Jane took my hand in hers.
"I know it's a lot to process. But look at the bright side, Dick. After two years of scratching your head, you can finally get the answers you've been searching for. You got your killer."
I huffed a laugh.
"My killer. You're the one who caught her."
"I couldn't have done it without you," she said. "And really, no one here cares about her. Don't you worry, no matter what happens, Ingrid Blakstov will always be known as Burnside's killer."
With that, we headed out of Janet's office towards the medical center, where I'd finally be face-to-face with the woman who'd been living rent-free in my brain for the past two years.
If I'd known ahead of time what I was going to find there, I might had just run for the nearest airlock instead.
Forty Six
Ingrid was out cold when we arrived, still naked, and lying in a medical scanning unit.
On the other side of the room, I saw Fritz's corpse cooling on a slab. The blood on his abdomen had dried to a black crust.
Medical droids buzzed about doing their thing, as I looked down at Ingrid. One of them began treating my arm as I stood there. Unconscious, she looked almost innocent, just the girl next door. It was clear how she'd managed to snare so many victims into her web, even if she hadn't been able to emit sex hormones to attract them.
Then I caught sight of the tentacles for the first time in person, and my stomach quivered.
Meanwhile, Jane and Janet activated the monitors of the scanning unit, and I immediately wished they hadn't. I thought the tentacles were hard to deal with. I saw what was on the screen, and realized they were unicorns and sunshine compared to what was beneath them.
"Interesting," said Janet.
"That's one word for it," I said, my eyes locked on the display despite my best efforts to pull away. "Fucking horrifying would have been my choice."
The scan showed an overlay of Ingrid's groin areas, the tentacles, the skin below them, the blood vessels, muscle and fat beneath that. None of it was unusual.
But under it all, was a perfect set of wide, interlocking triangular teeth, four on either side of the inner vaginal lips. They were connected to the vaginal wall by dense muscle tissue.
"It looks like an ancient Earth bear trap," said Jane. "Except with bone instead of metal." She must have seen my face turn white, because she touched my hand. "Sorry. I don't suppose I needed to point that out, did I?"
"That's not the strangest part," said Janet. She pointed to a spot farther up the vaginal canal. "No ovaries, no fallopian tubes. This space here looks something like a uterus, but it's actually full of fluid, and has a sphincter opening."
I'd barely passed biology in school, but I knew enough about human anatomy from my career, and I had a sinking feeling I knew where she was going with that. The last thing I wanted to do was ask her the next question, but I knew I had to.
"What are you saying?"
"Scan confirms the uterus is filled with an acid mixture. Look here."
She pointed to a series of tubes which snaked from the area up into the lower part of the descending colon.
I cleared my throat.
"So, it's a…"
I couldn't finish, so Janet did it for me.
"Secondary digestive system. Essentially, she's been consuming the penises she severs from her victims."
You'd think my first thought after that would have been about the victims. In reality, all I could think about was the questions from reporters. I was already making up names they'd assign to Ingrid. The Dick Shark, or maybe Snake Eater.
"I need to sit down," I muttered.
Luckily, a droid pulled a rolling chair over, and set it under my ass before I fell to the floor again.
"It's the final piece of the puzzle," said Jane. "Combined with the pheromone assault, it explains how she was able to sever the victims' penises without any struggle, and why you were never able to recover any traces of a weapon, or the penises, after the fact."
I nodded, rubbing my temples.
"Victims went into shock as soon as they came, so they were already half-dead by the time they'd even realized what was happening. The penile artery is a gusher, especially after an orgasm, so they wouldn't even have the strength to stand after that."
"It also explains why I didn't detect a weapon coming on board," said Janet, sounding almost relieved. "Sophisticated as they are, our scanners aren't programmed to pay attention to organic composition. Metal, plastic, ceramic, even chemical combinations will set off the alarms. But her weapon is made of simple dentin and enamel, just like every other human's teeth. Although shark teeth are probably closer."
She studied the readouts a while longer.
"Vagina dentata. How fascinating."
"Vahuna denwhata?" I asked. "What did you say?"
"Vagina dentata. It's an old Earth folk tale dating back at least fifteen hundred years, where a woman has teeth in her vagina. Often used in misogynistic storytelling, as a means of making men afraid of powerful women. And now we have a physical manifestation of it. Perhaps the folklore was actually based on something similar."
That got me thinking about the powerful women I was currently surrounded by, which reminded me they weren't actually women, at least not in the physical sense. But in every single way, they were extraordinary.
My stomach was starting to calm down, so I ran a hand down my face, and forced myself to look at the monitor again. Other than the obvious differences, it looked like Ingrid was physically the same as most people.
"So you don't think she's an alien?" I asked.
"I'm positive she's a mutant," said Janet. "Outside of her unusual reproductive system, she's identical to humans."
"Natural? Or manmade?"
"Unclear. But now we have her, we should be able to find out."
I wandered over to the fake Fritz's body. Other than the obvious cause of death in his belly, he was fairly well preserved.
"Anything out of the ordinary on our accomplice here?" I asked. "I was specifically thinking of the ridge in his skull."
