Android: Free Fall

by William H. Keith

  Eventually, I moved to the bathroom.

  People are careless. Even if they’re trying to not leave fingerprints behind, they’ll touch things in the bathroom out of habit, and not think about what they’re doing…and every non-floor surface in a bathroom is generally chrome or linoleum or plastic or glass or other hard, shiny, nonporous materials perfect for holding latent prints.

  The facilities were designed for low-G, of course. A dry toilet, made from frictionless buckyfilmed ceramic, with directed water jets when you flushed and a seatbelt to hold you in place. A recessed shower stall with an automatic door to keep the water in. A large spa-tub, again with an automatic door. A fabric-covered floor in the stall so you could wear your grip-booties into the shower. The High Frontier’s bathroom was pretty fancy, with voice-activated facilities and temperature controls along with the usual manual pressure plates. The non-fabric surfaces all looked clean and shiny, but I almost immediately scored.

  There was blood on the shower.

  Not much. In fact, I almost missed it, a tiny fleck of red caught between the wall and the fabric floor, and as I searched more closely I found another on the pressure plate on the wall where you turned on the water.

  I dusted for prints inside the stall, and did an amino check on the fabric floor.

  I found another speck of blood up under the rim of the sink. There wasn’t enough for a blood-typing, but so far as I knew, only one person in this room had been bleeding—Roger Dow. I did not believe that Dow had come in here to wash up, however.

  I pictured the crime again. Blood splattering everywhere—and flying lots farther and in a finer spray than it would have done on Earth, because here on Challenger there was only a spin gravity of about four hundredths of a G to pull it down. By the time Dow was dead, the murderer must have been drenched with splattered blood.

  He must have taken the time to go to the bathroom afterward, strip down, rinse off his self-cleaning clothing in the sink, and step into the shower himself. Blood in the sink, blood on the shower. Then he carefully cleaned up after himself.

  Cold—and not entirely consistent with the out-of-control madman image I’d begun to form in my head when I had looked at the wild slashes on the bed.

  There were two bath towels on the floor next to the sink, both damp, neither bloodstained. I took vacuum samples from both, and carefully dusted for prints throughout the bathroom. I pulled some good palm prints from the back lid of the toilet, and from the walls to either side. I also downloaded the toilet records. You never know. Sometimes a killer used his victim’s toilet before leaving. When you gotta go, you gotta go, and most upscale toilets record the users’ glucose, triglyceride, and protein levels, as well as checking for other key healthcare data, like blood.

  But why would the killer leave that blood-bathed charnel house in the bed, then carefully clean up after himself in the bathroom? That didn’t make sense.

  It was time I put a call through to Commissioner Dawn back Earthside.

  “Harrison,” she said, her face appearing on my PAD’s unfolded display. “What do you have for me?”

  “Pretty much the mess we expected,” I told her. “The elevator mercs tracked up everything, and I had to put my foot down. You, uh, may get a call soon complaining about my poor bedside manner.”

  “I already have. Twenty minutes ago.”

  “I stand by what I did. The gilada had no business being in here.”

  “Actually, they do. We may have to negotiate things with the SEA. Don’t worry about it for now. What have you found?”

  I described my preliminary conclusions. There’d been a bioroid in the room at some point while Dow had been here. The chances were good that it was a gynoid sex toy.

  I didn’t think the bioroid had killed Dow, though. Why? It seemed unlikely that a bioroid would drag a mining laser into the room, put it down, have sex with Dow, then slice him to pieces.

  The murderer was either known to Dow, or Dow thought the murderer was the maid coming up for room service. Why? He’d been in bed when the murderer walked in and switched on the laser. We knew Dow had called for room service at around 2330 last night; if the murderer had shown up a few minutes after that, Dow might have voice-opened the door and let the murderer in.

  Otherwise, the murderer needed either a key card or some decent hacking skills. Why would Dow order the door to open to a stranger?

  And, to wrap things up, I admitted that I was suspicious of the crime scene. There were things that just didn’t fit—the fact that the murderer had snicked off Dow’s left arm without burning the transplas behind it, the fact that there was so much blood, when the wounds from a mining laser should have been instantly cauterized, and the fact that the killer had carefully cleaned the bathroom, but left the main room drenched with blood.

  “Murder scenes always have contradictory evidence in them, Harrison,” Dawn told me. “You ought to know that by now. Anyway, don’t sweat the small stuff. We have a material witness, and we know who had this done.”

  “Oh? Who?”

  “We picked up Noise a couple of hours ago. He’s in Detention downstairs.”

  “He’s confessed?”

  “Not yet.” She seemed unconcerned. “He will.”

  “He’s supposed to be working for Melange now, right?”

  “That’s the word we have. We’ll confirm that by tonight. When we do, we’ll go after Melange. They have the motive. Dow was going to pull strings to create legislation that would eliminate clones from the work force, and the mining concerns can’t afford that. The murder weapon matches a mining laser stolen from Alpha Prospecting a couple of days ago. A miner—or someone working for a mine boss—killed Dow. Q.E.D.”

