city blues 01 - dome city blues

by Jeff Edwards

  “I just dropped by to see what you guys do for entertainment when you’re not threatening to kick somebody’s door down.”

  “You’re wasting my time, Stalin. Say whatever it is that you came to say, and then get out.”

  “Can I smoke?”

  “Will it help you get to the fucking point?”

  “It might.”

  She shoved a pile of papers away from her on the desk. “Please, have a seat. Light up. Take your time. I haven’t got shit to do.”

  I pulled up a chair and lit a cigarette. The chair was heavily patched with silver microbond tape.

  Four little magnets in the shapes of handguns were stuck to the front of Dancer’s green metal desk. Stretched between them was a paper target silhouette with seven bullet holes through the heart. The grouping of the shots was nice and tight. ‘Don’t make me kill you’ was hand written across the top of the target in red paint stick.

  “How’s Harvey Miller doing?” I asked.

  Dancer scowled. “Who?”

  “The hostage from the Lev the other day. The guy who got thrown down the stairs. Is he still in the Trauma Ward?”

  “He hasn’t shown up on my case list,” she said. “So he’s probably still breathing. I hope to hell that isn’t what you interrupted me for.”

  “I need some information,” I said.

  “Is this going to be a formal interrogation?” Dancer leaned back in her chair and smiled a dangerous little smile. “Should I call my lawyer? Or would it save time if I just confess?”

  “I was thinking of a trade,” I said.

  “What do you have that I could possibly give a shit about?”

  “A picture of the woman from the Lev, the one who killed Joseph Takamura with the laser.”

  Dancer sat up in her chair and punched an intercom button. “Bethany? Find Rick Delaney and get him up here. Now.”

  I cupped the palm of my left hand and thumped my ashes into it. Dancer slurped the last swallow from a plastic can of body builder’s protein drink and handed me the can as an ashtray.

  A door opened at the far end of the room, and Delaney walked in. He slid a chair over from another desk, and sat down to Dancer’s right. He ignored me entirely.

  Dancer leaned back in her chair again. “Rick, our friend Mr. Stalin has dropped by to enlighten us with regard to that unsolved One Eighty-Seven on the Lev the other day. He says he has a picture of the shooter.”

  “I need some information from the LAPD archives,” I said. “I’m offering the picture in trade.”

  “What exactly do you want?” Dancer asked.

  “I need a complete data pull on the Osiris murder investigation, including all of the autopsy data on the victims and the killer.”

  Dancer cracked her knuckles. “Osiris? I don’t remember anything about an Osiris case. Rick?”

  Delaney pulled out a pocket comp, punched a few keys, and stared at the tiny screen. His pupils didn’t move; he was pretending to read, just like the other day when he’d pretended to read the little plastic card from the Magic Mirror.

  He looked up. “Six murders. All teenage girls between thirteen and fifteen. A male Caucasian named Russell E. Carlisle confessed to all six murders on Five September, Twenty Sixty. Then he committed suicide with a homemade bomb in the day room over at Central Division in front of eleven witnesses. No one else was injured in the bombing.”

  The pocket comp was a prop. A smokescreen. Delaney was using it to draw attention away from his personal powers of observation and recall. I wondered if he had a natural photographic memory, or if he had some kind of augmenting brain implant.

  Dancer looked at me. “That sound like your boy?”

  “That’s him.”

  “I can get your data pull,” she said. “But first, let’s have a look at this picture of yours.”

  I handed her the chip containing the image of the dark-haired mystery woman.

  Dancer passed the chip to Delaney, and he loaded it into his pocket comp. He pecked at the keys and then turned the comp around so that Dancer and I could see the video display.

  Oddly enough, the grainy image looked a little better on Delaney’s comp than it had in Tommy Mailo’s video workshop, possibly because the picture had to be so heavily compressed to fit on the tiny screen. It still wasn’t very clear.

  Dancer stared at it for a few seconds. “Is this some kind of a joke? I can’t do anything with that. It’s worthless.”

  “Maybe you can have it enhanced,” I said.

