Titanshade

by Dan Stout

  At the far end was an open door. The bedroom.

  I took a breath and held it as I walked in.

  The whole family was in there. Parents and two young boys, four bodies laid in a row. Deep gashes were clearly visible in the victims’ torsos, and the blood had drained out, soaking the carpet in a wide area. There were no markings or trails to indicate the bodies had been moved, and there were contusions on the boys’ heads, as if they’d been knocked out before they were brought into the room and killed. A set of shoeprints led away from the bodies. The prints were adult-sized but small, maybe from the witness who’d found the victims.

  The techs around me weren’t wearing respirators. I let out my breath. On the inhale there was no scent of cinnamon. That was a relief, at least.

  An entertainment center sat in the corner, a sheet draped over the television. I glanced at the bed, and saw its sheets had been pulled off. Wondering why the family or killer had done that, I turned away and stared at the windows. All the curtains were tightly drawn except one, and through it I could see Ajax talking to one of the patrol cops outside. I moved to the window and rapped on the glass pane. My partner glanced up, and I motioned for him to join me. He headed into the house, and I was left staring at my reflection superimposed over the neighborhood.

  A few seconds later Ajax walked into the bedroom. I greeted him with a question.

  “You think they were about to go on vacation?”

  He looked around, eyes resting on the sheet-covered mirrors and TV, and the framed photos that had been flipped facedown or taken off the wall.

  “No,” he said. “That was the neighbor outside. She watches the kids some days, the mother’s sister does others. She came by at the normal time and when no one answered she tried the door. She confirmed that the victims live here.” A slight nod to the bodies on the floor. “Jon and Tara Bell-Asandro and their sons. But I don’t know—”

  I waved a hand to interrupt him. “Reflections.” I turned around and raised my voice to be heard by the whole crew. “Curtains!”

  The techs stared.

  “Who opened the curtains?” There was a pause that ran on for too long for my liking. “I watched Detective Ajax walk up to this house through the window. The curtains would have been closed when you got here, and now they’re open. Who did that?”

  Ajax scanned the room, and I heard an intake of breath. “Reflections,” he said.

  I shot him a fake grin. Glad you’re catching up.

  A particularly pimple-faced tech approached me and held up a hand. “I opened the curtains, sir. We needed the light to take photos so—”

  I raised my voice again. “Those cameras don’t have flashbulbs? Cause they look like they got flashbulbs to me.”

  His cheeks reddened and he nodded.

  I spoke loud enough for everyone in the house to hear. “Do not move anything until we see it and document it. Is that understood?”

  Turning back to the tech I rolled my eyes. “Get back to work.”

  “So.” Jax drew the syllable out and turned it into a musical scale. “Our guy covered anything that would show his face.”

  “Which means?”

  He snapped on his own set of latex gloves. “Guilt,” he said. “Superstition.”

  “Maybe. It definitely means he was here for a while. At least long enough to pull sheets and cover surfaces, probably longer.” I made a slow turn, arms spread. “What was he seeing in here?”

  A tech stuck his head into the bedroom. His dust mask was loose around his neck.

  “You need to see this, Detective.”

  “Not now.” I scanned the room again. I tried to put myself in the killer’s shoes, seeing the room as he or she had done.

  The tech cleared his throat. “There’s a note.”

  I paused, not certain I’d heard right. “A note?”

  He nodded rapidly. “Yes, sir. In the kitchen.”

  I pushed him aside, and ran downstairs.

  The note was written on paper torn from a spiral-bound pad and shoved in the edge of the pantry cabinet. The slogan, “If You Please, Get These Gro-cer-ies” was printed in a purple graphic across the top of the paper. Beneath that, scrawled in thick black marker, were two sentences.

  “Warts and all, the greatest treasures are at the greatest depths. I’m sorry.”

  I read it aloud, then looked at Jax. “What in the Hells does that mean?”

  He didn’t say anything, and I stared at the writing for a long moment, waiting for pieces to fit together. They didn’t all match, but something clicked.

  “Hold on.”

  I jogged down the hall to the living room. Picking up the family photo, I saw two parents, two young children. I dropped it back in place and grabbed another one. Two parents, two small children, and one older boy. A teenager hiding his eyes behind long bangs. Another son who wasn’t lying dead in that bedroom. “Jax,” I called, “we need a BOLO on the oldest son.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Don’t know. I’d say he’s . . .” The other two kids in the photo were a couple years younger than their corpses in the bedroom. I added that time to the look of the missing son. “Nineteen or twenty. Call in to the Bunker—”

  He nodded, keeping pace with me. “And have them run a records check. Be on the lookout for someone that matches. On it.”

  “Make sure that BOLO goes out with a note to treat him with kid gloves. Either he’s our killer, or there’s a good chance he’s got no idea this has happened yet.”

  There was a rattle from Ajax’s coat. He fished out his pager, then showed it to me. Code 25: Report in to Dispatch. We hiked out to the car and radioed in together. The dispatcher we got was a veteran named Kelly.