Janet shook her head.
"Just an implant, likely for the purpose of disguise. Other than that, entirely human."
Which shot down my germ of a theory, that he and Ingrid had somehow been mutated together. That was the life of a detective, creating theories, and proving them right or wrong. The latter happened a hell of a lot more often than the former, unfortunately.
"Hold on," said Janet, looking at readouts on the screens. "There's something odd about the implant."
"What's that?"
She called up a closer scan on the screen. It looked to be made of bone, but when it zoomed into the microscopic level, it showed something definitely not bone.
"Nanotech," she said softly. "But it appears to be organic, somehow. And it's connected to his cerebral cortex. I've never seen anything like this."
I felt a light going off in my mind.
"That's how he did the hacks! And probably how he managed to wipe the other victims' home computers after the murders."
"It would seem so. Jon will want to know about this as soon as possible. We need to find out where this tech came from. It had to have been incredibly expensive on the black market."
"Now we know about it, we can program the scanners to look for it from now on," said Jane. "But it does solve that part of the mystery."
"Well, I've got some work to do," I said. "Do I need a warrant to get into Ingrid's ship, and access her computer?"
"If Jon were actually here, he'd have ordered me to do it himself. He might even have had me kill Ingrid here where she lies."
My eyes went wide.
"Are you serious?"
"Absolutely," said Jane. "Jon is a complex man. He's generous to a fault, but he's also absolutely ruthless when it comes to threats against himself, or anyone under his protection. I've seen him execute assassins on the spot. He once tossed an entire merc unit out of an airloc
k. If he were here on the station…"
"He'd be dead," I pointed out. "He doesn't have your," I hunted for the right words, "special abilities."
"Actually, he'd be quite fine," said Jane. "His suit would have protected him, even with so little warning. Going into a Venus trap, it would have been programmed to emulate his naked self, with clothes over the top like I was wearing, and he'd never have allowed it to be seen it was a suit, let alone allow it to be taken off him. As sharp as those teeth are, they're no match for the suit. My avatar wasn't damaged by them in the least, and Jon wears a much superior form than I use. Had this been real, he'd have committed assassin interuptis. Permanently interrupted. Especially after what he's been through in the last few months. Janet wouldn't have been able to stop him."
Which reminded me of something which had been lost in the shuffle of everything that had happened.
"Speaking of that," I said. "How did Janet materialize inside Jon's suite the way she did?"
"The suit again," said Janet. "Chameleon programming allows it to be effectively invisible unless it's in motion."
"Huh. Could have used something like that on stakeouts."
Jane grinned.
"They're practically brand new. And trust me, the ESPD's entire annual budget would have been used up on a single suit."
Again I wondered about this life on the fringes of the galaxy. Money, power, women, no bureaucracy, frustration, and boredom. It was becoming more fascinating by the minute.
Janet turned her attention to Fritz's body on the slab.
"It's a shame you had to kill him," she said mildly. "He would likely have been able to supply us with some answers. I'll have to see what I can track down from records, instead."
"I tried my best to keep him alive," I shrugged. "I guess I'm just a natural-born killer."
It was meant as a joke, but Jane nodded as if she agreed.
"Don't think Jon hasn't taken notice of that," she said. "He's going to want to meet you. And soon."
Forty Seven
The computer on Ingrid's ship didn't stand a chance against Jane.
I watched with a mixture of fascination, and a little fear, as a slim piece of metal extended from her index finger into the emergency data port of the airlock. She glazed over for a fraction of a second, before coming back to me.
"Piece of cake," she said as the door opened, and we headed inside.
It was a fairly standard small freighter, which we expected. Inside the cargo bay was a sophisticated long-range shuttle I was willing to bet we'd be able to place at some, if not all, of the murder scenes, just in case we needed evidence for a trial. That was far from a certainty, given Hunter could decide to blast her into space if he felt like it.
Jane hacked into the computer, as I stalked my way through the ship's living area. There was a disproportionate number of clothing wardrobes on board, housing hundreds of outfits ranging from formalwear, to sports jerseys, to sexual fetish gear, numerous wigs, skin and hair dyes, coloured contact lenses, and more. It seemed our gal Ingrid was prepared for just about any situation.
Any situation except the one she found on Hunter's Redoubt, that is.
I couldn't find anything directly related to her accomplice, and was about to head back to Jane, when I saw a thin seam in the otherwise smooth wall behind the head of her bunk. I touched it lightly, and nothing happened, so I pressed harder. At that, it sprang open, revealing a storage space about twice the size of a shoebox.
It contained what I would have expected from someone in her line of work. Hard credits, fake IDs, some hacking tech, and a signal booster. But stuck to the interior wall was an image of a couple holding an infant. And under the other items was a small metal nameplate, the kind some pilots liked to affix to the outside of their ships. It said, simply, Stargazer.
An alarm went off in the back of my mind as I read it, and I trotted back to the bridge to find Jane.
"Stargazer," I said. "Tell me why that name rings a bell for me."
She accessed records, and nodded.