  Delaney fiddled with the keypad of his little computer and then stared at the readout. “It already has been enhanced,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “by a kid who works out of the back of a video store. Not exactly a professional video engineer.” (Technically true.) “Maybe your vid lab can do better.” (Probably not true.) “There’s a chance that you’ll get a clean enough image to I.D. the shooter.” (Almost certainly an outright lie.)

  Dancer pushed her chair away from her desk and stood up. “What if it turns out to be a piece of shit?”

  “In case you don’t recognize it,” I said, “this is what’s called a lead. Maybe it goes somewhere. Maybe it doesn’t. That’s how the game works.”

  Dancer crossed her arms. “Do you need a refresher course in reality, Stalin? We’re the cops here, remember? You might want to keep that in mind.”

  I took a drag off my cigarette and blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling.

  Delaney stared at the image on his screen. “Where did you get this picture, Mr. Stalin?”

  “Come on,” I said. “I’m not asking for much. A few data files on a closed investigation. All it will cost you is a couple of minutes of download time. If the picture turns out to be garbage, you haven’t really lost anything.”

  “The picture,” Dancer echoed. “Where did you get it?”

  I’d hoped to avoid this part. I took a hit from my cigarette and exhaled slowly. “From the video recording of Michael Winter’s suicide.”

  Dancer frowned. “Michael Winter?”

  “Aztec,” Delaney said. This time he didn’t even pretend to check his comp. “Another closed serial murder investigation. Teenage girls between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, just like the Osiris case. The MO’s were very similar. So similar in fact, that the departmental AI’s flagged Aztec as a copycat.”

  “You were saying something about Aztec the other day,” Dancer said, “when we were at your house. What is this fascination you have with serial killers?”

  I sighed. “I think the cases may be related.”

  Dancer’s face stiffened. “Aztec and Osiris? I’ll tell you how they’re related. The second guy,” she snapped her fingers several times, “Aztec, sees this Osiris-guy’s work on the vid and gets a hard-on. He likes it so much that he tries to copy the guy’s MO. Other than that, and your fertile imagination, the only thing that ties those cases together is the fact that they’re both closed. The killers were caught, Stalin. Finito. End of fucking story.”

  I resisted the temptation to point out that neither of the accused killers had actually been caught; they had both confessed, and now they both were dead.

  “I think the woman in the picture might be an accessory to some of the Aztec and Osiris killings,” I said. “Maybe even all of them.”

  “And this is the same female perp who punched a combat laser through Takajima’s brain?”

  “Takamura,” Delaney said softly.

  “Fine,” Dancer said. “Taka-fucking-mura. Is it the same woman?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think so.”

  Dancer closed her eyes and rubbed her left cheek. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re trying to fuck me without kissing me first?”

  “Give me the files,” I said. “I’m just trying to keep anyone else from getting hurt.”

  Dancer opened her eyes. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I can get what I need by hiring a jacker,” I said, “but
I’d rather not do that. Somebody is tracking me through the Net.”

  “So what?”

  I thumped the tip of my cigarette ash into the can. “The last person who made inquiries into this case for me got stepped on. Hard. Somebody cornered her on a Lev and beat her half to death. I figure next time, they won’t stop at half-way. If you don’t help me, I won’t have a choice; I’ll have to hire another jacker. Chances are, the next one will end up on your list of unsolved One Eighty-Sevens.”

  “You’ve got the Midas Touch, Stalin. Everybody you touch winds up dead or seriously fucked up. Do you have any idea how much paperwork I have to do when your magic finger of death leaves a body on the sidewalk?”

  “Give me the files,” I said.

  Dancer massaged her temples with her fingertips. “You’re giving me a headache.”

  “I’ve given you my best lead,” I said. “It won’t hurt you to let me have the files.”

  “What’s your interest in this, Stalin? Is this a case you’re working on, or is it a personal crusade?”

  “It’s a case,” I said.

  “Who are you working for?”

  “I don’t think my client is ready to go public.”

  “For a man who came here to trade information, you’re not exactly busting your ass to be helpful.”

