Pet Noir

by Pati Nagle

  Darkness. Devin stepped through the door.

  “Hello? Chief?”

  His voice echoed. I went in, hurrying away from the light and straining to see. The room was gigantic, and I could see cargo containers marked “Galactic Express” at the far end.

  “It’s the Galactic Express warehouse,” I said.

  Nearby was a shape that looked like a dentist’s chair. Must have been owned by a very bad dentist, because it had restraining straps. I jumped onto the seat, which was warm and held a hint of the chief’s cologne. I let out a low, unhappy howl.

  Devin turned his flash on, spotlighting the chair and a few other bits of furniture and equipment around it. I hopped down, following the chief’s scent toward the back of the warehouse. In the distance I heard a door slap shut.

  “Devin,” I yelled. “Send someone to cover the front entrance!”

  I ran, following the scent to a closed door. Stood up on my hind legs and punched at the controls, but it was locked. Devin caught up and slid his security ID into the override slot. I made a mental note to request one of those as the door opened, then I heard the buzz that precedes discharge of a stunner.

  “Get down, Dev!”

  He ducked, and two high-charge bolts slammed into the wall where his head had been a second before. Before the stunner could charge up again, Devin and I dashed down a hallway and found ourselves in the front offices of Galactic Express.

  “Freeze! Security!” Devin yelled, bring up his own stunner.

  Three struggling figures swayed in the middle of the reception area. Devin strode toward them, even as the front door burst open and Stan and Sheila stepped in.

  “You’re surrounded!” Devin shouted. “Hold still!”

  They held still, sort of. One of them slid to the floor. I hurried over and confirmed that it was the chief, in a zoned-out stupor but otherwise no worse for wear.

  The other two put their hands up. One, a weasely guy in a dingy green nullsuit, looked nervous. The other was a big jock in a Galactic express flightsuit. His face was expressionless.

  “OK, against the wall, you two,” Devin said. Now.”

  I went over and licked the chief’s face, trying to wake him up. No good, he was deep under. Just like good old Albert.

  Devin called for backup. The team combed the warehouse and Pulsar, but except Firefly, who came willingly, we didn’t pick up anyone else. There were more involved, though. Lots more.

  It was Firefly who helped us sort it all out. She’d been a pawn, it turned out. Not only were the Galactic Express goons using her to pinpoint candidates for rapid, deep-induction hypnotic programming, they were using her to do the programming itself, her flashing abdomen being a remarkably effective tool. Between that and her shows, she hadn’t had much sleep lately.

  She got immunity in return for testifying. Really, she was a victim, as much as any of the poor slobs who fell for her.

  “But what were they programming them to do?” Elsa asked over a five course gourmet meal at Ling-Ling’s.

  The chief glanced at Devin. Dev popped a fried wonton in his mouth and crunched it, then grinned.

  “Setting up a coup. They wanted a monopoly on Gamma’s shipping contracts, and they damn near got it. They’d already succeeded in disrupting Tristar’s shipments.”

  The crooks from Galactic had programmed Albert to cancel all shipments from Tristar Transport, which he’d done before reporting to the bushes for his snooze. That was what had screwed up Ling2’s supply order. Skanecutter, who turned up sweetly sleeping on a sofa in the port’s outgoing passenger lounge, had been hypnotically prepped to give Galactic Express preference in scheduling new shipments.

  “They got greedy, though,” Devin added as he spooned some shrimp in lobster sauce onto the plate Leila and I were sharing. “When the chief came into Pulsar they should have laid low, but they saw he was responsive to Firefly’s induction and thought they’d hedge their bets. They almost got away with it, too.”

  “I can’t begin to thank you for getting me out of that,” the chief said to Devin. “You and…” he glanced at me, then at Elsa. “… all the team.”

  “All in a day’s work,” Devin said, grinning.

  Ling2 passed around a platter of Peking Duck, saving a couple of choice bits of skin for me and Leila. While Leila daintily crunched hers, I paused to acknowledge the chief, who was raising his beer to me in a silent toast.

  “Psst! Leon!”