  “Yeah, hold on,” she said. We waited while she sorted through the pizza boxes and note cards that littered the dispatch office. “Here it is. Detective Kravitz left a message for you. It says ‘Good to go on your interview. You’re expected at 1 Government Plaza ASAP.’”

  “That’s great,” I said. “But we’re on a crime scene right now.”

  “There’s more to the message,” she said. “It says ‘Drop everything.’”

  Make it work. Even if it meant the death of this family went on the back burner. I looked at Ajax.

  “This is exactly the reason I wanted someone else to take first on-scene,” I said.

  I stalked back to the victims’ home and told myself to compartmentalize, to push aside my desire to find this killer, so that I could focus on finding another one. I almost managed to convince myself that it worked.

  8

  I DON’T LIKE POLITICIANS.

  Maybe somewhere they’re worth a damn, some alternate world where those who govern do so out of a sense of civic obligation instead of greed and a hunger for power. But Titanshade has always had a way of clarifying people’s true intentions. There’s never been a politician, whether it’s our current representative in the Assembly of Free States or the lowliest alderman, who didn’t eventually lash out at the people she was supposed to protect, or line his pockets with the labors of those who trusted him. The people of this city have long since surrendered any hope that politicians are in the game of helping others. At this point we just hope they won’t do too much collateral damage as they rob the communal till of every last coin they can find.

  And diplomats? They’re nothing but politicians who can’t be bothered to go to the trouble of rigging an election. So the gilded halls and ornate furnishing of the diplomatic corps didn’t surprise me. When we were escorted to an ostentatious office decked out with velvet curtains and oil paintings of famous politicians, that didn’t surprise me either.

  What did surprise me was the apparent sincerity of the woman seated before us when she stared us in the eyes and said, “Find him, Detectives. Find the son of a bitch who did this, and l
et us know what you need to help you do it.”

  Her name was Gellica, and judging from her office, she was far from the lowest rung on the ladder.

  Jax answered with a polite voice, solid as an old oak table. “We’ll do our best, Ambassador. What we need right now is candor.”

  “If we’re starting with candor,” she said, “drop the ‘ambassador’ title.” She grinned and continued in a confidential whisper. “I’m technically a diplomatic envoy. The ambassador is my boss.”

  She pointed to one of the paintings on the wall, a portrait of a steel-eyed human woman with a dimpled chin and tightly cropped dark hair. I recognized Ambassador Paulus from the front page of the papers. She was the Assembly of Free States’ representative in Titanshade, and the lead figure in negotiations with the Squibs and other parties to convert the surrounding oil fields into wind farms. As a member city-state, Titanshade had a fair amount of autonomy. But if the rest of the AFS determined that something would happen, our city’s lone voice would be overruled and ignored. Paulus was a powerful woman.

  Jax pressed on.

  “I may need to ask you some uncomfortable questions.”

  The smile dropped from Gellica’s face.

  “I know what happened to the Squib delegate.” She paused, and I saw the thought behind her words, as carefully calculated as the curve of makeup that accented the upturn of her eyes. “I would say that the whole damn thing is uncomfortable.”

  Jax nodded and started the interview. I half listened to the first few questions, but since I wasn’t running the interview my focus drifted. I found myself paying more attention to this diplomat who didn’t care for titles.

  Gellica was dressed in a white suit made of quality fabric, expensive but not ostentatious. Her dark hair wasn’t curled but simply swept back over her shoulders. For all the appearance of an outfit casually put together, the finished product was striking, and I was sure every element had been chosen for effect. Not so unfashionable as to be an object of scorn, but she wasn’t going to be invited to any social-climbing parties mountainside. The office desk was massive and as ornate as the rest of the room, but she didn’t hide behind it. Instead she sat on a simple wooden chair across from the small couch that Jax and I shared. There was an antique coffee table between her and us, and though there was a full tea service laid out on it she hadn’t made a show of offering us a drink. Overall, she was showing us more honesty than I’d expected.

  The basic preamble over, Jax shifted, jostling my elbow as he started the real questioning. “Are you aware of anyone in the diplomatic corps hiring prostitutes?”

  “Yes.”

  That was far more honesty than I’d expected.

  Jax nodded. He was either less surprised or better at hiding it. “Were any of those envoys in the area of the Eagle Crest hotel last night?”

  Gellica reached into an attaché beside her chair and pulled out two manila file folders. She held them out to us.

  “Here are dossiers on the only two members of our staff who have such proclivities and whose whereabouts that night are unaccounted for.”

  I took the folders, and Jax said, “We like to account for whereabouts on our own, Envoy.”

  She nodded and crossed her legs. The fabric of her skirt pulled against her thigh and I looked away, studying the swell of the velvet curtains. It didn’t help.

  “Of course,” she said. “But any other envoys I might suspect were on active duty or have alibis backed by witnesses.”

  Ajax eyed the dossiers. “You assembled all this rather quickly.”

  “We started work as soon as we heard of the murder. It’s natural to suspect those closest to the late delegate. The faster you have this information, the faster you can apprehend the guilty party.” She laced her hands over one knee. “And if it comes out that we helped the investigation, it will help mitigate any negative publicity.”