  “If you have a question, ask it,” I said. “I’ll answer it, if I can. But I’m not giving up the name of my client.”

  “Maybe a couple of hours on the Inquisitor would change your mind,” Dancer said. “That thing can squeeze your brain like a sponge.”

  I took a final hit off the cigarette and dropped the butt into the plastic can. It sizzled when it hit the last few drops of protein drink.

  “Synaptic signal injection,” Dancer said. “The Inquisitor uses the same basic technology as the machine we use for brainlock. Just a few minor differences in circuit design. What do you think, Stalin? Pump your brain full of synthetic neurotransmitters and fire a scanning electron beam into your hippocampus. They say it’s a little like being struck by lightning, right in the fucking head. It’s supposed to be safe, but you’ve heard the rumors, haven’t you? Somebody flips the wrong switch, or the computer has a bad day... A person could get brainlocked. By accident, of course. Sort of like instant Alzheimer’s.”

  “Fine,” I said. “If you want to run me through the Inquisitor, go ahead. But let’s get it over with. I’ve got things to do.”

  Dancer slapped at the paperwork on her desk. “Now I’m wasting your time? I was doing fine until you came along and blew my morning schedule right out the fucking window. Forget the Inquisitor, I’m going to handcuff you to this desk and make you finish all of these reports.”

  Delaney half smiled.

  Dancer took a sharp breath, started to say something, and then stopped and released the breath slowly. “Rick, get Stalin his data pull and then get him out of here.” She turned to me. “If you turn up any more corpses, Stalin, I swear to God I’ll tack you down and shoot you myself.”

  CHAPTER 19

  WARNING: THIS DATA REPRODUCED AT LOS ANGELES CITY TAXPAYER’S EXPENSE.

  The bright red legend carved circles in the air above the desktop comp in my den. At the axis of the warning’s orbit floated the LAPD Southwest Division logo in streamlined ultrachrome letters.

  My data shades were propped up on my forehead. I slid my hands into the control gloves and adjusted the audio conduction pads against the bones behind my ears. When I flipped the wraparound shades down over my eyes, the LAPD warning logo was repeated in the eyepieces. I punched the comp’s holographic space bar, and the logo vanished, replaced by a file directory.

  I crooked the fingers of my left hand to activate browse mode, and then scanned down through the directory menu to a file marked:

  ► CARERRA, ELAINE, R: CRIME-SCENE: 09JAN60/9:11p.m. ◄

  I swallowed heavily. The last thing in the world I wanted was to take another slaughterhouse tour of butchered teenaged bodies, but it had to be done.

  I pointed my right index finger at the filename to activate the recording, and the crime scene unfolded in front of my eyes. I ignored the data readouts that danced at the edge of my field of vision; I was only interested in the scene itself.

  The room was shaped like a thick slice of pie, with a door at the narrow end of the wedge. The wall opposite the door was curved, a single huge window running from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. The glass was set for full transparency, revealing a night view of the Los Angeles skyline silhouetted against the dome.

  The walls were covered with video panels tuned to one of those art channels. The screens cycled slowly through an apparently endless gallery of abstract paintings.

  The bed was round. It hovered in the center of the room on an electromagnetic cushion, like a Lev.

  Elaine Carerra’s body lay half on and half off the bed. Her face was tilted upward, leaving her dead eyes to stare at the ceiling. A spatter of blood had struck her left cheek and trailed off like a tear. When she’d slid to the floor, most of the bed linens had gone with her.

  The jumble of blood-slick sheets swaddled her body like a cocoon. A wheeled cleaning drone sat frozen on its fat rubber wheels. Its motionless manipulator arms were all bent toward the carpet near Elaine’s body. The drone had obviously been feverishly trying to mop up the spreading stain of blood when the cops had arrived and shut it down.

  My eyes found the raw hole that the killer had hacked in Elaine’s chest, and suddenly I knew.

  Just to be certain, I backed out of the program, and loaded and watched the crime scene recordings for two of the other Osiris victims. It wasn’t really necessary; I was already certain. Delaney had called Aztec a copycat. He was wrong.

