Future Americas

by John Helfers

  But the doors didn’t swing open that day. They remained stubbornly closed, and that was the first time I felt how wrong it all was.

  Behind me, DeAndre said, ‘‘Dark in here,’’ and it was. I hadn’t noticed that the usual lights were operating on one quarter power, like they had the time I called just before dawn, during the three hours out of twenty-four when Steffie’s business was officially closed.

  The chief had to use some kind of key card to get the double doors to swing open. Even then, they moved as if they were made of steel instead of the smooth, easy movement I remembered.

  The interior lights were wrong, too. Too bright, almostlike floodlights, revealing that the carpet I had always thought of as white was more of a gold color, the kind that hid dirt.

  No young attractive escort waited for us with a fluted glass. Instead, some crime scene techs were examining the walls, probably looking for the most active paint chip with the required cameras.

  There was no music, and the perfume that filled the air was the rusty scent of blood.

  ‘‘It’s okay to walk,’’ the chief said. ‘‘We’ve already been over this place.’’

  Still, I reached for the booties that the techs always kept near the front of a scene. The chief caught my hand.

  ‘‘Seriously,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ve had the scene since midnight.’’

  Which meant it had been swept at least twice, and if the scene was confusing—and it appeared to be just from our presence and the presence of the remaining techs—it would have been swept at least twice more.

  The chief led us through the entry, down the long corridor with its stunning black-and-white photographs of old Portland from a century ago, and toward Steffie’s inner sanctum.

  At that point, I still had no idea she was dead, but the hair rose on the back of my neck just the same. No one went to Steffie’s inner sanctum without her approval, and certainly no one walked this way without her in the lead.

  ‘‘You guys knock the pictures around?’’ DeAndre asked.

  The chief glanced at him, and I glanced at the photos. A few of them were askew—just a little, enough to drive a man with anal-retentive tendencies, like my partner, to want to make them line up like soldiers at reveille.

  ‘‘Possibly,’’ the chief said.

  And that was the point I straightened. Crime scene techs had become the most important part of the investigativeteams in the past thirty years. The techs relied on science above all else, using the mandatory data collectors stored in all microfibers as well as computer programs that recreated the crime scene in the lab, and doing what I called cheating—using the extensive DNA database that covered every single American and every single foreigner who’d ever crossed our borders.

  I had always maintained that just because a person’s DNA was present at a crime scene, it didn’t mean that he had committed a crime, but I had been outvoted decades ago. Now mostly my job involved eliminating suspects—people who were already identified through their DNA as having been at the crime scene some time (anytime) before, during or shortly after the crime went down.

  I hated the new system, and made my opinion known. Lawyers tried to prevent me from testifying at trial because of my ‘‘anachronistic’’ attitudes, and the chief’s predecessor had tried to get me fired.

  But every now and then an investigation needed my skills—especially when the DNA had been ‘‘compromised.’’ More and more, sophisticated criminals were using gene altering techniques to make sure whatever DNA they left at the crime scene wouldn’t be traced back to them—rather like the criminals back in the early days of my career who burned off their fingertips so that no one could identify them through their fingerprints.

  The chief didn’t know if his people had knocked the photographs because the computer models hadn’t told him about this part of the scene. And if the computer models didn’t know what had happened in this corridor so very late in the investigation, then the crime scene was in trouble.

  If I hadn’t been so worried about Steffie, I might have felt a moment of glee.

  Instead, the chief used the same key card to open the double doors at the end of the hallway, and the decaying rust smell grew worse. The room had been closed for hours with blood evidence—and maybe a body—still inside.

  The tension I felt had grown worse. This was the entrance to Steffie’s inner sanctum, a series of rooms that had once been a high-end condominium. I’d only seen the main room with its three-hundred-year-old desk, expensive plants, and original Monets. I’d never gone all the way to the back, although I’d heard that the luxury in her private rooms and bedroom would make the front room look like it had come out of a catalog.

  After opening the door, the chief stepped aside. He nodded at DeAndre and me to continue.

  I went in first, and stopped just inside the threshold. A woman lay on a fainting couch near the room’s only window. She was wearing a negligee made of white gauze so thin that it revealed more than it concealed. Her long feet were bare, but high-heeled slippers had fallen onto the floor, crossing over each other like they’d been kicked off.

  One arm rested above her head as if she’d fallen asleep. The other covered her stomach. Her head was turned toward the wall, but I didn’t need to see her face to recognize Steffie.

  DeAndre’s breath caught—you never quite got used to seeing someone you knew dead—and I wondered if mine had, too.

  ‘‘This how she was found?’’ I asked.

  The chief nodded.

  ‘‘That fainting couch an antique?’’