"Got it. Explorer ship that tried to cross the barrier system which stopped us from colonizing closer to the core of the galaxy. Would have been about twenty-five years ago now." She paused for a moment. "Interesting. This ship has a complete set of media records of the Stargazer ship and mission. What are you after?"
"Was there a crew member named Blakstov?" I asked.
"Two. Boris and Irina." Her eyes lit up. "I see where you're going. Let me look, yes, here it is. Birth record for Ingrid Blakstov. Born eight months after the Stargazer made it out of the barrier system."
"And the parents?"
"Died three months after she was born, within days of each other. Cancer brought on by radiation exposure in the barrier system."
We looked at each other.
"I think we can assume she was conceived before or during the mission," I said. "I'm no scientist, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out the foetus was likely mutated by the same radiation which subsequently killed her parents."
"Highly likely," she said. "It's possible she had a natural in-utero defence against radiation, in addition to her other mutations. Everyone else on that ship was dead within a year."
"Odd she'd use her real name here like she did," I mused. "But I guess names weren't really high on the list of priorities for her victims, when they were swimming in pheromones. They were probably all dead within an hour of meeting her."
Jane searched a while longer, before we were interrupted by a call from Janet.
"Ingrid Blakstov is awake," she said. "We've got her in a holding cell. She's none too happy about it."
"I'll bet," I said. "Give me a few minutes to get there, and I'll start my interrogation."
I looked at Jane, who nodded.
"Go," she said. "I've got more sifting to do, and I know you're eager to get the answers you've been looking for. Hopefully I'll meet up with you in a bit with even more of them."
I stalked out of the ship, feeling better than I had in two years.
Forty Eight
Ingrid glared at me from the other side of the force field.
Her wide smile was nowhere to be seen now. They'd given her a featureless grey jumpsuit to cover herself, but there were no other luxuries in the cell. She sat on the floor mat, her arms crossed over her knees.
"Hello, Dick," she spat, as I took a seat in front of the cell.
Janet stood behind me, arms folded over her chest, observing.
"Nice to finally meet you, Ingrid," I said with mock courtesy. "I've been looking forward to this for two years now."
"I bet." Her eyes bored a hole into me. "Old fuck like you probably doesn't get to talk to young girls very often."
I grinned.
"Aren't you sweet. And what an actress! You had all of us fooled. Well, except my companion here."
I raised a hand to Janet, who waved.
"I filled Ingrid in on how she was captured," she said. "She wasn't very impressed, or at least that's what she said."
"Really?" I asked.
It surprised me Janet would tell her the truth about herself and Jane.
"Holograms are amazing things," Janet said with a grin.
I didn't need to see a wink to know what had happened. She'd told Ingrid a story more than plausible enough to fool her, especially since she would have had gaps in her memory from the stunner shot to the head.
"You come here to make fun of me?" Ingrid asked. "I know my rights. You're not allowed to do that."
"It's always about rights with you criminals," I said. "Never the rights of your victims. Hate to tell you, honey, but your rights aren't worth a pinch of freeze-dried dog shit here."
Ingrid's eyes widened, and she looked over my shoulder at the security chief.
"He's right," said Janet. "My boss may decide to execute you on the spot. We won't know until he gets here, which won't be for a while. In any case, I'd get comfortable on that floor if I were you."
&
nbsp; Ingrid scowled, and hunkered down even more, as if trying to close herself off from our presence. I had bad news for her. I wasn't going anywhere.
"Who was your accomplice?" I asked. "I mean, I know who he is, he's the guy I killed earlier today. You remember, the one on the slab in the room where you woke up?"
Her eyes flashed with cold fury, but she stayed silent.
"I meant, who was he, really. We know he wasn't Hartley Fritz. I assume one of you killed the real one before taking his identity? Don't bother answering, I don't care. Actually, I don't really care who he was, to be honest. I'm more interested in what he was." I leaned forward and grinned. "Your pimp."
That got a rise out of her.
"Fuck you!" she bellowed. "You don't know anything! Just like he always said!"
"Did he help you with the clean-up? That would explain how you managed to leave such immaculate crime scenes in such a short time. I assume he did your bookings for you, of course, and handled logistics. I bet he was watching Patterson outside the stadium, so he could direct you to exactly the spot where you could conveniently bump into him."
More silence, which was fine with me.
"But you," I said. "You were the talent. The one who took care of the business only you possibly could. Taking on all those high-stakes contracts, raking in what I assume was millions of credits. I have a feeling once I start looking into it, I'm going to find your clients are all quite wealthy."
"Who cares?" she said, but I could tell her casual tone was a feeble attempt to mask her real fear. "Like you said, Hunter's going to kill me anyway."
"Not necessarily," said Janet. "He could just as easily have you extradited back to Earth Sector to stand trial. It would be a huge boost for Detective Burnside's career."
For an artificial intelligence, Janet was incredibly intuitive. She knew this was my last case, but she also knew threatening a trial, and a lifetime in prison, might get Ingrid thinking about making some sort of deal, and loosen her tongue in the process.
Burnside's Killer_Extended Version Page 20
