Melancholy: Episode 2

by Charlotte McConaghy

  “I’ll figure it out,” I promise. I hesitate awkwardly for a moment. “Can you do me a favor?”

  She glares at me.

  “Not say anything to Dual about what happened between us last year?”

  Lace shakes her head with exasperation. Then without any warning she moans with deep, gut-wrenching despair.

  I lurch to my feet, unsure what to do, but May is already rushing to take her daughter in her arms.

  “Batch didn’t come home,” May tells me over the sobbing. “I would have heard him. Now go.”

  So I do. As the door shuts behind me the terrible sound of weeping is dimmed. Josi is sitting on the edge of the road, arms folded over her knees. She looks up miserably. “Is she okay?”

  I shake my head.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset her.”

  “She was upset anyway.” I reach for her hand and pull her up. She brushes the dust from her pants and we head toward the infirmary. “She probably needed to give someone a good slap.”

  “Glad I could help then.” She sounds sincere. “Did you get any clues?”

  “No clues. Which might be a clue in itself. She said that nothing out of the ordinary had happened, he’d been acting normally, and I believe she didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “So are you thinking I might be right about the kill being a message or a statement or something? Rather than a personal gripe with Batch?”

  “Well I’ve spoken to the guys on guard duty with him, as well as his closest friends. They knew nothing, and said he’d been totally normal. Apparently he finished his shift on watch at midnight and then no one saw him again until you did.”

  “So we have a chunk of his time that’s unaccounted for – from midnight until about 5:30 am.”

  “And you didn’t go home until after 2, which means he wasn’t placed at the crime scene until after then, or you would have seen him.”

  “So where the hell was he between 12 and 5:30?”

  I shrug. “He wasn’t at home with his wife, according to both Lace and May. Yesterday Lace said he did come home, but I honestly don’t think she was lying – I reckon it’s more likely she got confused about the days. So it’s possible Batch could have been accosted on his way home and kept somewhere for a few hours, either dead or alive.”

  “Any idea where the killing took place?”

  I shake my head. “Had to be a hell of a lot of blood.”

  “So you have to either clean it or hide it somehow.”

  “Might be time for me to start searching houses for any remnants.”

  “That’ll make you popular.” We head inside Dodge’s lab to find him, Ranya and Mom all standing around Batch’s body laid out on a table. The three of them are peering closely, talking animatedly, despite the fact that Ben is hammering repeatedly on his glass cage.

  Meredith is cuffed, once again, to a nearby chair.

  “What do we reckon, gang?” I ask and they all look up.

  “Come here,” Mom says, ushering Josi and I closer. The body is losing some of its stiffness – yesterday the rigor mortis was at its worse, but it’s begun to lessen, making him easier to move. Batch’s head sits a little apart from the body. “See this bruising around the sever line?”

  Josi and I lean in close. The skin beneath where the head’s been chopped off is indeed dark blue. “Yeah.”

  “We think the cause of death might not have been the decapitation, but strangulation.”

  “So someone choked him to death and then cut his head off,” Josi surmises. “Would that explain why there wasn’t much blood at the site?”

  “It could.”

  “So he could have been killed where he was found?” I ask.

  “Yes, or he could have been killed elsewhere and carried to that spot, where the killer then chopped his head off.”

  “Is anyone else finding this very weird?” Josi asks.

  We all nod.

  “There’s no way this was a crime of passion,” I sigh. “You don’t take pains to set out a confusing crime scene like this unless it’s all premeditated.”

  “Unless you kill someone in a fit of passion, realize the mistake and then try to cover it up by making it look like a completely different crime,” Josi points out.

  “True. But by the sounds of it no one would have cause to kill Batch in a fit of passion.”

  “How do we know?” she argues. “Nobody really knows anyone. Just because his wife didn’t think there was anything weird going on doesn’t mean there wasn’t.”

  I look sideways at Josi. “Not everyone lies,” I tell her softly.