  “I’d feel better about that hypothesis if more of the physical evidence lined up.”

  “Like I said, don’t overcomplicate things.”

  “I’m not. I’m trying to be thorough.”

  “What you are looking for, Harrison, is proof that someone we can link to the miners, preferably Melange, was in that room at around 2330 last night. I suggest you look at the seccam records.”

  “I intend to. And to question the maid. And Housekeeping.” There were some problems there, too, that just didn’t add up.

  “Okay…but make it fast, and then get your tail back down to headquarters. We know who we’re going after. And they’re going to fight back.”

  True. The mining bosses were not known for their quiet and reasonable ways. They were powerful, and they fought dirty. With lawyers.

  At the same time, I was not convinced that the mining bosses were the answer. Not yet.

  “I think it advisable,” I told Dawn, “to dispatch an evidence team up here.”

  “Damn it, Harrison, that’s expensive! That’s why I sent you!”

  “I know. But I want a full GCP work-up of Room Twelve.”

  GCP—Genetic Chemical Presence. A team of men in cleansuits would come in and literally vacuum up everything in this room. All the blood. All the stray hairs and skin cells I’d missed. The sheets. The carpeting. The dust mites in the mattress. The outer layer of paint on the walls. Everything. It would all be put through the big chemical analyzers back at NAPD HQ; they would sequence out every bit of DNA and other molecules that could be extracted, and spit out a list of everything found, together with probabilities, listed as percentages, of what belonged to whom—blood, semen, perspiration, skin cells, eyelashes, even stray molecules of amino acids. Was all of the blood on the bed Dow’s? The analysis would tell us. Were there hairs or skin cells left on the rug or on the laser by the murderer? The analysis would find them. How many people had been in the room recently, and what were their genotypes? The analysis would tell us that. Was the murderer a human or an android? The analysis might tell us that as well. I simply didn’t have the equipment or the training for such a comprehensive study.

  It was crime-scene forensics on an industrial scale.

  “That’s going to take time, Har
rison,” she grumbled. “Couple of days at least.”

  “What we’re looking for will keep,” I told her.

  In the meantime, I had a complete range of physical evidence identified by where I’d found it and backed up by photographs. That would give me something to go on.

  But no matter how exhaustive I was, in my experience the physical evidence could lie because people misinterpreted it. I had a lot more faith in human testimony.

  And the maid who’d found the body would be first on my interview list.

  Chapter Six

  Day 2

  Fuchida had given me a room, number ninety-three on the main level. It didn’t have Room Twelve’s view, but it was big enough for me to run some tests in my evidence kit, and big enough, after a good night’s sleep, to let me interview Maria Delgado, the maid who’d found Dow’s body.

  “Hello, Maria,” I told her as she walked in. She was wearing the hotel uniform, a blue iridescent skintight with the hotel logo, and she looked pinched and terrified. I stood up. “Have a seat. I just want to ask you a few questions.”

  “Y-yes, sir.” She could barely speak.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re not a suspect. But you may have noticed some things that will help us in our investigation. Understand?”

  She managed a jerky nod.

  I had my PAD recording both audio and visual. “Okay. I’m recording this. Interview with Maria Delgado, Dow murder case,” and I added the date and time. “Okay, Maria. First of all, I’d like you to sign this.”

  “¿Que es eso?”

  “It says you’ve volunteered to answer my questions of your own free will. It says you’re waiving your right to an attorney for this questioning, and it’s giving permission for me to take some samples—fingerprints and blood. Is that okay?”

  “Yes, sir.” There was no hesitation.

  “Do you want to have an attorney present?”

  “No, sir. I don’t have one.”

  “We can get one for you if you like.”

  “No, sir. I’ll…I’ll just answer the questions. Anything you want.”

  “Very good. Thank you.” I let her thumbprint the form, which I put away in my club. “Okay…your name and address?”

  “M-Maria Chavez Delgado. I live here at the High Frontier.”

  “Where are you from, Maria?”

  “New Angeles. Just north of Guayaquil.”

  “Occupation?”

  “Housekeeping technician. Sir.”

  “I see. And Housekeeping got a call last night from Room Twelve?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What time?”

  “It was logged in at 2317, sir.”

  “And what was requested?”

  “Mr. Dow asked for…for fresh sheets.”

  “And you took them up?”

  “Yes…”

  “What time did you get there?”

  “It was…it was around 2330, sir.”

  “So…twelve, thirteen minutes after Housekeeping got the call. That’s a quick response.”

  “We try to be, sir. Uh, quick, I mean. Ms. Robards can be pretty sharp to us if we’re not on our toes.”

  “Ms. Robards?”

  “She’s the shift super, sir.”

  “Your boss.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay. You went to Room Twelve with some fresh sheets.”

  “Y-yes…”

  I could see the terror in her eyes. I decided to change tack for a moment. “Where is Housekeeping, anyway? Where were you coming from?”

  “It’s on Sublevel One. That’s one down from this one.”

