she works. Why do you think Killian was killed by a man? Or was “guy” just a generic term?’
‘Had to be a guy,’ Barren replied. ‘No way did a girl do that to Killian. He might’ve been a politician, but he was a fit man, worked out. He was beaten up and then strung up to a tree, which means someone had to carry him eighty metres from his house to get there. Then they cut him open like… like that Japanese suicide thing. A girl isn’t going to be able to do that.’
‘I could,’ Fox replied. She got to her feet. ‘Thanks for your time, Detective Barren. I’ll dig around a little, see if I can come up with anything to help my cases.’
‘Yeah. Whatever.’
‘Word of advice, Detective. Don’t underestimate the fairer sex. Some of us can get really badass when we’ve got our bitch on.’
~~~
‘I’ve requested the case files for Detective Guthrie and the two bodies found at Lake Lida,’ Kit said as Fox walked across the bridge back to the hotel. ‘What do you plan to do with the rest of the afternoon?’
‘Get changed again. Then I’ll take a run out to Killian’s house. I doubt I can get authorisation to go in, but we can take a look at the area the body was found. See if you can get us an appointment to see his ex-fiancée. You said she moved on pretty quickly, but maybe she knows something.’
‘Lizette Delvalle,’ Kit supplied. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I did manage to get some background on her. She is a favourite with the local gossip sites and channels. She comes from a moderately wealthy family and appears to have no impulse control at all. It’s reported that her family were rather pleased with her association with Mister Killian, hoping it indicated that she was calming down. Apparently, it did not.’
Fox frowned. ‘That sounds like it’ll be a fun interview.’
‘Possibly. I’ve also found a number of news media reports on the discovery of the two bodies at the lake. They were discovered by a fisherman who… Let us say that he had the presence of mind to capture a number of images before calling the police. These were sold to IB-one-eight-three and received extensive air time.’
‘Huh, yeah. Fargo Live Network. It serves the Fargo area, but the number is close to Kansas Belt News’s channel so people see it all over the Belt, usually by mistake. It specialises in gossip, which is never fact-checked, and making even the smallest petty crime sound like mass murder. If a six-year-old steals a candy bar at lunchtime, it’ll sound like an armed robbery with a dozen casualties by the time it hits the evening news stream on Fargo Live.’
‘It does, however, give us a precise location for the site the bodies washed up.’
‘Huh. I don’t suppose Killian’s place and the lake are in the same direction?’
‘Not entirely, but Mister Killian’s house is not far away and we have about three hours before it gets dark. Besides that, you can see just as well in complete darkness as in daylight.’
‘Okay. Download the waypoints into the bug and we’ll take a drive.’
~~~
Kent Killian had lived in a fairly new ranch-style house which was somewhere between conventional architecture and David Neiman’s glass house. There were some very big, floor-to-ceiling windows, especially on the side facing the Red River, less than a hundred metres away across a broad lawn. Most of the interior walls were, however, solid, and the blinds were drawn all the way around.
‘Not much to be seen from the outside,’ Fox commented. She was standing at the edge of what might have been termed the garden. There was a difference in the grass here: carefully manicured lawn which had gone a little wild since Killian’s death gave way to more roughly cut grass which went down to the river, or to the trees which formed a thick mass on the right. There was a little seating area here on the edge of the garden with four chairs set around a table. Well, it was probably useable in the summer. Right now, it was covered in snow.
‘Mister Killian was tied to one of the trees beside the river,’ Kit said. Her avatar was out in Fox’s sensorium and she pointed to where a spur of trees jutted out from the greater mass. One of the trees, just out of sight of the river, was highlighted in red and Fox walked toward it. ‘The killer looped one length of rope around the trunk at a height of two metres,’ Kit went on. ‘Mister Killian’s wrists were then tied to that loop. His legs were secured by a rope attached to each ankle and then cinched together behind the trunk.’
‘Pulling his legs apart,’ Fox said. ‘It’s another sexual element. If you want to look at it that way, anyway.’
‘He was naked. I believe that the sexual imagery applies.’
‘Yeah. Two metres up…’ Fox peered at the tree, superimposing the crime scene imagery from the file. ‘Unless we’re dealing with someone who really stands out in a crowd, she’d need a ladder or something to fix that. She had to have set it up before she started. You wouldn’t want to leave him lying on the grass while you tied the rope. Then she’s managed to haul him up there. She’s fit. She doesn’t need to be superhuman, but she’s fit.’
Fox turned from the tree and looked back at the house. ‘And then she cut him open and left him to die… looking at his house. Was it convenient? Did she want him found quickly? No, because she could have hung him in full view of the river. It was October and this area’s fairly private, but someone would’ve seen him. So, does the view of the house mean something?’
‘I have no
idea,’ Kit admitted.
‘Neither do I. Except that, well, it’s like each murder has been kind of personalised to the victim. That’s another factor in the MO. Each death is a little different. Maybe she’s just improvising, but I think it’s better planned than that.’ Fox started back toward the house. The Q-bug was waiting on the road on the other side of it. ‘I doubt we can get much from here. We’ll go check out this lake site.’
‘I suspect that we will find little of use there too.’
‘Yes, but it gives me a better picture of the scenes. You never know when being in the right place might trigger something interesting.’
~~~
The two corpses had come ashore no more than a hundred metres apart on a rocky beach just off County Highway 4. It had been June then and the fisherman who had found them had been up at dawn; otherwise they would likely have been spotted by someone living in one of the nearby houses along the edge of the lake. There was one twenty metres from the edge of the beach.
In winter, with sunset a little more than an hour away, it was a bleak sort of landscape. There were a few trees about, but nothing near the beach. The lake was partially iced over, making the view even less appealing. If the bodies had been dumped in winter, they might not have come up until spring.
‘The single identified woman was Molly Anne Tailor,’ Kit supplied as Fox surveyed the landscape. ‘A tattoo on her thigh survived sufficiently to identify. It was custom-made for her by a local tattoo artist who knew it as soon as he saw it, apparently. She was nineteen, born and raised in Fargo itself, so this is some distance from her home. From the media reports of interviews with her parents, she went out for a drink with friends on Saturday, May twenty-eighth. Her parents noticed she had not returned home the following morning, but the police made them wait forty-eight hours before putting in an official missing person report. They filed that report at nine a.m. on the thirty-first.’
‘Huh. Well, it’s standard procedure in some locations. In New York, and a lot of other metros, if someone’s fitted with an implant, we can expedite things. It’s just a quick network location search. Out here it’s harder. Implant uptake is lower than the metro areas for one thing.’
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