Dangerously Placed

by Nansi Kunze

  ‘They haven’t found out much, as far as I know,’ said Budi. ‘Inge did say they were still checking people’s alibis, though obviously most of us were way too far away to be considered suspicious. Not that you should be worried, though, Alex,’ he added, wagging a finger at me. ‘I’m sure there’ll be no problem establishing that you were here the whole time.’

  This was my chance.

  ‘I guess there’d be login records to show that, wouldn’t there? I mean, I assume Simulcorp keeps a close eye on who’s using which Virk Room and when.’

  Budi looked at me, surprised.

  ‘It’s funny you should mention that,’ he said. ‘Normally you’d be right. But apparently someone’s been messing with the login record system, and all those files are missing. And not just for yesterday – it’s the last two or three months that are blank.’ He leant in, eyes gleaming with the joy of gossip. ‘Someone in CGI told me the police think the record-keeping function was disabled back then, and no one has noticed in all that time! I’d hate to be the guys responsible for our regular system checks right now.’

  ‘Yeah, pretty bad news for them,’ I murmured.

  Budi turned to his computer, bringing up a photo of a group of girls wearing primary-coloured pantihose with what appeared to be garbage bags for dresses. I was supposed to be deciding if the picture was any good for a hosiery campaign, but what I was actually thinking was: So much for getting leads on where the other Simulcorp employees were when Grody was killed. From what Budi had said, the police must have ruled out all the people who’d been accounted for at their Virk Rooms overseas and in other cities, but I didn’t even know who those people were. With the afternoon off, my ‘investigation’ was being put on hold before I’d really discovered anything. And besides all that, there was still the burning question of what exactly would have happened between me and Dale if Budi hadn’t interrupted us …

  ‘So, what do you think?’ asked Budi.

  ‘I think I’m getting nowhere,’ I sighed, only to realise a moment later that, of course, he meant the bright tights pic. And for the second time that day, my face went as red as a pair of fashionable 80-deniers.

  As it turned out, I was wrong about my investigation being at a standstill.

  When I left AU-3 at lunchtime I texted Sky and Kiyoko to let them know I was out of work already. I was still waiting at the train station when, to my surprise, Ki called me back.

  ‘I’m about to have my lunch break, but I’ve just spoken with Evan and arranged a visitor pass for you for the afternoon. Can you make it down here by 1.30?’

  ‘Make it down where? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about you visiting me at the path lab today,’ said Ki in the extra-slow voice she reserved for addressing the terminally thick.

  ‘I gathered that part,’ I told her, ‘but you didn’t say why.’

  ‘Because I have something to show you. Besides, you’re my best friend – I thought you might find my workplace of some interest.’

  ‘Of course I’m interested! It’s just surprising, that’s all. For one thing, how many work experience students would be able to persuade their mentor to let their friends visit them at work, especially in a secure place like a path lab?’

  ‘I do seem to have gained a certain trust here,’ said Ki, sounding smug. ‘But it helped that I was able to tell Evan you had Simulcorp security clearance: apparently the lab is owned by another Simulcorp division. So, will you be here?’

  ‘Of course.’ If nothing else, I was curious to find out what Kiyoko could possibly have found at the lab that she thought I’d want to see.

  I followed her directions carefully and arrived a few minutes early. It was a friendly looking place – at least compared to AU-3 – with a big, airy reception area and bright prints on the walls. While I waited for Ki, I took a closer look at a picture that looked like pink butterflies on a black background. ‘Tetrahymena thermophila cells mating’, read the label underneath. Riiiight. I glanced around and saw a red-haired guy staring at one of the other prints, a startled expression on his face. I knew just how he felt.

  ‘Alex!’

  I turned around. It was kind of weird seeing Ki in a white coat, especially since she always wore black when she wasn’t in uniform.

  ‘Give it to me straight, doctor – am I going to die?’ I asked.

  ‘Very amusing,’ said Ki dryly, straightening the coat. I could tell she was kind of pleased to be addressed as ‘doctor’, though. ‘Here’s your pass. Shall we go in?’

