Red Shadows

by Mitchel Scanlon

  "Still, it's one hell of a coincidence," Anderson said. "In a city of four hundred million people, the killer manages to pick four victims who were all born in 2084? That doesn't sound random to me."

  "I agree. And then, there's the other thing. You remember I told you that with both Eunice Bibbs and Brenda Maddens the killer cut their throats from the front?"

  "Sure. What of it?"

  "Well, admittedly it's hardly unheard of, but it is an unusual way to kill someone, especially when, as in these cases, the perp used a single blow to kill the victims each time. Usually, if a victim is attacked from the front by a slashing weapon like a knife you'd expect to see defensive wounds where they put up their hands to ward off the blow. Plus, the throat is a relatively small target. That makes it a difficult target to hit - even more so when the victim is capable of movement and can try to dodge the attack, or lower their chin to protect their throat. And yet, in both cases, the perp hit his victims right on the money. One blow and it was all over. I'd almost suspect he'd managed to immobilise them in some way, except there's no physical evidence to support that theory. Splatter patterns on the blood spray found at each scene show that the victims were all standing and probably conscious when they were attacked. There's no sign of any ligature marks to suggest they'd been bound. The tox-screen came up clear: there were no paralysing agents, mood altering drugs, anaesthetics or anything else of that kind in their bloodstreams. Granted, it might not actually mean anything. It could just be that the killer got lucky both times. Thought I should mention it anyway, just in case it turns out to be important further down the line. You never know."

  "Yeah, you never know," she echoed him. Staring down at the bodies, Anderson realised she had reached the point where the Med-Judge could tell her no more. It was up to her now. She was putting off the inevitable. The time had come for her to scan the three bodies before her. It was time to see what they had seen when they died, to experience their pain.

  It was time for more bad memories.

  Bad memories. To Judge Edward Weller, sometimes it seemed as though they were the only memories he had left. As he walked the corridors of the Sector House after having visited his Watch Commander in his office, he found himself sinking into a dispirited mood as his mind replayed their brief conversation from only minutes earlier.

  "Believe me, I sympathise with your position, Weller," watch commander Jessup had told him, nodding sagely from behind his desk. "Nobody likes interference, much less when they are the primary on a case and supposed to be in overall charge of the investigation. But it's a question of priorities and chain of command. What do you think Sector Chief Collins will say if he hears we had a Psi-Judge wanting to help us catch a serial killer and we turned her away? You know what the SC is like: he wants to see cases cleared and perps put in the cubes. Admittedly, I understand that Anderson can be a little unconventional, even difficult at times, but you will just have to make allowances. She is a Psi-Judge, after all. Give it time and I'm sure you will find that she's an asset to your investigation. Anyway, it's not like I'm asking you to partner up with her indefinitely, just until the two of you can bring in the perp." Apparently satisfied that the issue had been decided, the watch commander's eyes had turned to the pile of reports and folders littering his desk. "Now, if that's everything, you'll have to excuse me while I get back to my duties. This paperwork isn't about to pick up a pen and do itself."

  With that, the interview had ended. Despite his best efforts, Weller had been stymied. He had hoped that by visiting Jessup he could elicit the watch commander's support in forcing Anderson to keep her nose out of his case. Instead, he now found he was shackled with the Psi-Judge for the foreseeable future. "Just until the two of you can bring in the perp," Jessup had said. Having worked a number of serial killer investigations before, Weller was well aware of the inherent difficulties of reaching a satisfactory outcome in such a case. Serial killers were elusive beasts. Above all else, the lack of rational motive for their crimes often hampered any attempt to track them down.

  In his own twenty year career as a Judge, Weller had encountered serial killers who committed murder by reason of prior abuse, religious mania, substance addiction, or simply because they thought some Tri-D chat show host was sending them secret messages in every broadcast ordering them to kill. Granted, Weller might get lucky. Maybe Forensics would turn up something, or the killer would make a mistake. Maybe the perp would pick the wrong victim next time and find a stump gun blast waiting for him when he pulled out his knife. In the meantime, it looked like Weller was going to be on this case for the long haul. It could take weeks, even months. And during every moment of the investigation, he would be forced to work with a psychic beside him.

  A psychic; he would have to spend time with a psychic. To Weller, it seemed like the very stuff of his nightmares.

  It all started with Necropolis, he thought, his mood growing bleaker as he made his way to the elevators to head for the morgue. I mean, I never exactly relished having to be around psychics. What Street Judge does? If I'm honest with myself though, it was Necropolis that made all the difference. Necropolis changed everything. After Necropolis, things could never be the same again.

  Necropolis.

  They called it the Necropolis Event. In the blood-splattered annals of the history of Mega-City One, it ranked alongside the Apocalypse War as one of the worst disasters to have ever befallen the city. A group of powerful other-dimensional psychic entities had seized control of the minds of the city's Judges and had forced them to start murdering the same citizens they were sworn to protect. Weller had been one of the enslaved Judges. His memories of the event were a series of hazy recollections of citizens screaming, as he either killed them or rounded them up to deliver them to his new masters for extermination.