  I had a map-pad on the desk, a disposable flatscreen with the complete layout of the hotel, left for guests who might want to go up to the Athletic Center, or find the restaurant on the other side of the lobby. “Show me on this, would you?”

  She traced her journey from Housekeeping, up an elevator to the second level, then down a passageway to Room Twelve. I pointed to the last stretch of her journey. “This passageway here,” I said, indicating the corridor coming off the ramp from the hotel lobby. “That’s the only way in from the lobby, right?”

  “There are emergency exits at the far ends of these hallways, sir.” She pointed them out. “But this is the only way in from the lobby, yes.”

  “Those emergency exits. An alarm sounds if you open them?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I’d check that later. “When you were in this part of the hallway,” I continued, “did you meet anyone?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No one at all? No guest? No one else on the staff?”

  “No, sir. The hall was empty.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay. You got to the door to Room Twelve. What happened then?”

  “I thumbed the door announce.”

  That was the small panel in the center of the door, an electronic door chime.

  “And what happened?”

  “There was no answer, sir.”

  “And?…”

  “I rang twice more. And then, well, I…I thought it was possible that Mr. Dow had just stepped out, that he’d called Housekeeping for fresh linen, then left and gone down to the bar or someplace while I changed his bed.” The terror was returning, the eyes in her dark face growing large. The words began spilling out in a torrent. “It happens all the time! The guests ask for room service and we take care of it while they’re out, because the risties don’t want to see the staff and Ms. Robards says we’re supposed to be invisible on the job and I didn’t want to—”

  “Okay! Okay!” I held up a hand. “Take it easy, Maria. It’s okay.”

  “I was just doing my job!” the tears were flowing now.

  I handed her a tissue from the dispenser in the desk. “So you opened the door…”

  She nodded, dabbing at her nose. “I used my passcard.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “¡Oh, Jesus y María! ¡Fué horrido!”

  “You found Mr. Dow…”

  She nodded, a jerky, almost spasmodic movement of the head. “¡Tanta sangre!”

  “Was there anyone in the room? Anyone besides Mr. Dow, I mean?”

  She shook her head.

  “Dígame, Maria. What did you do next?”

  “I…I was sick.”

  “What…there on the floor?” I hadn’t seen any sign of vomit inside the door. Had someone cleaned it up?

  She shook her head again. “No, sir. I went to the bathroom.”

  Ah. That made more sense. “And there was no one in the bathroom?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Maybe standing inside the shower stall, hiding from you?”

  “No, sir. The shower stall—it has a transparent front. But it was open, anyway. There was no one in there.”

  “I see. Was the bathroom clean, pretty much? No blood on the floor, nothing like that?”

  She shook her head. “No, sir. There were some used towels on the floor beside the sink. I didn’t see any blood.”

  I’d seen those when I’d been in there, and pulled samples. “But nothing else?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What about blood on the bathroom floor?”

  “No. I didn’t see any. I don’t know…”

  I considered the testimony for a moment, wondering what else to ask. The girl hadn’t seen anything useful, it seemed.

  “Did you touch anything in the room?”

  “Y-yes, sir.”

  “What?”

  “I—I touched the wall behind the toilet, while I was being sick. I might have touched the wall beside it, too.”

  I remembered pulling the prints from beside the toilet. They’d been full handprints, and looked small—like a woman’s. Like Maria’s.

  The fact that she’d remembered that little detail went a long way to establishing her credibility, so far as I was concerned.

  “After you were sick, w
hat did you do?”

  “I left the room, locked the door…and I called Ms. Robards on my personal vid. I told her…I told her…”

  She was about to burst into tears again. “Está bueno,” I told her. “That’s okay.”

  “There was so much blood!…”

  “Okay, Maria. You’ve been very helpful. Thank you.”

  She managed a weak smile around the tissue.

  “I would like to get handprints and a blood sample from you, if I may.”

  “¿Por qué?”

  “If we find your fingerprints in that room,” I told her gently, knowing I already had them in my kit, “we want to be able to rule you out as a suspect, right?”

  A few minutes later, I was alone in my room. I began using my e-ID and badge number to access hotel records. The first thing I wanted to see was a list of emergency door access incidents.

  Those emergency doors at the end of the hallways—they opened onto back stairs going all the way down to the basement level. Push on the access bar, and the door opens, an alarm sounds, and the fact of the opening is recorded in the hotel log. Fair enough. But it also turned out that, as with most hotels, those back stairs and passageways were routinely used by hotel staff. They used a coded pass card or even an e-ID recorded on an implant to open the door without the alarm. And each time the door was opened, the fact was recorded, with the time and with the number of the employee.

  According to the hotel log, the door at the far end of the hallway for Room Twelve had been opened seven times between 1800 and 2400.

  I made a list of the employees who’d used their cards on the door that night. I would need to check each one out later.

  I was facing some troubling questions.

  It was the timing that bothered me now. I patched through to the hotel’s Housekeeping log, and verified that a call for room service had been received at 2317 last night. But when I went to pull up the actual recording of the call, I hit a blank.