Memorable Murder

by Vanessa Muir

  Memorable Murder

  Book One of the Charlie Spade Series

  Vanessa Muir

  Copyright © 2019 Creative Brand Ventures, LLC. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, organizations, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations or persons, living or dead, is fictionalized or coincidental.

  This book is a Hidden Sphinx production. For inquiries regarding this book, please email contact@hiddensphinx.com.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author or publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Enjoyed The Story?

  Hidden Sphinx Book Club

  1

  This was a woman in a lab coat.

  Women in lab coats didn’t usually fall prey to psychotic murderers wielding miniature chisels. Women in lab coats led cushy lives while their fathers looked on in the distance, radiating pride. They wore expensive perfume, funded by their state salary, and they married young.

  Smart women, pretty women.

  Dead woman.

  Charlie slapped on a pair of memory-latex gloves. The fabric melded to her skin, and she shuddered.

  Four years with the Stormshield Services Group, investigating odd occurrences, everything from murder to rape to theft, and she still wasn’t accustomed to that weird schlap-slooooop of the gloves fusing to her skin.

  “You okay there, Spade?” Eli asked. “You want to step out on this investigation?”

  She gave him a deadpan stare. “That’s cute.”

  “I’m just saying, given your track record it might be a good idea for you to —”

  “The victim’s name was Natalya Maxis,” Charlie said and tapped the pressure pad attached to her temple. Case information filtered through the contact lens in her left eye. “Technician at this memory bank.”

  “No shit.” Eli leaned against a curved, white counter.

  Charlie couldn’t reconcile that the big boss at Stormshield had saddled her with this joker. Eli was intelligent, but he wasn’t an investigator. They’d pulled his square-jawed, handsome ass right out of a cushy office job and set him on her.

  She’d fucked up once. Once! And this was the treatment she’d received.

  “Go on,” Eli said and flicked his gloved fingers at her. “I’m riveted.”

  “If you’re not going to take this case seriously, you shouldn’t be here,” Charlie replied. “This isn’t a paper you can push, kid. This is the real deal. It’s a dead woman in a memory bank.”

  “Double no shit.”

  Charlie focused on the information streaming past her retina to keep from rabbit-punching him in the forehead. “Natalya Maxis, loyal employee of the state and technician at Corden Prime Memory Facility and Bank, Pi Sector. Studied in memory extraction. She recently extracted a memory from two high-profile clients in —”

  “High-profile clients? Here? This is the middle of bumfuck nowhere,” Eli said. “Who comes to a minor sector in Corden Prime to get their memories removed?”

  “People who don’t want to be obvious about it.” Charlie surveyed the crime scene as she spoke, picking out important details.

  The reception area was minimalistic, nothing but a computer bank against one wall and two glass doors at the far end. One was misted out and controlled by retina-scanner and thumb pad. Blood on both of those.

  The other door, translucent, looked in on the memory extraction chairs and their matching apparatus. Nothing untoward in there, nothing out of place. Natalya must’ve finished for the day and closed up prior to the “incident.”

  “— all the way out here for this. I don’t get it.”

  Charlie tuned back into her new partner’s droned complaint. “That’s because it’s above your pay grade. And I’m getting to the reason we were sent.” As operatives of the state, working with and independently from them, Stormshield didn’t get involved in random murders.

  This woman’s death had to be linked to something else. Grand scale corruption or a crime which damaged the state and its constituents directly. Councilor Gregor didn’t care about the little people. He cared about “all” the people.

  “All” being just himself and his weighted pockets.

  Charlie walked to the woman’s body, face down in a pool of her own blood. She dropped into a crouch, took a handful of matted hair, then turned Natalya’s head. One eye stared at her, milky in death, the other socket was a mess of meaty drippings.

  “There it is,” Charlie muttered and let go of the victim’s head, ever so gently. She had the utmost respect for the dead, hearkened from her mother’s funeral.

  Eli retched behind her.

  “There’s a wastepaper basket next to the reception desk,” Charlie said. “Don’t hurl on the evidence.”

  Next, she lifted Natalya’s hands, one at a time, shifting over the body to do so. She examined the nails, now blue-tinged, and noted the missing right thumb. “Both her eye and thumb removed, as depicted in the preliminary report,” Charlie said and lowered the dead woman’s hands to the tiles. “Used to access the memory bank’s primary storage facility.”

  Eli hadn’t thrown up, to his credit. He held his fist in front of his mouth and stared at the body. “What for?”

  Charlie rose from her crouch and frowned at the shut misted door. “Well, these facilities store extracted memories on site before they’re uploaded to the cloud.”

  “That’s dumb. Huge security risk,” Eli said and swallowed reflexively. He averted his gaze to the padded ceiling, marked with cameras. “Why would they keep any memories on site? What if a Councilor or someone important comes in and has plans removed?”