  By the time the entities had ultimately been defeated and the Judges finally released from their mental domination, over a million people were dead and the city was in ruins. Ironically, it was Anderson who had played a major part in defeating the entities' plans. But to Weller, it made little difference. She was a psychic, while he was man who, under the influence of psychic powers like hers, had personally played a role in the murder of thousands. It might be unfair, even irrational, but he could no more forgive her for the fact that her powers were psychic in nature than he could forgive himself for his own crimes.

  Even now, more than ten years later, the memories of those nights still haunted him. In the aftermath, like most of the Judges involved in the disaster, Weller had been cleared of having to pay the price for what he had done. "You were acting under psychic compulsion," the senior Judge in charge of the review board had told him. "Your mind was not your own. You cannot be held accountable for your actions." Other than ordering him to attend a few sessions of mandatory psychiatric counselling, as far as the Justice Department was concerned that had been the end of the affair.

  For Weller though, it could never end.

  He dreamed of Necropolis constantly, the sensations of that time granted a clarity and vividness in his dreams that, mercifully, his waking mind could never muster. He dreamed of a woman choking, desperate, her eyes looking at him in uncomprehending horror as his hands closed around her throat. He dreamed of lines of terrified men, women and children being led screaming to destruction. He dreamed of standing in streets littered thick with corpses, his nostrils heavy with the cloying stink of decay, the sky above his head rendered black by the entities' powers as they delivered the entire city into eternal night.

  He dreamed of all these things and more, waking in a cold sweat every time he slept. Then, day after day, when he awoke, he put on his uniform and went out into the streets to do his duty, trying all the while to pretend he could one day forgive himself for the things he had done. In his heart he knew it would never happen. He had innocent blood on his hands. He could not forgive himself for that; his memories of the victims of Necropolis would not let him. While, thanks to the labyrinthine int
ernal politics of the Justice Department, the memories that were his secret shame were now in danger of being discovered.

  A man's mind should be his own, he thought, feeling a rising tide of bitterness as the elevator doors opened before him and he stepped between them. He shouldn't have to guard his thoughts every minute, worrying that some telepath might learn all his secrets. As it is though, I'm going to have to be careful. I can't let Anderson see what's in my head. I can't let her see my memories. I can't let her see anything they could use to pronounce me unfit for duty. I can't let them do it. If they did, I'd go crazy. Some days, I swear being a Judge is the only thing that keeps me sane.

  The frustrating thing was, he had not wanted to call in a Psi-Judge in the first place. He had simply had no choice. Sector 34 had one of the worst rates for unsolved homicides in the city. Accordingly, Sector Chief Collins had recently issued standing orders that the Street Judges of his sector were to use "every available resource" when preliminary investigation of a murder failed to identify any suspects. It was all about clearance rates and Justice Department targets. Sector Chief Collins was an ambitious man, and he was not about to let the problems of Sector 34 reflect poorly on his record. In this case, that meant that Weller had been all but compelled to call in a Psi-Judge to perform a psychometric scan on the Maddens woman's body. Now, he was stuck with her. Worse, he was stuck with the very real possibility that at any moment his own guilty conscience might betray him.

  It did not matter that the review board had cleared him, or that there were hundreds - perhaps even thousands - of other Judges in Mega City One who were in the same position as him. All that mattered was that he had never been able to put Necropolis behind him. If something like that came to the attention of the powers that be, they would act swiftly. Being a Judge in Mega-City One was stressful enough, never mind when you were damaged goods already. They would not take the risk that, his resolve ground down by his nightmares, one day he might crack under the pressure. They would take action. They would invalid him out of the Justice Department immediately, reducing him to civilian status fast enough to make his head spin. And, in the years since Necropolis, it seemed to him that his head had done enough spinning already. Sometimes, it felt like his whole world had turned on its axis and was doing cartwheels, leaving him hanging on grimly in the hope that one day things might return to normal. He wanted to be able to forget. He wanted to be able to forgive himself. But he was a Judge. To a Judge, forgiveness was like mercy: a strange and alien emotion that did not quite come naturally.

  I just have to crack this case as quickly as possible, he told himself. Concentrate on catching the perp so I can get Anderson out of my hair. In the meantime, I just have to hold it together. Above all else, I can't let Anderson know what I'm thinking. I just have to watch my thoughts. I can do it. I've kept this thing to myself for so long. I can keep it inside a little while longer.

  His mind made up, Weller extended his hand to press the button for the elevator to take him down to the sub-basement morgue. The elevator doors closed, the narrow confines of the elevator closing in around him like a coffin. With a distant electric hum the elevator began moving.

  A man going down.

  "I can't even begin to explain it," Anderson said, as she turned to face the three men who had gathered in the morgue to hear the results of the psychometric scans. "I performed a psi-scan on each of the three bodies. In each case, it's clear that the killer gained entrance to the apartment disguised as a delivery man. With Margaret Penrith and Eunice Bibbs he claimed to be from Synthi-Flora with a delivery of flowers and candy, just like with Brenda Maddens. With Vincent Henk he claimed to be from EPS Prize Delivery, come to deliver a brand new state-of-the-art Tri-D player that Henk had won by filling in a shoppers' survey at his local buy-mart. But that's not the weird thing. The weird thing is, with each victim the killer looked completely different. With Vincent Henk he was a short, dumpy guy. With Margaret Penrith he was a tall guy. With Eunice Bibbs he was brown-haired, with Brenda Maddens he was blond. And with each victim his face was different, too. If I didn't know better, I'd say we were looking for four different killers."

