by Alec Taylor
“You know,” I said, “I’m not sure he did it. I’m just going to check Eli’s height.”
Glen tipped his head back and looked like he thought I was crazy. Pete’s eyes widened and he lifted his eyebrows. I looked at Eli’s personnel file.
“Hmm,” I said. “He was a few centimetres taller than Imani. I guess it might have been him in the airlock footage…”
“There you go,” said Glen. “It was Eli.”
“I’m not sure,” I was battling the distracting visions in my mind and forcing myself to stay focused. “It’s not that close, and hundreds of colonists would be within a few centimetres of her height.”
“Mike,” said Pete, “he was her lover and she dumped him.”
“That’s the oldest motive in the book,” said Glen.
“I understand that,” I said, “but when I was talking to him out there, it didn’t seem like he was guilty. He just seemed distraught. Also, June knew him well and didn’t think there was any way he could have killed her.”
I suspected that Eli wasn’t Imani’s killer and was uncomfortable with them wanting to quickly close the case.
“But it all makes sense,” whined Glen. “She dumped him, he got angry and killed her, then he ran off and killed himself.”
“I understand that’s how it might look,” I said calmly, “and maybe that is what happened, but we need to be sure.”
“Classic obsession and jealousy,” said Pete. “Case closed.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, “but it doesn’t fit for me. There’s something we’re not seeing, something more going on here.”
“Hmm,” said Pete, frowning. “I think we’re ready to close it but what do you want to do?”
All I knew was that I couldn’t just let it go like that. I strongly suspected that Eli was innocent and I was bitterly frustrated by his death. I needed more answers.
After thinking for a few seconds, I said, “I’d like to find out more about Eli.”
Glen screwed up his face and said, “That’s a waste of—”
Pete cut in. “Mike, you’ve just seen something horrific. I think you should take some time off. Maybe talk to Chris after the autopsy and try to de-stress.”
“No,” I said firmly. “I’m okay. I don’t need time or counselling or anything—not yet, anyway. I want to know the truth. Let me dig for a little while to make sure we have the right answer. Surely we have nothing as important as this case. And we need to fully document the incident for JOSEV anyway.”
“I suppose that’s right,” said Pete reluctantly. “But I want you to keep me in the loop, and I’m going to pull the plug if I think you’re going down a dead end.”
“Yes, sir,” I said automatically and turned to my screen.
“I’m going to update Karl,” said Pete, and after a moment he left.
I stared at the screen, trying to calm down. Images kept flashing in my mind—the dust spraying into the sky, the buggy hanging in the air over the canyon, the figure on the far side, the dark-red pool of blood.
I shook my head, logged on to my screen, and opened Eli’s file. His history before the colony was unremarkable—he had been an American engineer and came through the normal nomination process. Here, he had been the Head of Colony Development. He had arrived in the second Martian year of the colony and had replaced a woman who had moved into Harvest Operations.
A few minutes later, Pete came back into Security.
“You all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine, thanks,” I replied. I nearly asked how his conversation with Karl had gone, but I realised that I didn’t want to know. I had been disappointed with Karl’s passive response to my suspect list and anticipated a similar response to my investigation of Eli.
When I had exhausted Eli’s file, I remembered that he shared a room with Jan from the Executive Office. Eli had been allocated to Jan’s room when he arrived and neither of them had ever requested a change.
Jan had always been in the background during my brief time in the colony. I had never worked with him directly, but he was in our meetings with Karl and shared his office. I quickly scanned his file, but there wasn’t a lot in it. He had studied business law at a high-profile university in Sweden and was working for a large law firm when the EU nominated him to join JOSEV. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything helpful in his bio. He came from a modest, upper-middle-class background. He was squeaky clean and, on paper at least, very uninteresting. He had arrived with Karl in the first fleet and hadn’t rotated through any other roles. I had to admit that his role suited him perfectly. I decided I needed to talk to Jan.
I turned around and saw that Pete was watching me.
“I’m going to talk to Eli’s roommate,” I said. Glen turned around as well.
“Okay,” said Pete quietly. “But why don’t you freshen up first, maybe take a walk? Or a shower? There’s blood on your suit.”
“Okay,” I said and went to the bathroom.
My angular face looked pale and almost gaunt in the mirror. I decided I needed to eat more food and let my beard grow out a little to soften the line of my jaw.
After failing to clean the blood off my suit, I went to the Executive Office and approached Jan at his desk. Karl looked up briefly and then ignored me.
“Hi, Michael,” said Jan with a thin smile. “I’ve been wondering when you were going to come by.”
Nobody used my full name.
“You can call me Mike,” I said. “Nobody calls me Michael.”
“Okay,” he said with a little smile. I got the sense he was going to continue to call me Michael anyway. I couldn’t tell if he was just being formal or passive aggressive.
“So…I’m wondering if we can talk about Eli and maybe have a look at his bunk,” I said, wanting to get him out of the office so I could talk to him alone, without the Chief Executive in the room.
“Do you mind, sir?” Jan asked Karl.
“Of course not,” replied Karl with a plastic smile.