  “The memories have to be stored on site for a minimum of two days to ensure the memory removal process didn’t corrupt the data. If they’re uploaded straight away, and the memories are corrupt, the corruption will spread and wipe out the entire bank,” she said. “Seriously, what the fuck did you do before they sewed you to my side? Flip burgers?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “No thanks,” Charlie replied. “And memories aren’t our problem here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the killer didn’t steal anything from the memory bank,” she said and tapped the pressure pad on her temple again. The scrolling data slowed. “They stole drugs. MemXor. An entire case full.”

  “Drugs? That’s it?”

  “That’s right,” Charlie said. Which didn’t technically make sense. MemXor was used to stabilize the brain during the memory extraction process and shortly after for recovery. Most versions were free, apart from the upscale “worst kept secret” versions given to the wealthy and powerful.

  She checked her timepiece, a standard issue attachment on her Stormshield uniform — lurid blue and yellow, god she hated it. “Our contact will be here shortly. We’ll use the surveillance footage to get a better handle on who did this to our victim.”

  “A psycho,” Eli said.

  Or someone
who was so desperate for an overdose of readily available drugs, they’d attacked a woman with a medical implement, ripped out her eyeball, and cut off her thumb to get it.

  This time, Charlie’s shudder wasn’t from the memory-latex.

  2

  This wasn’t the setting Charlotte “Charlie” Spade enjoyed. The strange white chairs, coated in that shimmery synthetic material, with their attached metal suction cups and fiddly ends, gave her all kinds of chills.

  “We can view the videos in here?” Eli asked.

  Their contact, the replacement technician — which had happened before Natalya’s body had cooled — sniffed and thumbed his glasses up his nose. “Yeah,” Ray said.

  Charlie fixated on his thumb. How long before the crazy came back and chopped it off? “Talk to me about MemXor, Ray,” she said. “Is it addictive?”

  “Nope,” Ray said and dragged a pack of gum out of his pocket. He crinkled open the paper, then inserted a pink stick between his teeth. He chewed noisily.

  “Enlightening.” Charlie walked to the screen on the wall, used for uploading memories into the cloud, no doubt, then tapped on the screen. “Care to go into a little more detail before we view this footage?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “MemXor stabilizes the neurotransmitters before and after the procedure. We give it out for free to all our patients.”

  “In large quantities?” Charlie asked.

  “Nah, it’s prescription.” Ray chewed ever on, smacking his lips. “Easy enough to get it, as long as you’ve had memories removed.”

  “I’m not clear on that.” Eli scratched the stubble along his hero jaw. “The whole memory removal thing. Why do you need to stabilize their brains if you’re just gonna suck stuff out of it anyway?”

  Charlie opened a folder on the screen and stepped back. “I need a passcode here,” she said. “And the term ‘removal’ is a misnomer. The memories are copied, checked for corruption, then uploaded. The client retains the original memory and uses the drugs to make sure it stays that way.”

  “Crazy,” Eli replied. “You know a lot about this shit.”

  “It’s what I do.”

  “Meaning you’ve gotten your memories removed?”

  Charlie snorted. “Not even if you paid me.”

  Ray trudged over, then rapped his fingers across the screen in a particular sequence. The folder unlocked, and Charlie selected the first item on the screen, a manifesto of customers who’d entered the bank in the last week.

  Five names on the screen, all male. “Take these down and check out their alibis,” she said.

  “What am I, your employee?” Eli pursed his lips.

  “Now.”

  Ray watched the exchanged between slobbery chews. “You two married or somethin’?”

  “Once again, not even if you paid me,” Charlie replied and ruffled her hair. “All right, so we’ve got our primary suspect list. Let’s take a look at the footage. Ray, you stay here and tell me if you recognize any of these people.”

  “Not likely,” he said. “I was working over in Corden Prime Alpha Sector before I got reassigned.”

  “Right. Stay anyway, I’ll need your input on the security issues with the system,” Charlie said. “It shouldn’t be this easy for someone to waltz in and access classified information, or drugs.”

  Though, it really was this easy. In all their magnanimity, the state had become lax. They were infallible. Hints of an underground rebellion had been ignored on the surface, but the undertone for this investigation spoke to her.

  They were concerned. They wanted this fixed or finished. Brushed under the rug.

  Questions whirled through Charlie’s mind, but she had to squash them all and focus on the job.

  If she fucked up this time, she’d be out of her job at Stormshield and have a pissed off father to deal with. Daddy dearest already didn’t approve of her position with the SSG, how he’d whine if she dare got herself fired.

  Insubordination wasn’t a popular term these days. It hadn’t been since the civil war thirty years ago.

  She cleared the garbage from her brain. “Ready?”

  “To watch a woman have her eye gouged out? Sure,” Eli said in a monotone.