  I flipped the datashades up onto my forehead and shut the computer down. I could feel my pulse pounding in my temples.

  There were no more maybes. As soon as I’d spotted the mutilated body of Elaine Carerra, I’d known with an absolute and sickening moral certainty that I had seen this killer’s work before. Aztec and Osiris were the same person. And he was still out there somewhere.

  I peeled off the control gloves and datashades, and dropped them into one of the drawers of my desk. I suddenly wanted a shot of scotch very badly.

  I settled for a cigarette, inhaling the smoke deeply and waiting for the calming effect of the nicotine to steady the tremor in my hands.

  I tried to focus, to force some semblance of objectivity back into my mind. I needed to concentrate on the facts.

  I had compared the victims from both cases. There was a definite pattern to the killer’s selection. The girls had a quality about them that I couldn’t quite describe, an essential sameness. All of them had been between thirteen and fifteen—and had been similar in size, build, coloring—but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t even that they looked alike, although they certainly had, to a degree. It was more of a feeling. The girls felt similar, as though they were somehow interchangeable.

  That set me to wondering. If the killer followed some sort of specific criteria for choosing his victims, what about his patsies? Was there some essential similarity between Russell Carlisle and Michael Winter that had led to their selection? And if there was such a connection, what would it be? Probably not anything in their personal histories or lifestyles. They had lived in different parts of the city, traveled in different circles, and practiced totally different professions. Could the answer be in their deaths, rather than their lives?

  I loaded the autopsy protocol on Russell Carlisle. In less than five minutes, I knew I was on to something. Carlisle’s hands had been heavily callused, the right more so than the left: the mark of a right-handed carpenter. Like Michael, Carlisle had chosen to kill himself with his left hand, holding the homemade bomb against his left temple.

  Two right-handed men who had chosen to kill themselves with their left hands. In both suicides, the death blow had come from the left side of the head. What could there be about the left side of
the head, in particular, that could point to the killer?

  I loaded the files from both autopsy protocols at the same time and instructed the computer to tag all similarities between Michael’s autopsy results and Russell Carlisle’s.

  The comp bleeped and projected a short message: FILE SORT IN PROGRESS. ESTIMATED COMPLETION = 00:01:30. The seconds column started counting down immediately. I’d forgotten how slow the desktop’s microprocessor was.

  I lit a smoke and sat back to wait out the ninety seconds.

  I was amassing a mountain of evidence, but I still didn’t know where it was pointing. Kurt Rieger was my favorite suspect (in fact, the only one I had) but—when viewed objectively—the evidence against him wasn’t exactly airtight. I knew that I should be considering other suspects, but I couldn’t seem to come up with any.

  Had I grown too attached to my Kurt Rieger theory? If Rieger was the killer, the woman was only an accomplice. Why was I so wrapped up in that scenario?

  Why did I want Rieger to be guilty? Because he was a pedophile? Because his Gestapo had beaten Lisa to a pulp? Because he’d slept with Sonja?

  The comp bleeped again and projected an enormous column of data.

  I started reading.

  Most of the flagged items were obviously garbage. Both corpses were adult males. Both had suffered fatal head wounds. Both men had two arms, two legs and the normal compliment of toes.

  I went through the list, dropping any flagged item that obviously wasn’t relevant. The column got shorter fast.

  When I had the list down to about fifty lines, I spotted a heading labeledCRANIAL CAVITY►FOREIGN MATTER►PRESENCE OF. Under the label were ten entries:

   Gallium Arsenide

   Platinum

   Carbonized Ceramic

   Silicon Monoxide

   Silicon Dioxide

   Selenium

   Nichrome

   Titanium

   Aluminum

   Orthostatic Epoxy

  I knew what orthostatic epoxy was. It was used for gluing broken bones together. I knew what platinum, titanium, and aluminum were, although I didn’t know why traces of them would be found in the head wounds of two different men. Gallium arsenide? Nichrome? I had no idea what any of the rest of those things were, or what they were likely to be used for.