  He nodded again.

  ‘‘Recovered or restored in any way?’’

  ‘‘No,’’ he said softly.

  Which destroyed any evidence it could have given had it been a reproduction or a retrofit. All modern materials had nanofibers that collected DNA. Usually it took a court order to examine those fibers, but it was routine for that order to be granted in the case of murder.

  ‘‘Anyone here when she died?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘Three of her female escorts,’’ the chief said softly. ‘‘They’re just as dead.’’

  And probably just as secretive about their killer, since I doubted I would have been here for one dead criminal—even if she did fall on the tolerable side of the ledger.

  ‘‘Anyone else?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘In the operating theater,’’ the chief said. ‘‘Some-one we haven’t identified.’’

  He said that with such a lack of indignant righteousness that I knew he’d been up here before—and probably not in an official capacity. He hadn’t been chief when Steffie led me to the previous body; he hadn’t even been in Portland.

  ‘‘Walls look newly painted,’’ I said. ‘‘Glass looks like it has UV.’’

  ‘‘Everything but the antiques follow code,’’ the chief said, and code meant that they included tools that would help in any criminal investigation.

  ‘‘But?’’ I knew there had to be a ‘‘but.’’ He’d called me in after all. Me, in particular, a man he would normally consider a natural enemy. One who believed in the power of human reason over the power of established science.

  ‘‘But,’’ he said, ‘‘they’re empty.’’

  ‘‘Empty?’’ DeAndre repeated as if he couldn’t believe it. ‘‘Like someone removed the trace?â
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  ‘‘As if they were new. As if they’d been replaced since the murder.’’

  ‘‘Have they?’’ I asked.

  The chief shook his head. ‘‘There’d be a record of that.’’

  ‘‘And what if the record was wiped?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘I don’t think it’s possible,’’ he said. ‘‘Not from all these surfaces, and not in the time since she’s been dead.’’

  ‘‘How do you know how long she’s been dead,’’ DeAndre asked, ‘‘since your usual tools aren’t functioning?’’

  Somehow he managed to ask that question without sounding antagonistic. Me, I’d’ve been a little too smug and that would have threatened the chief. Or angered him.

  ‘‘Body temperature, rate of decomposition, and smell,’’ the chief said, then looked at me. ‘‘The coroner still knows how to do it the old-fashioned way.’’

  ‘‘Is it the same for all of the bodies?’’ I asked.

  The chief nodded.

  ‘‘Down to the lack of forensic evidence?’’

  ‘‘I’m not sure how there can’t be any,’’ he said. ‘‘If you’d told me that yesterday, I’d’ve said it’s impossible.’’

  I sighed. I didn’t know how to ask my next question without that smugness in my tone. I struggled for a moment to find the right words, and then I finally gave up.

  ‘‘Is it possible that Steffie set up this place so that it wouldn’t record anything?’’ I asked. ‘‘Maybe using ancient carpet samples, old paint, things like that?’’

  ‘‘It’s possible,’’ the chief said. ‘‘It would violate city codes.’’

  As if she hadn’t done that before.

  ‘‘But you investigated that murder at her behest a few years ago,’’ the chief said.

  Nearly ten years ago, I almost said, but didn’t. I was trying to be as delicate here as I could.

  ‘‘She had the normal systems in place. She wasn’t trying to hide anything, or so your files say.’’

  ‘‘She’d said that, too.’’ I remembered it clearly. I’d been stunned at the level of cooperation she’d given us.

  ‘‘I figured we’d be overwhelmed in DNA. This would be like hotel rooms, you know, or other public spaces. A surfeit of riches.’’ The chief shook his head. ‘‘I never expected to find nothing. Nothing at all.’’

  ‘‘What about hairs, fibers, fingerprints?’’ DeAndre asked, and again I was glad it was him. The old-fashioned stuff. The stuff we’d been trained in before the new techniques became available.

  The stuff we were both comfortable with.

  ‘‘The place is clean,’’ the chief said.

  ‘‘No old-fashioned trace evidence either?’’ I asked.

  The chief shook his head. ‘‘We even had to find someone with a nontech vacuum—you know, the old kind that only sucked up stuff on the carpet, not stuff from the fibers.’’

  ‘‘And you found nothing?’’ DeAndre sounded as intrigued as I felt.

  ‘‘That’s right,’’ the chief said.

  ‘‘What about the blood evidence?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘What about it?’’ the chief said, and I looked at him in surprise before I could stop myself.

  ‘‘Did you match all the blood trace to the victims? Did any come from someone else?’’

  ‘‘The bodies are clean,’’ he said a tad defensively.

  ‘‘Meaning that you didn’t find fluids or fibers on them,’’ I said. ‘‘But what about that spray?’’