  Ray grimaced and glanced at the body in the other room. A forensics team had moved in for removal, and one of the innocuous overall-clad fellows drew a screen across the door and blocked Natalya from view.

  Charlie opened up the footage and scrolled through for most of the day. Natalya marched in and out of view, carrying first a massive package of drugs, then a clipboard. “What’s that?” Charlie asked. “That wasn’t with the body. Look, she put it down on the reception desk.”

  No answer forthcoming from her companions.

  Charlie forwarded the video, and they watched as Natalya greeted a client, led him through to the memory removal room, then set up the machine.

  “What’s the time stamp?” Ray asked.

  She paused the video. “Late, 6 pm. Memory banks are open that late?”

  “In special circumstances,” Ray said. “What’s weird is that she didn’t have any other clients all day.”

  “It’s a small town.” Eli shrugged.

  “Doesn’t matter. Memory removal is cheap and popular. Every grandpa and his sister gets their brain trash saved here, a legacy for their relatives. Immortality via code. Memories are the new shiny treasure,” Ray said.

  “What’s your point?” Eli asked.

  “That there’s no way she only had one client appointment scheduled for today. Unless — wait, yeah, move over.” Ray nudged Charlie out of the way.

  The corner of Eli’s lip quirked upward, and Charlie fed him a glare of doom. He wiped the mirth away, real quick.

  Ray tapped his tapered fingers across the screen, letting out a satisfied grunt whenever his gum popped between his teeth. He opened up a document, filled with numbers and squiggles, then nodded. “Yeah, that’s why. Natalya was supposed to give a large shipment of those drugs to an incoming researcher. Standard pick up of expired product.”

  “Who was the researcher?”

  “Don’t have a name. But you should be able to get it from Mem Store. You are the SSG, after all. Not like they’ll deny you the information,” Ray said.

  “Make a note of that,” Charlie said and pointed at Eli.

  “Bite me,” he replied.

  Charlie opened the footage again, then forwarded through the memory removal process. It took all of fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes and the man’s memory had been copied, stored, and he was on his way out the door with a bottle of MemXor.

  “This should be it,” Charlie said and slowed the video.

  Natalya walked to the front of the memory removal facility and checked her timepiece. She tapped her heeled foot.

  “The researcher’s late,” Charlie said. “That’s why she stayed behind.”

  “Pity. She was hot.” Eli’s addition to the conversation elicited an eye roll from Charlie.

  A hooded figure approached the entrance. Tall, definitely a man, dressed shabby, face concealed. He pushed open the door and walked toward her.

  “He’s carrying, see? Look how he holds his right hand at his side. He’s tense. This is premeditated.”

  Ray lifted both hands and placed them over his eyes.

  Eli turned his head slightly, watching from his peripheral vision.

  The two on the screen shared a few words. Natalya stomped her heel, pointed to the exit. The murderer shook his head. He gestured to the store room. Natalya turned her back on him. Bad move.

  Hooded figure pounced on her, hacked at the back of her skull, then tackled her to the tiles.

  “Good fuck,” Eli breathed. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  “Is it over yet?” Ray asked.

  “No.” Charlie laser-focused on the screen. On the violence, the eye-gouging, the hacking of the thumb. She’d have to examine this footage many times over the next couple hours
. No use trying to hide from it now.

  Finally, the murderer detached from his prey. He directed the eyeball at the scanner. One light flashed green. He swiped the bloodied thumb. The other light flashed green. He entered the store room and reappeared with the drugs, then headed for the exit. He swiped Natalya’s clipboard on the way out.

  The entire exchange had lasted all of 45 seconds. That was all the time it took to end a life and rob a memory bank.

  Mem Store, the state’s partner and creator of the memory removal technology, was in ultimate shit if this got out.

  “That’s all,” Charlie said and closed the video. “All right. So, I’m going to need copies of all of this sent directly to my work station. You can handle that, can’t you Ray?”

  The man lowered his hands at last. “Yeah. Just leave your details, and I’ll send it to you.”

  “Good.”

  Eli swallowed. “I don’t see why you need it,” he said. “Seems simple to me. The guy was a crazy who wanted the drugs.”

  “For what purpose? They’re cheap, readily available.”

  “He was a hobo. Maybe he wanted to sell them to make some cash on the side,” Eli said.

  “Maybe,” Charlie said, but she didn’t agree. Something weird had happened here. Something that didn’t quite fit with Mem Store’s guarded and jovial aesthetic. “We won’t know until we catch him.”

  3

  Charlie peeled the gloves off and stretched her fingers, working the joints. The cool night air felt better than a shower and a shot of liquor. Darkness had fallen over the town’s skyscrapers and apartment blocks. An electric post flickered, bulbs fading in and out, on the opposite side of the street.

  “We should do this again sometime,” Eli said and nudged her.