  Inside, the lab was like some kind of anti-Kiyoko dimension: white walls, white floor, white-coated people staring into white microscopes.

  ‘Doesn’t all this whiteness get to you?’ I whispered.

  Ki smiled, walking confidently down the middle of the room.

  ‘A contrasting background makes any object easier to see. I think this environment is allowing me to discover new aspects of myself.’

  I raised my eyebrows, but Ki looked totally serious. Before I could ask her what she meant, a tall man with grey hair and a pointy grey beard came striding up to us.

  ‘Aha, you must be Alexandra!’ He held out his hand for me to shake. ‘Excellent! Splendid!’

  ‘Alex, this is my mentor, Dr Evan Fairfield.’

  ‘Kiyoko tells me you’re quite the science student,’ said Dr Fairfield.

  ‘Uh, well, I guess …’ I mumbled. Obviously Ki had severely exaggerated my achievements in Science to justify getting me into the lab. I could tell from her face that she wanted me to back her statement up. Well, I did get an A minus on that test about cell structure last year, I thought. ‘Yeah, I’m really into, um … biology, Dr Fairfield.’

  ‘Call me Evan!’ he beamed. ‘Biology, eh? Wonderful! I can see why you’d be interested in our work, then. Biology’s a wide field, though – do you have a particular area of interest?’

  ‘Uh …’ My mind went blank. What on Earth were the different branches of biology? ‘Well, I haven’t, um …’

  ‘Anatomy,’ said Kiyoko. ‘Human anatomy.’ Her face was completely expressionless, but somehow I just knew she was referring to the recent conversation in which I’d described Dale’s butt.

  ‘Excellent choice!’ cried Evan, oblivious to my embarrassed expression. ‘Well, if you’re anything like as dedicated and quick to learn as your friend, you’ll make a fine pathologist. Quite the best student we’ve had here in years!’ He clapped Ki on the shoulder.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ki, graciously inclining her head.

  The next half-hour was a strange mixture of the fascinating and the just-plain-gross, as Evan and Ki showed me around the lab. Sure, it was kind of interesting to know that each sample could be tracked using its own radio frequency identification label, but when the discussion turned to all the different colours of mucus Evan had seen over the years, I began to wish Ki wasn’t quite such a dedicated work experience student.

  ‘I’m not sure I get the attraction of all this pathology stuff,’ I told Ki, when Evan finally left us alone in his office.

  ‘Pathology is a search for the truth, Alex. What could be more central to our nature as humans than the quest for knowledge?’

  ‘Good point,’ I said, although personally I could think of a few things. The quest for the perfect guy, for one. I wondered what Dale was doing with his afternoon off.

  ‘And that’s where these little snippets come in,’ continued Ki, checking to see that no one was outside the office door and then stealthily drawing several sheets of paper from behind the monitor of Evan’s computer.

  ‘What are these?’ I took the set of papers, which looked like a report of some kind. I scanned the first page: Cerebral ischemia caused by occlusion of carotid arteries … indications consistent with homicide …

  ‘Wait, is this …?’ I looked at the corner of the page, and there it was: a case number and a name – Grody, Pierce Brian.

  ‘Yes.’ Ki nodded. ‘It’s your former
boss’s autopsy report.’

  ‘Ki!’ I stared at her. ‘How did you get hold of this?’

  She looked around again, lowering her voice.

  ‘I told you Evan had promised to let me work at the morgue, didn’t I? Well, this morning I had my chance to go there.’

  ‘You saw him? Grody’s body, I mean?’ My eyes felt like they were about to pop out of my head. ‘I know you’ve got them eating out of your hand here, but this is …’

  ‘No, I didn’t see him. A work experience student at a homicide victim’s autopsy?’ Ki looked amused. ‘Even my influence has its limits, Alex. But they did allow me to tour the morgue, and to view a sample file that showed what kind of information is involved in an autopsy report. Fortunately for me, the young man they assigned to show me the report hadn’t seen me observing a thoracic incision without any sign of squeamishness earlier in the tour, so he was completely fooled by my simulation of sudden light-headedness at the sight of the photos in the report. And while he was out obtaining a glass of water for me, I was able to access Grody’s report and print it out.’