  “Sure they do,” she replies calmly.

  “The body wasn’t at the crime scene for long before it was discovered,” Meredith says abruptly and we all turn to stare at her.

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  “If a body remains undisturbed for hours after death, a process called livor mortis occurs. This means that the parts of the body touching the ground develop a discoloration, usually red or purple, from blood accumulation. This body hasn’t suffered that, which means it’s been moved too often since death for it to have occurred. Is it also true that the body had yet to develop rigor mortis when you first moved it here?”

  Ranya and Claire both nod.

  “Then it was within the first three hours of death.”

  “So he was killed not long before I found him,” Josi says. “It’s looking more and more like I did it.”

  “We know you didn’t do it,” I try to console her.

  “This is a bit gruesome for me. I gotta get to my shift in the fields,” she says, heading out into the midday sun.

  “Dodge,” I sigh, “can you do any DNA magic?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t have the means to get external DNA off his body, I only know how to analyze his.”

  “Don’t bury the body,” I tell them. “I want it kept as long as possible.”

  “We don’t have the power to refrigerate it,” Ranya protests.

  “I’ll speak to Quinn about having some rerouted. He doesn’t get buried until this case is solved, alright?”

  “And where will you put him?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll sort something out.”

  Ranya throws up her hands and starts fussing about with things as though I have put her out personally.

  “You alright, Mom?” I ask.

  She nods and walks me to the door. “I know it’s a horrible thing to say given the circumstances, but I’m glad to have something to do.”

  I kiss her on the cheek.

  Meredith is watching us all very closely and there’s something creepy about it. She and Mom are both drones, but under the lab lights they don’t seem anything alike.

  *

  I spend the afternoon on a cooking shift in the kitchen with Eric, Rina and Grace, trying to come up with innovative recipes for potatoes, potatoes and more potatoes. And bread. There’s a shitload of bread.

  For once, my mind’s not on food. It’s stuck on Batch.

  “Any idea who did it?” Eric asks me when it’s clear I don’t have any input about dinner.

  Rina and Grace are both lean, hard women in their forties, and they watch me expectantly.

  “I shouldn’t talk about it,” I say. “But I’m close, and it’s definitely an isolated incident.” A big fat lie.

  “It’s pretty obvious who did it,” Grace snaps as she kneads dough.

  “Was it her?” Rina asks in her soft, high voice. Both women, I have good cause to know, are excellent fighters, and both are raising children in The Inferno.

  “Who?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Luke.”

  “It wasn’t Dual,” I tell them. “And I can tell you that for a fact.” Another big fat lie.

  “Never been a murder inside The Inferno before,” Grace says shortly.

  “And there won’t be another one,” I assure her.

  “Better not be, Luke. Else why should we raise o
ur kids here?”

  I don’t know how it became my responsibility to stop them from killing each other, as the second newest member of the compound, but okay. I don’t point out that there isn’t anywhere else to raise kids, either. I just nod.

  “Get off your bum and grab me some herbs.”

  I do as I’m told, entering the big walk-in refrigerator. The air is cool in a direct contrast to the hot weather outside, so I hurry for the herbs, grabbing rosemary and mint. But at the door I pause with an idea. And I know immediately that it is not going to be a popular one.

  Chapter 16

  February 15th, 2066

  Josephine

  I sit between Hal and Pace, with Will hanging from my neck like a monkey. The Den is full, but we’re not here for a meal tonight. Quinn has called a community meeting, which is apparently pretty rare.

  “Sure you don’t know what this is about?” Pace asks me for the fifth time.

  “Yes!” I exclaim. “Why do you assume I get told what’s going on?”

  “Because your lover boy is on the council table.”

  “He’s not my lover boy, and he hasn’t told me anything.”

  Will makes mushy kissing noises in my ear and I push him away as Hal and Pace giggle.