  "But that's impossible," Tek-Judge Yoakim said. "The DNA-"

  "I know." Anderson held up a hand to cut him off. "The DNA says the same man was at all their apartments, and hence he must be the killer. Either that or this whole thing is the biggest coincidence in the history of Judicial investigation."

  "It's not just that," Noland said from beside Yoakim. "It's not only the DNA that points to a single perp. There's the autopsy evidence as well. All the things we talked about: the single slash wound to the throat and the pattern of increasing severity of mutilation on each victim; all the evidence points to one man being responsible for all the killings. Then, there's the knife. I can't conclusively rule out a different weapon, but there are wound characteristics in each killing that suggest the perp used a Bowie knife. It can't all just be a coincidence."

  "No, it can't," Anderson told him. "I agree, and that's why I'm at a loss to explain it. But there it is, all the same. I saw four different delivery men in the victims' psychic impressions. Of course, it might just mean I'm going crazy, but, frankly, I was hoping somebody here might be able to offer a better explanation."

  "Maybe he's using a face-changing machine?" Yoakim ventured. "We already know the perp is smart enough to wear a coat made from Stay Kleen. And you know what else? It turns out that none of the blocks where he killed his victims had working surveillance cameras inside them. They either weren't equipped with cameras in the first place, or the cameras they did have were offline for maintenance. It could be the perp is picking blocks like that intentionally. But he still has to worry about being recorded on exterior PSU cameras when he's entering and leaving the building, so maybe he uses a face-changer to alter his features after each killing. He's trying to make it harder for us to catch him."

  "No, it wouldn't work," Noland shook his head. "One of the reasons face-changers are so heavily regulated is because it's dangerous to over-use them. The perp killed three people over a nine-hour period. If he was changing his face that frequently, all that would be left of it by now would be a puddle of flesh-coloured goo. And anyway, a face-changer wouldn't account for the differences in his height and weight that Anderson saw in her scans."

  "What if the perp's carrying a portable holo-unit?" Warming to his subject, Yoakim's voice grew eager. "Some of those new consumer models out of Hondo are small enough for you to fit them in your pocket. I mean, they're pretty pricey and you've got to be careful about interference if you move too close to anything emitting EM radiation, but that could explain how he changes his appearance."

  "It could do," Anderson said as she considered his suggestion. "I don't know though. Holo-units can work fine at a distance, but the illusion doesn't hold up so well when you get in close. Someone can make themselves look taller or shorter, but their arms and legs are still physically the same size. When you're up close, eventually the inconsistencies add up. You start to realise their stride length is wrong, or their arms don't reach as far as they should. Even if you don't realise what's causing it, unconsciously you still know there's something wrong. The perp got really close to his victims, close enough for them to notice the kinds of things I'm talking about, and yet I didn't get any sense of it in the scans. No. It was a good idea, Yoakim, but I just don't think it fits."

  Pausing, Anderson considered the matter for a few seconds longer. Then, finally, she sighed.

  "All right," she said, glancing at the Tek-Judge. "So maybe we need to look at this thing from a different angle. What about you, Yoakim? Have you got anything for us? Fingerprints? DNA comparisons? Other forensics?"

  "Well, despite what I said about the perp trying to make it hard for us to catch him, he doesn't wear gloves," Yoakim said. "I got a bloody handprint on the kitchen table at the Maddens crime scene, as well as a partial thumbprint on the front door that probably belongs to our pe
rp as well. A couple more bloody fingerprints were found at the Bibbs and Henk homicides, but when I ran them through MAC for analysis, I didn't get any hits. It's the same with the perp's DNA. I couldn't find any matches in the Justice Department database. Either the perp is from out of town or he's somehow managed to slip through the system. Guess that explains the lack of gloves."

  "Out of town?" For a moment, Anderson cast her mind back to the memories she had experienced during the psychometric scan of each victim. "Now you mention it, there was something in the voices of the delivery men. They all sounded identical. There was a slight accent. I can't quite place it though."

  "I can forward the fingerprints and DNA to some of the other city-states and ask them to compare them to their records." Yoakim grimaced. "I wouldn't get your hopes up though. We've got reciprocal arrangements with some of them, but you know what it's like with Inter-Judicial bureaucracy. It can take an age before the wheels are finally set in motion."

  "Do it anyway," she told him. "You never know, we might get lucky. Other than that, it sounds like we're batting zero on all fronts."

  "Of course, there could be another explanation for these multiple delivery men of yours, Anderson." Judge Weller had been listening to the conversation in brooding silence, and so far he'd kept his own counsel. Now, at last, he spoke. "Not wanting to harp on with a familiar theme, but how do we know we can even rely on the results of your scans?"