“Last door, you can tail-gate on me this time but watch me, if you go through by yourself you have to know what to do.”
Again, his voice was curt. Eileen mentally cursed her big mouth. Blaine swiped the card through yet another odd looking machine, typed in his number, and pulled on a big steel door as the locking mechanism clicked open.
“My,” Eileen said. “Another door?”
“Yes,” Blaine said, and stepped up to a huge metal door with a submarine-style wheel on it. As he reached out to touch it, it spun from the other side.
“Someone coming out,” Blaine said, and stepped back. The huge door swung towards them noiselessly, and a tiny young woman of Japanese descent stepped briskly through. Her perfume floated along with her, a cloud of Eternity that nearly made Eileen sneeze.
“Oh, good,” the woman said. “You'll close it for me?”
Blaine nodded, and they stepped across a doorway lined with flat brass plates.
“What is this for?” Eileen asked, gesturing at the door and the plates. “If this place springs a leak and sinks?”
Blaine didn't smile. “This protects this area from electronic surveillance,” he said. “No electronic emissions can escape this quadrant of the building.”
A stray thought crossed Eileen’s mind and caused her a brief, tense shudder.
“Something wrong?” Blaine asked.
“I just realized probably that our murderer is in this building with us,” Eileen said with a mirthless smile. “Be kind of hard to get in and out of here unless you worked here.”
Blaine paled at that, and bit his lips to a bloodless line.
“This way,” he said, and led the way down the hall.
“Another door,” Eileen sighed as they stopped next to a blank steel door. “The last one, I dare not hope?”
“The last one,” Blaine said. He put his fingers into a small metal box on the wall and lifted his palm up awkwardly so Eileen could see what he was doing. The box contained a series of buttons, each one numbered sequentially.
“The number is 8030,” Blaine said.
“Memorize it?” Eileen offered. Blaine pursed his lips at her disapprovingly and pressed the buttons in the numbered series. The last, final door clicked open.
“The Gaming Center,” Blaine said, and ushered Eileen in.
They walked up a narrow hallway, barely wide enough for Eileen’s shoulders, and slanted like a handicapped ramp. There was another door at the end of this oddly tilted hallway, but it was chocked open and through it Eileen could see bright lights, colors, the movement and sound of a crowd. There was a smell of coffee and donuts and the crowd animal, perfume and aftershave and the rank scent of sweat. People never smelled pretty after they discovered a dead body.
In the crowd, a murderer, and somewhere at the end of the hallway, the murdered. Eileen took a deep breath. However the strangeness of coming here, in the end a murder was a murder. This was going to be her show, and she was going to make it a good one.
They walked through the doorway and movement and noise dwindled and died away. Eileen looked, seeing a blur of faces and trying to see if one stood out with the pale vampire face of the murderer, pale and shiny with guilt. None presented themselves. Eileen became aware that Blaine was speaking.
“--Please take a seat and wait, the Springs Police have arrived and we'll get you cleared out of here as soon as possible.” This last to a very imposing looking man with the eagles of a full Colonel on his shoulders. A large blonde-haired man stood with him. His hair had a fringe of thick bangs, making him look somewhat like a Roman Caesar. He also wore a set of eagles.
“I'm Colonel Willmeth, Miss Reed,” the man said, and held out his hand.
“Detective Reed, sir. Just call me Eileen.” Eileen smiled and shook his hand, and realized belatedly she’d just called someone “sir.”
“I'm the Base Commander. Major Blaine called me in when he went to contact you. Is there anything I can do to assist you?”
“Has the Medical Examiner arrived? I was told the OSI provides their own.”
Willmeth looked at Blaine.
“He's on his way from a case at Fort Carson, he should be here within the hour.”
“All right then. I need to get these people out of here. Can you put them in a conference room somewhere?”
“I'll take care of it,” Willmeth said.
“Don't let anyone leave the conference room unless they're escorted. That should be fine.”
Eileen stood and watched the crowd slowly work their way from the room, shepherded by Major Blaine and Colonel Willmeth. A rule of investigation already broken. These people had nearly an hour to discuss the murder among themselves. She shrugged, and turned her attention to the room.
It was big, and beautifully proportioned to show to advantage the large screen displays. The biggest screen showed a view of the east coast. Eileen looked at this for a moment, puzzled, and realized the swirl of cloud that she had initially taken for some sort of strange hurricane was the spreading mushroom cloud of atomic detonation over Washington, DC.
“What you are seeing is classified,” Blaine said, returning to Eileen’s side. He sounded too much like he was giving an order to suit Eileen. “It's a simulation.”
Eileen stopped looking at the screen. It looked unbelievably real. The room had rows of seats like an auditorium, with a set of consoles at the end where Blaine and Eileen were standing. The consoles had headsets and microphones, now abandoned. One headset lay dangling over a chair arm, lazily revolving in the chilly breeze of the air conditioning.