  Quinn, Raven, Shadow, Ranya and Luke sit on a long table up the front of the hall, facing the rest of us who are perched around the place in no particular order. I find it amusing that they call it a council table, and can’t help feeling as though we are all children playing at grown-up games. Or maybe that’s just me.

  I’m of the opinion that Shadow shouldn’t be out of bed so soon, but he ignored me completely when I whinged at him to get back to the infirmary. He still looks pale from his gunshot wound, but he’s tough as guts like everyone out here, and determined to suffer in silence.

  “Okay, let’s get started,” Quinn calls over the din of two-hundred-and-sixty voices chattering curiously. Everyone settles down and there’s a general hush. “We have a simple matter at hand tonight, a decision to be made. I don’t feel comfortable making it myself, so we’ll explain the situation and put it to a vote. Luke?”

  Luke sits forward. “As you all know there’s been a murder in The Inferno. The day Batch died was a very sad one for all of us, because he was a member of our family. I’ve been made responsible for the case, and I promise that I will find out who committed this crime. In order to do that I need access to Batch’s body before he can be laid to rest.”

  “This isn’t a matter for public vote!” someone shouts. I crane my neck to see an old man I don’t know. “What happens to Batch’s body is a decision for Lace to make.”

  “I have already discussed it with Lace and she’s refrained from being involved in the decision. It concerns all of you because the only way I can think of to keep Batch’s body from decomposing is to convert one of the fridges into a kind of morgue and keep him there for the duration of the case. The kitchen is a public space, and you all need to agree to it before I’ll go ahead.”

  There is a general ruckus of outrage through the crowd.

  I sit back in my seat, admiring Luke for trying, but knowing this is only going to end one way.

  “This is unconscionable disrespect,” May says loudly. “A man should be laid to rest, not kept in a kitchen fridge in the middle of a public area!”

  “What about the health risks?” another woman says. “We can’t be having a decomposing body around our food!”

  “We would of course remove all the food and block off the area – ” Luke starts.

  “And the practicalities – we need the space,” the woman goes on. “Have you ever tried to feed more than two-hundred mouths with only one fridge full of food? It’s not gonna happen.”

  “Oh for god’s sake, Grace,” someone else groans. “It’s not about the practicalities – have a scrap of empathy for once. This is about a man’s death, and disrespecting his body and his wife.”

  “And keeping the body where the kids might see it!”

  I watch as Luke slumps in his seat, rubbing his eyes wearily. “It would only be temporary – ”

  “How do you know? What makes you think you’re ever gonna solve it?” a man asks.

  “Well he certainly isn’t going to solve it if he doesn’t have access to the only piece of available evidence,” I snap, and everyone turns to stare at me. I feel my cheeks flare, but hold my ground. “It’s protocol in murder investigations to legally hold the body as evidence in the case and trial. It’s not disrespect – it’s correct practice and common sense. Sentimentality needs to be saved for later, when the killer has been brought to justice. Either that, or we leave a murderer walking among us.”

  Oh crap. I shouldn’t have said the thing about the common sense or the sentimentality. Or the murderer walking among us. A ripple of anger and unease moves through the crowd.

  “And what gives you the right to open your mouth?” someone asks. I can’t see who.

  “Oh, sorry, are we living in a fascist regime now?” I reply.

  As the hall erupts into voices, Pace cracks up beside me, thoroughly tickled. I meet Luke’s eyes and see the hint of a smile tug the corner of his lips.

  I shrug, silently telling him I tried.

  His expression replies thanks anyway.

  “Alright, alright, settle down,” Quinn barks over the hubbub. “Let’s call it to a vote. All those who vote to keep the body refrigerated as evidence until the case is solved, raise your hand.”

  The three musketeers and I all raise our hands. On the stage Luke, Shadow and Raven raise their hands. Dodge does too and, surprisingly, my red-haired failed conquest, Eric. Luke’s parents raise their hands, much to the disgust of several people around them. All up, it’s only about thirty people out of more than two-hundred.