  ‘You pulled the fake fainting act? How gullible was this guy?’

  ‘He was most chivalrous,’ said Ki, with a subtle smile that I took to mean she’d quite liked the poor stooge. ‘Now, don’t you want to know what the report says about Grody’s death?’

  ‘If you can interpret all this, please do.’

  ‘Essentially,’ Ki explained, ‘it says that Grody was strangled. It seems that the murderer attempted to choke him with one of the power cords attached to his own Virk Suit, but finished by strangling him with their bare hands, suggesting that Grody was able to free himself from the initial attack.’

  I shuddered.

  ‘I guess the murderer must have been pretty strong if they were able to overpower him barehanded.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Ki flicked to the back of the report. ‘There’s an evaluation by one of the senior criminal forensics experts at the end, and she points out that since Grody’s Virk Suit was still sealed when the body was found, he was in a compromised position in terms of defending himself. He would have been unable to see realspace and unable to move with complete freedom, making the murderer’s task that much easier. In fact, she postulates that the position of the bruising on the victim’s throat may actually suggest someone slightly shorter than Grody, with reasonably long, slender fingers.’

  A surge of hope flowed through me.

  ‘But I’m much shorter than he was, and I don’t have long fingers! That would get me off the suspect list, wouldn’t it?’

  Ki’s face remained serious.

  ‘I’m afraid that kind of thing is more an educated guess than hard evidence, Alex.’ She patted my shoulder consolingly. ‘However, it could help your investigation of the Simulcorp employees. Does that description match anyone you know?’

  I snorted.

  ‘Only about half the people in the office! Isn’t there any other evidence, like hair or blood or something? If it’s just height and possible hand-size we’re going on, it could be loads of people: Inge, Budi, Dale …’ I counted them on my fingers. ‘Viktor, Sohalia, Elena, Ricky, that guy from Data Analysis whose name I can’t remember …’

  ‘I’m afraid the autopsy report doesn’t cover any evidence that isn’t on the body. There might have been DNA traces at the scene, but the Virk Suit covers the whole body so effectively, there was nothing to be found on Grody’s remains.’ Ki frowned. ‘However, while I agree that your list of matching people is rather long, we must remember that there’s one crucial factor that could cut it down dramatically. Could any of them have been physically close enough to get to Grody’s Virk Room yesterday afternoon?’

  I slumped into Evan’s chair.

  ‘I didn’t really manage to find out. I heard that the records of who was logged in where had been disabled, which is making it harder for the police to check.’

  To my surprise, Ki looked pleased.

  ‘Then you’re no longer the only likely suspect! There are several Virk Rooms in the city, aren’t there?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Five or six, I think.’

  ‘Well, then – if the login records don’t show who was in those rooms, there could have been other people just as close to Grody as you.’

  ‘That’s true. But I’m assuming if someone had been really far away from where they were supposed to be when the police escorted them from their Virk Room, they’d have been arrested by now. Most of the people in that list I just gave you would have been in other countries, so we can probably rule them out. We can definitely rule out Inge. While I was being interviewed, I heard these two officers laughing about a call they’d just got from Germany; apparently the German police wanted to strongly assure the Australian police that Inge’s location in Stuttgart had been confirmed. It seems she … wasn’t thrilled, shall we say, with how much time they spent questioning her.’

  ‘I see,’ said Ki dryly, and I was sure she did. ‘So most of your colleagues were a considerable distance away … except Dale.’

  I looked up sharply.

  ‘Yes. But his Virk Room is miles away, up in Woorenong.’

  ‘If the login records aren’t there, though, he could have been in any Virk Room earlier on.’

  I swallowed, suddenly remembering my lunch break the day before.

  ‘I … thought I saw him,’ I said slowly. ‘At lunch, when I was looking out at Beach Road, there was a guy walking past and I thought he looked like Dale.’