We walked along the passages toward Jan and Eli’s room.
“How long did you live with Eli?” I asked, trying to get him talking.
“Years. But you would know that from our files.” He said it flatly, without emotion.
“Tell me about him. What was he like to live with? What did you talk about?”
“Actually, we didn’t talk much. I barely knew Elijah.”
He didn’t appear at all upset by Eli’s death.
“Who was he friends with?” I asked.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t know. Other than Imani, of course. He was besotted with her, that was obvious.”
“I’m a little surprised by that relationship,” I said. “She was so popular, and he was more of a loner.”
“Yes, I think it didn’t mean much to her. He cried a lot when she dumped him. I thought he would get over it, but he obviously never did.”
We arrived at Jan’s room. One of the early rooms built in the first wing, it was smaller and more rudimentary than those constructed later. The door fitted poorly and the plastic-coated walls were rough and bumpy.
There was a bunk on either side of the room, pushed against the curved walls. In front of each bunk was a hanging frame and at the opposite end were two small plastic storage units. The bed on the left was perfectly made—the sleeping bag had been rolled and bagged and was waiting at the foot of the bed. It was definitely Jan’s side—it was obsessively tidy. The other side was a mess. I wondered how this odd couple could stand to room together. It occurred to me that perhaps there was some antagonism in their relationship.
“He must have driven you mad,” I said.
“Not really,” replied Jan. “He stayed on his side.”
I imagined there had been some tense conversations between them in the early days, but somehow they stuck with it and stayed roommates for years. I wondered if they had had no alternative—neither seemed to have many friends and they might have found it hard to find new roommates.
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br /> “I’m going to have a look through his stuff,” I said.
“Don’t you need a search warrant?” asked Jan, deadpan. Then he smiled to show he was joking.
“I’ve got probable cause,” I replied, not convinced he was joking. “Anyway, he’s dead and has no relatives on this planet.”
Eli’s spare outersuit smelled odd. It was faintly sweet and a little acrid. It reminded me of homeless people I had picked up when I was a policeman. But there was something else as well—it had a nasty metallic tang, like the strange smell in the gym. I looked inside the collar to see if the transmitter was working, inspecting the pocket of fabric from a few different angles. Then I gently unzipped it and saw the main power line had been disconnected.
I sensed Jan standing very close at my shoulder and, as I looked around, our faces nearly touched.
“Was that suit also not working?” he asked with a slight smile and raised eyebrows.
I was about to tell him to back away and stay out of the investigation, but then he smiled sweetly and said, “Shall I leave you to it?”
Jan went over to sit on his bed and I looked back at Eli’s stuff. The bunk and sleeping bag were not helpful. On top of his storage unit, there was a small print of Imani. It looked like it had been held often and was smudged as if it had been cried over. It was a screenshot from a headset video. She was laughing naturally, her smile wide and eyes gleaming. It looked like she was in her element, comfortable, in control. I carefully picked up the picture by the corners and placed it into a small plastic bag that I had brought for evidence.
Another smelly undersuit was draped over the top of the storage unit. Inside the unit were other undersuits and a handful of small plastic puzzles and toys. There was a pile of photos of Imani in the bottom drawer. It was unusual to have so many hard-copy prints in the colony—Eli had been obsessed.
“Did you know about this?” I asked Jan.
“I saw him look at those pictures sometimes. It seemed unusual but not worth worrying about.”
Jan was casually sitting on his bunk, one leg draped over the other, his arms crossed on his chest. He looked almost bored, though I sensed that his body language was contrived. He was watching me carefully. I placed the pictures into my evidence bag and remembered my first conversation with Eli.
“Eli said that he felt like a Martian, not an Earthling,” I said.
“Yes. I’m not sure why he felt that way. Around an Earth-year ago, he started saying that the colony should be independent, that we should have a local government. It was ridiculous.” Jan rolled his eyes.
“Did he annoy people with that view?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t know. It wasn’t really annoying, it was just stupid.”
I’m not sure about that, I thought.
“Was that around the time he started the relationship with Imani?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I suppose so. And then he started a petition full of platitudes about independence and confused ideas about different models of government. I don’t think even he knew what he wanted.”
All of a sudden, the mention of government crystallised an uneasy thought that had been in the back of my mind for the last two days, since we found Imani: I didn’t know the law in the colony. I was effectively operating on the assumption that the Australian rule of law would apply, but why would it?
“We’re in an ambiguous situation now, though, aren’t we?” I said, thinking out loud.
“I don’t see that.”
“We have a crime,” I explained, “but we all come from different countries, with different laws. The closest thing we have to law here is the unilateral authority of the Executive Office to judge inappropriate behaviour and dispense penalties. It’s not clear how that would extend to any serious crimes, let alone a murder. Let’s say it wasn’t Eli—it was someone who isn’t dead, and we arrest them. How will we give them a fair trial? Would Karl be the judge and jury? Or would we send them back to Earth? And if we did send them back would they be tried in Australia, or one of the partner countries? Their country of origin, perhaps?”
“JOSEV would sort it out.”
“JOSEV doesn’t have laws. It doesn’t have judges and juries; it can’t legally incarcerate someone.”