  As a rule, I’m always suspicious when someone offers to do my work for me. Jax seemed to share my sentiment.

  “This is a homicide investigation,” he said.

  Gellica raised a finger, showing off a tightly trimmed nail. It was painted a rich brown a few shades darker than her skin tone.

  “It’s a homicide investigation with international implications. It will impact trade relations and redirect billions of dollars in unanticipated ways. People may lose jobs, factories may be relocated. Your investigation,” she said, “needs to be aided by any means necessary.” She looked at Jax for a long beat and even spared a glance for me. “If you need the other names you’ll have them. But start here. I don’t know about their . . .” She paused. “Preferences. But I expect that they would only call in candies from the Estates.”

  So Gellica knew the different availabilities of candies. That was interesting. She was either intimately familiar with that trade or else . . .

  “Where are you from?” I asked. Jax shot me a look but didn’t call me out for breaking my silence.

  Gellica didn’t smile, though a careless observer might have thought she had. Half of her mouth twisted up and there was a look in her eyes as though she was remembering something not quite unpleasant. Like the forgotten memory of a too-sweet apple pie.

  “I was born here,” she said. “I didn’t move away till I went to Fracinica for college.”

  “And now you’re back,” I said.

  “I go where I’m sent.”

  “You always that obedient?”

  “Only to my country.”

  Jax leaned forward. “Ambassador—”

  “Envoy,” Gellica and I corrected him in unison.

  Jax opened and closed his biting jaw, looking confused. So I asked the envoy another question.

  “What part of town?”

  Gellica raised an eyebrow. “Pardon me?”

  “You said you grew up here. What part?”

  “The nice part.”

  “There is no nice part of Titanshade.”

  Her smile was genuine this time, and I discovered that I liked being the cause of that smile. White teeth stood out against the rich brown of her skin and she tilted her head back at a slight angle, as if she were dancing on the edge of a laugh.

  Jax was getting impatient. He pointed his pencil at Gellica like a man asking to cut in at a wedding dance.

  “You’re giving us two names. Is there one you suspect more than the other?”

  “I have no idea, Detectives. I was kind of hoping you’d ask some probing questions and then put the pieces together.” Gellica pinched her jaw between finger and thumb, making the dimple in her chin more prominent.

  “Oh, we will,” I said. “We’ll haul in the killer, no matter who they work for, or who that might embarrass.” I tilted my head toward the portraits of politicians hanging on the wall.

  I was brought back to reality by a sharp pain in my thigh. Jax had discreetly turned his pencil around and jabbed it into my leg.

  “Carter . . .” She rolled my name across her lips as if tasting it. “I’ve heard of you.”

  “It’s not an uncommon name.”

  “When our staff spoke with the chief of police, she told us which detectives she was considering to oversee the case. Your name came up.”

  “Oh?”

  “She assured us it wouldn’t be you.”

  “She assured you right. I’m not overseeing anything. I’m just conducting routine interviews.”

  Jax broke in again. “Actually I’m conducting the interview. My partner—”

  “Your partner is completely right.” Gellica raised her voice and pointed at the folders in my hand. “I’m not providing that material to encourage you to hush this up. We need to see the guilty party found, arrested, and incarcerated, or we all look like fools.”

  She shifted her finger to me. “The ambassador and I will do whatever it takes to help you
r investigation wrap up as quickly as possible. I’m not disparaging you or your work. But we can’t have anything, or anyone, taking attention away from this murder. I hope you understand that.”

  She leaned back and indicated the folders with a casual wave. “Now do you want to interview those two men immediately or at a later date?”

  I started to answer but Jax shifted in his seat, sending an elbow to my ribs as he did so.

  “Only if they’re flight risks,” he said. “Otherwise we’ll have to go through our department. Do you think they’re nervous about why you were asking about them?”

  She shook her head. “Neither of the men named in those files believes he is under suspicion. My inquiries were discreet.”

  “That’s quite a trick,” I said. “Where did you pick that up?”

  “My mother,” she said, and the half-smile of unpleasant memories returned. “She still lives in the Hills.”

  “Oil money?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “New or old?”

  “Old as oil,” she said.

  “If you grew up around oil money, then you learned to be suspicious of everyone,” I said.

  She looked at me and blinked slowly, not sure where I was going. Suspicious indeed.

  “I’ll—” I glanced at Jax and corrected myself. “We are asking you again. Of these two,” I said, tapping the folders, “which one do you suspect more?”

  I expected another pencil jab from Jax, but it didn’t come. He was focused on Gellica.

  She breathed in deeply and seemed to give it some thought. “Of these two . . .” Gellica thumbed the top folder. “Cordray is the one I dislike less as a person. Look at him first.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You think the one you like better is the killer?”

  She gave me an empty smile and spread her hands. “Isn’t it always that way, Detective?”

  Ajax cleared his throat, a sound not unlike a basket of wind chimes tumbling down a stairwell.

  Gellica turned to him. “How else can I help you?”