This room was different from a typical auditorium. Along each wall there were doors that led to small rooms. All except one of the doors were open, and although Eileen immediately realized the significance of this, she forced herself to look into the other rooms and note the set-up; one console, headsets, microphones, and a comfortable looking chair. Each of the rooms had a fire extinguisher and a phone along with some other tool-like gadgets that were apparently used on the big computers that nearly filled each room. There were no windows or other exit. The little rooms were barely bigger than phone booths.
Eileen inclined her head towards the closed door, and Blaine nodded.
“I need a list of everyone in this room, names, addresses, phone numbers. Do you have a suspect or have you heard anyone mention a suspect?”
“I thought you knew,” Blaine said.
“Knew what?” Eileen asked irritably.
“Terry was murdered in that room but there's no way in or out of it. These cameras --” and Blaine pointed up towards the ceiling, “-- record everything. From the moment she walked in there and shut the door, she was on tape. The audience saw her go into the room, and they didn't see anyone else go in. No one could have gotten in or out of that room without the cameras or everyone here seeing them. No one but Terry went in. And nobody came out.”
Chapter Six
Garden of the Gods, Colorado
George Tabor couldn't do it. No matter how intensive his training had been, he couldn't do it. He looked into his little dog's trusting eyes and put away the pill.
They were in the Garden of the Gods, a city park in Colorado Springs. The Garden was an area with a geologic fault that caused huge rock spires to jut from the ground. The spires reached fantastic heights and were laid edge to edge like knives tumbled in a drawer. The Garden was beautiful in the summertime, with the deep green of the scrub oak setting off the dark red of the rocks. There were bike trails and running trails and horse trails through the park, as well as a few roads for cars. There were plenty of wild spaces in the Garden as well. George had parked his car and walked just a few minutes with Fancy at his side. He stopped in a small clearing that was completely private and hidden.
But he couldn't do it. The sandy soil would be easy to dig to hide the little body of his dog, and he would be free to catch the flight from Denver International Airport he'd booked less than an hour ago. The flight left in two ho
urs and it was non-stop to Paris. He couldn't take a dog. What could he do with her? Then he knew.
“Fancy, come on,” he said, and they started to walk back to his car. The dog bounded at his side, panting happily, knocking into him so he staggered in the soft soil. “Watch it,” he said. He was in his travel suit.
He put her in the car and shut the door.
“You're going to the Animal Shelter,” he told her through the glass, and took a deep breath of the summer air. He opened the door and got in, starting the engine. The interior was still cool from the air conditioning. “I think someone will adopt you,” he said. “At least it's a better chance for you than this.”
Even though he knew the risk, George Tabor was smiling as he pulled his car out of the parking place and headed down the road.
Gaming Center, Schriever Air Force Base
“Get me a tape of everything the cameras recorded,” Eileen said.
“It's classified.”
“I'll look at it here.”
Eileen stood still and thought for a moment. Should she view the tapes now, or interview the Gamers now? She desperately wanted to see the video tapes of the Game. She wanted to see how Terry Guzman could have walked into a room and never come out. Someone must have entered that room, and that someone had to be on the tape. But the Gamers were real people, with memories that would fuzz and fade in just a few hours. The murderer, too, if he were one of them, would have more time to knit together a face of innocence. She didn’t want to risk that. The tapes would have to wait.
Eileen stepped towards the door. She examined it briefly and could see no signs of forced entry. Eileen pulled open the door by tucking her pencil in the slight crack, careful not to touch the knob.
The stench that met her was palpable, the unmistakable effluvium of death. The body was slumped over the console. The console still showed the nuclear cloud moving slowly out over the Atlantic. The woman -- for woman it was, her body curved and lush under what looked like a very expensive linen suit -- had one slender hand still outstretched over the computer mouse. In her back, driven deep and puckering the pale green material of her suit, was the bright yellow handle of a screwdriver. There was a wet patch around the puckered place, starting to dry and change colors at the edges. Eileen could not see her face and was glad, not for the first time. She didn't like to see their faces. Never had.
She could easily reconstruct the murder. The woman's headset was hanging from the chair arm, but it was undoubtedly on when the murderer stepped into the room behind her and drove the screwdriver into her back.
Unfortunately, the theory didn't fit. Anyone in the room behind her could see her right now, and if the murderer came through that door every one of them would have seen him. Or her. Eileen looked closely at the walls, seeing only two air vents near the ceiling that were too small for a human being. There was no other door, no window, no duct opening that would allow someone to wiggle through. The only way in or out of that room was through the doorway she was now standing in.
Eileen backed carefully out of the room. The Crime Lab would be here soon, and the Medical Examiner. She hoped the Air Force Crime Lab was competent. She would want their notes. She let the door swing gently closed.
“I've started a list going around the conference room.” Blaine said. “Names, rank, numbers.”
“Tell me what went on here,” Eileen said abruptly. She realized she’d been waiting for Jim Erickson to ask the question.
“We had a War Game here today. There was an audience, and there were players. The players were in the rooms. The audience membes were in their seats. The Commanders were here, behind the audience.” Blaine pointed at the dais and the row of consoles. “The audience and the Commanders were all in view of the cameras before the Game started. I was here, too. No one left the room from the time Terry entered that room to the time Nelson opened the door.”