  I glanced under the table and saw the quivering tip of an orange tail. Leaned down to peer into Butch’s green eyes.

  “What do you want?”

  “What do you think?” he hissed back.

  I sighed, reached up for my share of the crispy duck skin, and tore it in half, tossing a piece to Butch. He deserved a reward, too. If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have been in Pulsar the night Skanecutter was abducted.

  The chief was feeding Elsa tidbits of duck. I took advantage of her distraction and licked Leila behind the ear.

  “Care to slip away later, sweetheart? We could go for a walk.”

  She purred and nudged my chin. “All right, cher, but not in the garden.”

  “You got it, sugar.”

  I wasn’t in themood for foliage myself, and as for the fireflies, well you can have ‘em. They give me the creeps, and besides, what good’s a bug you can’t eat?

  8. Murder in the Rotunda

  She lay wrapped up in foil like a human burrito, dead as she could get. The massage table she was stretched out on was cushy and stood in the middle of a room lit by candles and stinking of herbal concoctions.

  I’d never been in the Starlight Day Spa before, with good reason. Even out at the entrance the vegitatious fumes were enough to send any self-respecting feline in the opposite direction.

  It was mid-afternoon on an average Friday and the last thing I wanted to see was a dead human, but Devin and I had been closest to the spa since we were patrolling the rotunda when the call about the deader came in. Devin had been called in to start the investigation, and I had tagged along. I was already regretting it, but Devin seemed upset and I didn’t want to leave him in the lurch.

  A couple of medics were in there too, casually packing up their gear after having determined the patient was beyond reviving. Apparently it had been obvious. They hadn’t even bothered to unwrap her.

  “What’s her name?” Devin asked.

  “M-Maria Callahan,” said the shaky massage therapist who had led us into the room. She was thin and pretty, with blonde hair in a ponytail and strong-looking arms and skin that looked like she spent too much time in the tanning salon.

  Devin’s head snapped up. “Judge Callahan?”

  “I d-don’t know if she’s a judge. She comes in every few months.”

  Devin grimaced and pulled a pair of sanitary gloves out of his pocket as he stepped to the head of the table. He put them on, then carefully lifted a corner of the cloth that was covering the deader’s eyes.

  “Yep, that’s her. Circuit court judge. Comes to Gamma four times a year.” Devin let the cloth drop back. “How long ago did you find her?”

  “I put her in the herbal w-wrap at about quarter after one. I came back in five minutes to check on her—that’s standard procedure. She was unconscious, or maybe she was already d-dead! I called emergency right away.”

  Devin glanced at the medics. One of them, a tall blond who looked like he should be farming corn, shook his head. “She was gone by the time we got here.”

  “Any idea what killed her?”

  The medic shrugged. “She’s only forty or so, looks healthy. My guess is poison.”

  “P-poison?!” The masseuse looked like she was about to hyperventilate.

  “Autopsy would cinch it,” the medic said, ignoring her. His partner, a petite brunette with moderate cush factor but not enough to get on Devin’s radar, eyed the masseuse suspiciously, as if hoping not to have to treat her.

  Devin sighed. “Better do
one, then. You got an autopsy scanner?”

  “Not with us,” the medic said. He punched his com, called for a scanner to be sent out, then looked at Devin. “Be here in a few minutes. Buzz us if you need anything else.”

  With a wary glance at the masseuse, he picked up his gear and headed for the door, his partner right on his heels. Devin watched them go, which made me think maybe I’d been wrong about his opinion of the brunette.

  “Did she have an appointment,” he asked the masseuse when they’d gone, “or did she just drop in?”

  The masseuse was staring at her hands. She turned a frightened face to Devin. “W-what?”

  “You feeling OK? Maybe you’d better sit down.”

  She made a funny sound halfway between a cough and a sob. Devin looked around, but there weren’t any chairs in the room. He took her arm and started leading her toward the door.

  I jumped up on a table that held a stack of towels, a bunch of bottles, a cup of water with a straw in it, and a few other bits of miscellany. I yowled to get Devin’s attention. He stopped and frowned at me. I sniffed significantly at a large unmarked bottle of green stuff, then sneezed.