  I swept my hand toward the almost invisible dotting of blood on the side of the fainting couch and the edge of the wall.

  ‘‘It clearly came from her,’’ the chief said.

  ‘‘How can you be sure without testing?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘I would think that a perp who is smart enough to destroy the trace everywhere else in the building would make sure he hadn’t left his blood at the scene,’’ the chief said.

  ‘‘People make mistakes,’’ I said. ‘‘Especially this kind.’’

  ‘‘The spray came from the body,’’ the chief said again.

  ‘‘Really?’’ I asked. ‘‘From where?’’

  I couldn’t see any wounds. She’d been rearranged. If she had bled, she had done so somewhere else.

  ‘‘She’s been stabbed,’’ the chief said, and touched himself on the breastbone. ‘‘Here.’’

  ‘‘Stabbings are bloody,’’ I said even though DeAndre was shaking his head. He didn’t want me to talk any more because he knew I’d antagonize the chief. ‘‘There should be more than a fine spray.’’

  ‘‘He cleaned up,’’ the chief said. ‘‘We established that.’’

  ‘‘And missed this?’’ I leaned toward the wall, indicating the spray. It looked more like a shadow than trace evidence. I wondered if the chief could even see it. ‘‘He didn’t miss any other details. Maybe he missed everything else here, too, the cameras and the internal trace collection.’’

  The chief snapped his fingers. A nearby tech came toward him. ‘‘Check that section of wall,’’ he said.

  ‘‘And don’t destroy the spray pattern,’’ I said. ‘‘Leave the evidence alone.’’

  The tech glared at me. The chief was frowning. And DeAndre rolled his eyes—at them, I hoped.

  I ignored all three of them and crouched beside Steffie. She had been posed close enough to her death to allow the blood to pool in this position. Her eyes were clouded, her mouth bruised.

  She had known that her profession was risky. We’d talked about the possibility of her death more than once, and she seemed pretty sanguine about it.

  But I wondered if that sanguinity remained when the killer confronted her here. I wondered if she minded a whole lot more than she said she would.

  I couldn’t touch her because the medical examiner would go over her body at the morgue, with black lights and trace finders and DNA sniffers. He’d give her a more thorough examination there, and probably come to the same conclusion—that she was clean.

  But I was glad Robert Callan was on duty tonight. Callan was two years older than I was. Next year, he’d retire and I’d be left with the younger coroners, the guys who didn’t dig under fingernails with the clean edge of a knife, preferring instead to let their little machines peer inside the space between the nail and the fingertip and find whatever debris it could.

  For good measure, I’d talk to him. I’d make sure he did an old-fashioned examination as well as a new-fangled one.

  ‘‘What about the other victims?’’ I asked as I stood.

  ‘‘What about them?’’ The chief still sounded annoyed about the spray.

  ‘‘Who are they? Where are they? How did they die?’’

  ‘‘All stabbed,’’ the chief said. ‘‘Except the one in the theater. No one knows what killed him.’’r />
  Him. That was an anomaly, too, although I didn’t say so. Neither did DeAndre, although he caught it as well. Our gazes met over the chief’s back and I knew we were thinking the same thing.

  We’d start with the guy in the operating theater. We’d consider the others collateral damage. But we wouldn’t tell anyone. Everyone here assumed Steffie was the killer’s primary target—and they all might be right. But I wasn’t going to jump to conclusions. I was going to conduct a good old-fashioned investigation.

  The kind that focused on what wasn’t there as much as what was.

  The kind that required only a little bit of science and one whole hell of a lot of thought.

  For the first time in decades, I felt like a man in charge. I knew what I was doing, and it wasn’t make-work that I didn’t quite believe in. If these crimes were going to get solved, they were going to get solved because of me.

  I wanted to see the dead escorts before I went into the operating theater. When I told the chief that, he waved me away. He was more concerned with that scrap of wall. His tech was telling him that there might be something under the spray, and it was taking both of their expertise to remove the technical information while adhering to my request to leave the spray pattern intact.

  I wasn’t going to tell them to take samples and then photograph the section. That seemed obvious to me, and was probably obvious to DeAndre, but to these louts it was something unusual and foreign. It certainly didn’t fit into their way of thinking.

  The other escorts were in apartments down the corridor. Most of Steffie’s escorts lived off-site, but the handful of fulltimers lived in the former condos near her.

  The apartments covered several floors. The chief had ordered each apartment searched and its information recorded. Some poor slob—also with the title ‘‘detective’’—would have to sift through the information to figure out what was pertinent.

  That was one of the jobs I had come to hate. A computer technician would do better than someone trained in the art of discovering murderers. And I had complained about that, too.