  I can’t believe Ranya hasn’t raised her hand and, by the look of it, neither can Luke. It occurs to me that this could be a clue, and I start looking around the room at all the people who vote to bury the body. I commit their faces to memory; they’ve just become suspects. But the problem remains: it’s still basically everybody.

  *

  I go with Luke to the lab to take a final look at Batch before he’s put in the ground. Meredith is toiling away, so focused on whatever she’s doing that she doesn’t even look up at our arrival.

  “Can you take one of your mental picture thingies for me?” Luke sighs.

  “Yeah, but I can only see so much, and I can’t remember things I don’t know.”

  He sighs again.

  “Those are some awfully big sighs,” I murmur, rubbing his back without thinking. It comes to me belatedly that this is probably too intimate a gesture, and I remove my hand quickly. Do friends rub each other’s backs?

  “It’s idiocy,” Luke says.

  “It’s crowd mentality, superstition and grief.”

  “Don’t they want to know the truth?” he snaps, frustrated.

  I shrug. “Don’t take it on. We got what we could from the body and now we have to look elsewhere.”

  Luke looks at my face. “I get more emotional and you get more rational.”

  “It’s a strange world,” I agree.

  “Meredith, you got any other little gems of information you want to share with us before it’s too late?” Luke asks the scientist.

  She looks up, distracted by her work. “I could have gone over him for DNA evidence if I’d had another day or two. Skin particles under the fingernails or in the wounds, hair follicles, blood or sperm residue …”

  “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that yesterday?”

  “You didn’t ask yesterday.”

  He looks about ready to hit her. “Is there anything you could do before the morning?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll see to it that you’re punished,” he threatens.

  I take his wrist and pull him away. “Let’s go punch a bag for a few hours,” I suggest.

  “Jos
i – ”

  “This isn’t a detention center,” I tell him. “We don’t ‘punish’ people for enacting their own human rights.”

  He tugs his wrist out of my hand and stalks away furiously. I watch him go, thinking him a very different man to the one I lived with.

  After a few moments I turn back to Meredith. “You’ve done some really bad stuff,” I say softly. “If it weighs on your conscience at all, feel free to lighten it a tad by helping us out. We’d appreciate it.”

  “I’m already helping you,” she points out calmly. “I’m working on the Zetemaphine blocker to keep that brute alive. I can’t do two things at once.”

  “Well could you please pause that job for the night and try to find us any clue at all to who killed this man?”

  She considers me. Something seems to gentle in her eyes slightly and she nods.

  “Thank you.”

  *

  Luke

  Blood fills my fingernails and pours from my gums, my ears, my nose, my eyes. My hands are around a neck, squeezing squeezing squeezing. All of my strength goes into stealing the breath of the body before me. My hands slip, though; there is too much blood. My feet slip next, and I land heavily on my hip, splashing the thick crimson liquid all over my face –

  I jerk awake, sharp pain slicing through my side.

  It takes me long seconds to orient myself. My bedroom in The Inferno. Dry, bloodless, just like my fingernails and gums are. I have fallen out of bed and landed on my hip.

  Alone, I peer through the dark to the window, beyond which I can see a glowing silver moon. It is almost full.

  Or, no. It was full a couple of nights ago. When Batch was murdered.

  My skin crawls and even though I know there is no blood, I can taste it in my mouth.

  Something under my bed catches my eye, a glint of metal, and I look more closely. Reaching curiously, I feel the cool sharpness of a blade. My blade, I see, as I pull it out.

  Except that the knife is covered in dried blood. And I don’t remember putting it under my bed.

  *

  February 16th, 2066

  Josephine

  Batch is buried at dawn as the sun rises over The Inferno. We are on the very north side of the compound, and the funeral might be beautiful if not for the dreadful sounds of the Furies beyond the wall, still trying to get in.