“Fortunately, that’s a hypothetical that we don’t need to worry about. Eli was ready to pop. He killed himself, for God’s sake. Of course he killed her.”
I was astounded. It was cold judgement for a man Eli had lived with for so long. It was strange that Jan didn’t seem to care at all, or even to be shocked by his own conclusions. How could he be so heartless about Eli taking his own life? Or about Eli’s obvious distress after the break up with Imani? I had just seen Eli die that morning and was nearly shaking with shock and anger.
“I guarantee we’ll need to worry about the law someday,” I said through gritted teeth. “Maybe sooner than you think.”
“Are you thinking of murdering someone, Michael?” Again that thin wry smile.
“I am now,” I growled and was immediately angry with myself. I had encountered people like Jan before—low on empathy and with little or no conscience—but I was usually calm and objective. Jan was a powerful person with a lot of influence, so I needed to be even more careful and in control around him.
Then I suddenly remembered that Jan had known Eli was a suspect the previous evening, because Karl had shown him our list of nine suspects. Jan could have told Eli that he was on our list—he could have tipped Eli off and triggered his escape in the buggy. That was probably how Eli had known he was on my list. Could Jan have pushed Eli to take his own life? Could he have persuaded him that it was impossible to prove he was innocent? Was he being confrontational to distract me from his own involvement?
Jan was smirking at me.
“Jan,” I said. “Eli knew he was on the suspect list. You told him.”
Jan’s smirk faltered and faded a little. I paused to see if he would fall for my bluff and implicate himself, but he didn’t say anything for a few seconds.
“Well, of course he knew he was a suspect,” said Jan. “He killed her.”
“No, he knew he was on a list, not just a suspect,” I said. “By the way, I’m not convinced he killed her. He also claimed his innocence.”
“Really,” said Jan. “Still sounds like he was guilty to me. It’s obviously why he killed himself.”
“You told him he was on our suspect list,” I said again, studying his face for a reaction.
“No, I didn’t,” said Jan without any hesitation. His face was so calm that he looked serene. He was either an extraordinary liar or telling the truth.
I deflated. There was no way I could prove that Jan had told Eli he was on the suspect list, and since Eli was dead all Jan had to do was coolly maintain his innocence. It was a dead end, so I grabbed Eli’s spare suit and left.
When I returned to the office, I called Liu in Systems and asked him to unlock Eli’s private electronic files.
8. IMANI
Eli’s work files were filled with notes about designs, plans, and fixes. However, his personal files were bloated with recordings of Imani. The most recent recordings were several weeks old. Mostly shot from a distance without any discernible audio, they were brief grabs of her laughing, smiling, or talking. She was undeniably beautiful and I understood he was in love, but the sheer volume of footage was surprising.
Some of the earlier recordings were much longer. I selected the one with the most views and found it contained a conversation about the colony, recorded late at night in the lounge.
“We’re not on Earth anymore,” said Imani softly. “We’re out here in our own community…but we’re caught in a strange historical time loop. It’s like we’re in eighteenth-century colonial Europe…occupying new worlds and depleting their natural resources…pillaging the natural environment. In human history, we keep doing the same stupid things again and again, without ever learning from them. We have a problem at home, so we go
to a new place far away to solve it, and create new problems when we get there. We’re just lucky there were no indigenous lifeforms here for us to decimate, but we’re still making a lot of the same mistakes.”
Eli waited patiently for her to continue. I could faintly hear him breathing.
“We’re scraping the helium off this planet,” Imani continued, “without thinking about whether it’s sustainable. We’ve created a local community and imposed authority from Earth, when the environment here is completely different and our community is evolving independently. The people in power back on Earth couldn’t possibly have any appreciation of the situation here. Sooner or later we’ll want some independence, like America did, like every colony has wanted eventually…We’ll need self-determination, self-rule…We’ll need to make decisions for ourselves and in our own interests, and they won’t always align perfectly with Earth’s short-term needs. We’re here now, we’re the residents of this world, this is our society and we should govern it. We need to be thinking about future generations, not just today’s energy needs on Earth.”
She went on about independence, self-determination and the evils of colonisation. She seemed mildly high and occasionally nibbled at a cookie. Eli wasn’t saying anything, just listening, and breathing, and soaking it up. I could almost hear his thoughts: I’ll do something about it, I’ll show you, I’m worthy, love me.
Imani was the real agitator. Whether she knew it or not, she had persuaded Eli to start his petition, to lobby for independent government. It was her voice, not his—which is maybe why Eli had seemed so confused to Jan.
I must admit that at that stage, after only two weeks on the planet, it sounded a lot like treason to me. Her one-sided perspective jarred with my sense of loyalty to Australia, JOSEV and Earth. I switched off the video and browsed the incident reports from the weeks before Imani’s death. There was nothing involving Imani or Eli, at least nothing that had warranted any intervention from the Security Office. Then I had a quick look at Eli’s call log. There were a few work-related calls and only two calls outside work hours in the last six weeks, both to Imani, both unanswered. I checked his spare suit again but found nothing helpful.