  I could see the light go on in Devin’s brain. “You wear gloves when you smear on the herbal stuff?” he asked the girl.

  “N-no. Do you think it’s poisoned? S-should I go to the clinic?”

  “I think if it was poisoned you’d already be at the clinic. Better check it, though, just in case.”

  Devin came over to the table and frowned at the bottles. “I’d better take them all. You got a bag?”

  “Um. Yes, I’ll get you one.”

  I hopped down while Devin shoveled the various bottles into a fancy boutique bag provided by the masseuse. He looked at the cup of water.

  “She drink any of that?”

  The girl shook her head. “I was about to offer it to her when I realized…”

  Her face crumpled and she burst into tears. Devin grimaced, then made soothing noises as he bundled her out of the room. I followed, glad to get away from the stench of herbal goo.

  Devin paused to slap a Security seal on the access pad of the door to the massage room. It lit up yellow, with scrolling letters that said “Access Prohibited—Gamma Station Security.”

  Devin led the weeping masseuse out to the lobby, where there were some chairs. He put her in one, then shut and locked the spa door and set the sign to “Closed.”

  Either this chick was the best actress since Sarah Bernhardt, or she didn’t know anything about the poison. I had already lost interest in her, and left it to Devin to calm her down while I snooped around a bit.

  I checked out the wastebasket behind the reception desk for evidence, then wandered into other rooms in the spa to see what I could find in the trash. No suspicious containers or wrappers marked “poison” anywhere. No food either. Total strikeout.

  I came back when I heard the front door open and Devin talking to someone. A med tech, a no-nonsense hopper female with blue-green skin and wearing a work cling in a complimentary shade of green, had arrived with the autopsy scanner, a device that looked like it belonged in Sue’s kitchen. It was all brushed chrome and sharp-looking bits, and bobbed in the air next to the tech on its own antigrav unit.

  “It’s this way,” Devin said, leading the tech to the room where Judge Callahan lay in peaceful deadness.

  The scanner floated along behind them, and I tagged along to watch, never having seen an autopsy scan performed. It was mildly gross and involved the machine drifting back and forth over the corpse, occasionally extending its sharp bits to poke and prod and take samples. The med tech watched the data readout on a large portable com, nodding her head and making an occasional whirring noise in her throat.

  “Yep,” she said when the machine had finished. It returned to her side, humming softly as if pleased with itself.

  “Yep?” Devin prompted.

  “Yep, she was poisoned. Tetrodotoxin. Organic poison originating on Earth. Occurs in various species of fish and amphibians, and is seriously nasty. Attacks the nervous system, causing paralysis followed by respiratory failure. Not the most pleasant way to go, but there are worse.”

  “That’s a little callous, don’t you think?” Devin said, gesturing toward Callahan. “The poor woman’s dead!”

  “Hey, at least she didn’t puke and suffocate on her own vomit. Coulda happened.” The com unit spat out a data film which the tech handed to Devin. “Here’s the report. Have a nice day.”

  She headed out, followed by her faithful autopsy scanner drifting along behind her. Devin frowned at the film in his hand, then hurried to catch up with the tech. He got to her just as she reached the lobby.

  “Wait a minute—where’d the poison come from? Was it in the herbal treatment?”

  A gargled hiccup came from the masseuse who was still sitting in a chair at the side of the room. Devin spared a glance for her, then looked back at the tech.

  Hoppers don’t have eyebrows, but the tech managed to wriggle her forehead in a way that suggested raising a brow. “Nope. She ingested it. Stomach contents indicate she ate dim sum for lunch. I’d check the Imperial Gardens.”

  Devin sighed. “OK. Thanks.”

  “De nada. Ciao,” said the hopper as she left, showing off a slightly mismatched knowledge of human languages.

  Devin locked the door after her and looked over at the masseuse. “There, see? Nothing to worry about.”

  “Oh, thank God!” she said, and burst into tears again.