  ‘Really?’ Ki leant towards me. ‘And yet I would have said it was impossible for him to get to Beach Road and back up to the northern suburbs in a forty-five-minute lunch break. Were you with him all of the time between seeing Grody alive and dead?’

  ‘No.’ My stomach seemed to be squeezing itself into a knot. ‘He wasn’t with me for most of the time the party was going on. But there were so many people there …’

  Ki arched an eyebrow.

  ‘I know,’ I groaned. ‘It sounds really bad. But what motive would he have? He barely knew Grody, just like me. And …’ I put a hand up to my face, feeling again the gentleness of Dale’s fingers brushing my cheek. ‘I can’t believe he could do it, Ki. I really can’t. He might be a bit competitive, but that’s all. He’s … he’s a nice guy.’

  ‘The human psyche is far more mysterious than one generally imagines, Alex.’ Ki sat down next to me. ‘I’m not saying that this one suspicious circumstance makes him a murderer, but you have to leave your attraction to him behind and allow yourself to be objective. Watch him. Find out what you can, and be cautious about your own safety. All right?’

  I nodded, feeling strangely traitorous to have made Dale a suspect in Ki’s eyes. But she was right – I had to watch him. If only to clear his name, as well as mine.

  ‘Well, girls, what say we go and look at some unusual phlegm samples?’ cried Evan, striding into the room.

  ‘Sounds fascinating,’ replied Ki, deftly slipping the autopsy report behind her back as she stood up.

  ‘I think I see what you meant about this place showing you new sides of yourself,’ I muttered, following her out of the office. ‘I had no idea you were so … stealthy.’

  Ki’s lips twitched.

  ‘I must confess,’ she murmured back, ‘that while I’m enjoying pathology, I’m beginning to wonder whether covert intelligence-gathering might not suit me better.’

  I smiled. I could totally see Ki as a spy.

  I got up early on Thursday to see if Ki’s inside information could help me identify anyone apart from Dale as a suspect. I obviously couldn’t just ask around at Virk about who lived where without seeming suspicious – even looking people up on the personnel files would probably make me look more like a prying weirdo than a model student. So instead I opted for doing it the old-fashioned way: looking my co-workers up on the net.

  It wasn’t hard to find most of them: their names, coupled with the magic word ‘Simulcorp’, w
ere enough to bring up plenty of mentions. After all, you didn’t get to be at Virk by being shy and retiring. But my search didn’t come up with much that was helpful. Maru from the Legal Department and Frankie from CGI were Australian, but both lived in Perth – much too far away to have sneaked back to their Virk Room and been checked by the police after visiting Grody at AU-2. Sohalia used AU-9, but that was over two hundred kilometres away. It seemed that all the other Australian Virk Rooms were used by people in other divisions, and all the remaining staff from Marketing were known to live overseas. The only exception was Elena, who didn’t show up in my search. But then, she was a manager, not a high-profile executive, so maybe that wasn’t all that surprising. So much for my attempt to widen the range of suspects; all I’d really done was return to the idea that Dale and I were the main possibilities.

  So I went to AU-3, logged into Virk and watched Dale. As you can imagine, it wasn’t exactly a chore. In fact, by the middle of the morning, I was beginning to wonder if I had some kind of hormonal imbalance or something. I mean, here I was, conducting secret surveillance on a guy who could be a murderer, and half the time all I could think was, Man, he looks hot in those pants!

  Unlike Kiyoko, however, it seemed that my skill in covert intelligence-gathering was on the lame side. As soon as he managed to escape from Inge’s explanations of demographic charting, Dale came straight over to our cubicle, sat down close to me and murmured, ‘What is it, Alex? You’ve been watching me all morning.’

  Damn.

  ‘Oh, well, I was just wondering when you’d have time to work on the Impression proposal. Budi told me it had been approved.’

  ‘I’m free now. But are you sure that’s what you wanted to talk to me about?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I turned to open the Proposals folder on our computer so Dale wouldn’t see my face.

  ‘Well …’ Dale moved closer, and I could actually feel his soft breath on my neck, as if he were really beside me. ‘I guess I thought you might want to talk about yesterday. When Budi interrupted our … conversation.’