“Nelson?”
“Nelson Atkins, the Game Director.”
“I see.”
“So then there are the Gamers, there are eight of them. I mean, seven of them now. They were in the other rooms.”
“Is there any way into Terry's room other than the door?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Thank you, Major,” Eileen said. “Okay. I'll view the tapes later. I think I'll release the audience and your high-ranking commanders, once we have their names. Do you have another conference room or somewhere private? I need to interview these people -- the Gamers, you said? I'd like to do it one at a time.”
“We could use the little one in here,” Blaine gestured to an open door, “but the office one is bigger and more private. It's across the hall.”
“Sounds good,” Eileen said. “Lead me to it. And fill me in on the people I'm going to talk to. I'll let you tell the others they can go for now. I’ll contact them later.”
Fort Rucker Army Post, Alabama
Major Alan Stillwell did not understand quite what was going on. His orders were to return to Peterson immediately, even though his regular flight was scheduled in less than twenty four hours. The message had come through a strange channel, as well. His own base commander had phoned him at the officer's quarters. This was odd enough, considering that the Major had seen his own commander perhaps three times in the past two years at Peterson.
However Major Stillwell was an ambitious officer in a shrinking Defense world. He knew he wasn’t a particularly good-looking man. He was short and had a tendency to grow a paunch, and his hair had been gone on top since he was thirty. A drill sergeant told Stillwell in the officer’s training course that he’d never make flag rank because of his looks.
“It’s a friggin’ beauty pageant,” the sergeant told Stillwell, at a distance of about a quarter inch. “And you’re butt ugly.”
But behind Stillwell’s ordinary brown eyes was a handsome brain. Alan Stillwell astounded his good-looking friends by capturing an array of beautiful, bright girls during his college years. These girls saw the interior man in the tubby little body and, to his friends’ amazement, adored him.
Alan Stillwell was working his way up through the ranks using the same dogged style that won him female hearts wherever he went. So he packed his bags and headed to the flight line.
Waiting for a flight was sometimes a long process, but the orders were clear. He was to return to Peterson on the first available transport and report to his Base Commander. Stillwell didn't much like to fly. He hadn't minded once, back when he'd finished officer's basic training. He'd even felt regret when he was passed over for flight school because of his lack of perfect vision.
Then came his assignment to the OSI, and investigation. Investigation in the Air Force OSI was primarily aircraft accidents, and they were never pretty. Alan Stillwell threw up until he saw black dots in front of his eyes the first time he assisted in an accident investigation of an Air Force Huey helicopter. The helicopter lay in pieces in a hanger, and young Lieutenant Stillwell was assisting Major Johnston, a veteran OSI investigator. The pieces of the helicopter had been collected carefully and laid out in place. The pieces of the two pilots were mostly cleaned out. Not all. Shreds and splashes of human tissue and blood rotted slowly in the early summer heat.
Later, a Major himself, Stillwell was grimly amused when his own new lieutenant lost his lunch at the last investigation. This one was also a helicopter accident, a catastrophic failure of the rotor mechanism. The reason for the rotor failure had to be determined, and the bodies couldn't be moved until they'd filmed the scene and figured out a potential cause. The bodies were frozen solid in the high Colorado winter, and what sent his young assistant to his knees, vomiting, was the frozen icicles around the mouth of the copilot, a pretty young Captain.
Lieutenant Trask abruptly broke into a run and almost made it to the trees before he lost his Air Force cafeteria lunch. Stillwell and the Medical Examiner, Dr. Rowland, nodded at each other sympathetically. You had to be detached. Trask would either learn, or he w
ould find himself in a nice uneventful Military Police job, reading magazines and watching camera shots of windowless buildings.
Now Major Stillwell sat in the flight room at Fort Rucker, Alabama, waiting for a flight to take him to Colorado. He was very detached when at a scene, but he couldn't be quite so detached when he boarded a real plane. He wondered how badly dying in a plane crash felt. Was it really agonizing? Or did the shock make you feel dreamy and uncaring? How long did you have before you realized the plane was crashing? Minutes, seconds, even longer?
“Well, I have one for you, Major,” the flight control airman said, setting a piece of paper down on the high flight line table. “It's not going to be pretty, but it'll get you home. A Chinook, she's brand new and Peterson is where she's being delivered.”
Major Stillwell felt a rictus of a smile spread across his face as he took the paper. He hated helicopters.
“I hope they've got a good supply of barf bags,” he said. The airman laughed.
“You bet they will. There's some good thunderstorms up near Oklahoma this time of year. Check with Roseburg, he's got extra flight helmets. She takes off at dawn, that's about six hours from now. Better try and get some sleep.”
Gaming Center, Schriever
Eileen was catching up on a month’s worth of Dilbert cartoons pinned to a nearby cubicle wall when Major Blaine came back. He’d left her at a conference room across the hall and went to select a Gamer for her to talk to. A tall, stooped man with thinning gray hair was with him.
“Nelson Atkins,” Blaine said.
Ground Zero Page 5