  Devin shot me an exasperated look. I shrugged and tilted my head. I could maybe have calmed her down a little by jumping in her lap and purring, but I had no desire to be cried on. Besides, she might be allergic.

  “I guess I don’t need to take those,” Devin said, gesturing toward the bag of stinky stuff he’d collected, which was sitting on the chair next to the masseuse’s. “Thanks anyway.”

  He started for the door. She got up and followed him.

  “You’re not going to l-leave her here, are you?”

  “Someone from the morgue will be along to collect her. I left the room sealed, you don’t have to go in.”

  “Oh. Well, um—thanks.”

  “You did the right thing calling emergency,” he said as he opened the door.

  She gave him a wavery smile. “Thanks.”

  I slipped out behind Devin and gave myself a shake, relieved to be out of there. He stood looking at me for a second. Seemed depressed.

  “Mew?” I said.

  “I hope this was an accident. If it wasn’t, then someone did Judge Callahan. On our turf, too. That really stinks.”

  Not as much as the spa, I thought. I sniffed at my chest, trying to tell if my ruff had picked up the herbal fumes. Devin started off through the rotunda and I followed.

  The spa was on one of the inner rings. Devin headed for the outermost, where both Security HQ and the Imperial Gardens were located. Either would have been fine by me, but I couldn’t pretend to be sorry when he made for the restaurant.

  Ling-Ling had opened the Imperial Gardens after her Lightspeed Asian kiosk proved to be a hit. A big, fancy, sprawling place on the outer ring, it was actually three restaurants: a formal dining room serving classical Szechwan cuisine, a sushi bar for those with more Japanese tastes, and a dim sum place tucked between them. The classic restaurant featured elaborate gardens and waterfalls and a long starview wall across one side. The sushi bar overlooked the rotunda. The dim sum place was smaller and less fancy than either of the others, and it was almost always packed. Hoppers liked it especially, because the menu featured a selection of weird items from hopper cuisine, mostly insectoid.

  Surrounded by these three was the industrial kitchen that serviced them all, where Leila and I had tracked down the Cygnius sedonai. Ling-Ling had gone to jail for that little episode, and ever since then Ling2 had been running the Gardens. Devin asked for her when we went in the dim sum place.

  “Sorry,” said a perky A
sian waitress in a butterfly-embroidered clingsuit. “I think she went to Eps Indi on a buying trip.”

  “OK, thanks. Can you tell me if Maria Callahan ate here today?”

  “She did. She came in at eleven.”

  “Who waited on her?”

  “I did.”

  Devin didn’t say anything for a minute, and I knew he was weighing whether this girl could have had anything to do with Judge Callahan’s death. The way she so candidly claimed to have served Callahan spoke against it.

  “What did she have?” he asked.

  “Cold noodle salad, shrimp boats, bau-sa, and golden dumplings. That’s what she usually orders.”

  “Oh, she comes here a lot?”

  “Not a lot, but she always comes in when she’s on station.” The waitress waved a greeting to a couple of customers who had come in and stood waiting a little distance away.

  “Did she have any company or did she eat alone?” Devin asked.

  “Alone. Ling2 stopped by her table to say hello, though.”

  “I thought she was gone to Eps Indi.”

  “She left right afterward.”

  Devin frowned. “Ling2 share any of her food?”

  “No. She just had a cup of tea.” She glanced at the customers. “Anything else?”

  “Um. Have any of the other customers gotten sick today?”

  The waitress frowned. “No. What are you implying?”

  “Nothing. Thanks. Here, call me if you think of anything more about Judge Callahan.”

  Devin handed her a card and backed away. He glanced at me, then headed for Security. My stomach rumbled in disappointment as I followed him away from the Gardens.

  ~

  “No, let’s not shut the restaurant down,” said Chief Wright, leaning back in his executive chair. Devin and I were sitting across from him in the two guest chairs in his cushy office. I was tall enough now to see over the top of his desk.

  “If nobody else is sick, there’s no need to cause a panic,” the chief went on. “We’ll send Phil over to scan the kitchen.”