Six Shadows

by Nicole Grotepas

  “Ah, the record of time-stamps of when the door was accessed and who accessed. This goes back three weeks.”

  “Did a building super show on the logs or something?” Meg asked.

  “No, I don’t see one, at least not today, except for the girlfriend this morning,” Miko flipped through the file. “It all looks like the victim with a few odd ones in the mix. Except for the girlfriend this morning.”

  “Sounds like his life was rather dull. Boring.” Given, that was how mine was. The only people who came by my place were Lucy and Meg, when Meg dropped her off.

  Meg paced in front of the board. “I agree. If his life was that empty on the surface, maybe his computer will turn up something. Maybe that’s where he did all his living. Daxan?”

  “Yes?” He was at his desk now and spun in his chair to look at Meg.

  “Grab the victim’s computer from forensics and get searching through the files.”

  “Yes, sir,” Daxan said, standing up and heading out of the room. The young Druiviin was good at the desk stuff, not so much the beat. The natures of humans and Consties still baffled him, it seemed. If a person had never felt the urge to lie to protect themselves or experienced the passion of volcanic rage, then it was much harder to read suspects.

  And I sensed that he was afraid to screw up.

  Miko went to her desk, put her notes down, and began to work at her computer.

  “And we need to check his bank accounts,” I said.

  “Doing that now,” Miko said.

  “Good. Because the rest of the team is still on the Trippel investigation. Waugh is taking over the case from this morning—that dead witness.” I sighed. “Right now, I need a break.”

  Meg scoffed. “We’re not taking a break. We’re going over the suspects.”

  “Suspect,” I corrected. “There’s just the one. We need to find more suspects, because you clearly don’t think it was the pregnant girlfriend. And I tend to lean that way myself.”

  “Then this is hardly the time for a break, Gabe. We need to know what the hell the victim was doing when he died.”

  “Right. But I need a break. Because I haven’t eaten anything except a couple chunks of leftover brie from that terrible party you forced me to attend a few days ago.”

  “You loved it. And Lucy loved having you there,” Meg said.

  “I can’t think when my blood sugar is this low. I’m not suggesting we stop working on the case. Someone needs to go knock on doors again—check the surrounding businesses to see if anyone saw anything. And one of us needs to go interview the ex again.” I bit my lip and wondered if Meg was going to fight me on this, and how hard I could push back before it turned ugly. My communicator buzzed. “Yep?” I answered.

  “Gabe. Hey,” it was Cassandra Rossum, the medical examiner. “Cause of death is what you thought—blunt-force trauma. Base of the skull. But there are other things you should see. Come down to the morgue when you can and I’ll do the rest of the autopsy.”

  “I can now,” I said, relieved to have an excuse to get out and grab some food on my way over. My mouth watered thinking about the Molten Taco nearby. Although, if I was going to be heading to the autopsy, maybe I didn’t want to eat anything.

  “See you in a minute.” Cassandra hung up.

  “Go then,” Meg said, pouting when I ended the call.

  “I will,” I said. “I have to, though, you know. Don’t have a choice. It’s my job”

  “Right. Can you stop at my condo and check on Lucy?” she asked. “So I can go knock doors like you want me too?”

  “Yes. Go knock doors. I’ll check on our kid. Also, someone make sure Daxan’s scouring the web while you two canvas the area again.”

  ***

  The ME’s office was located between the Ice Jade district and the Yellow Jade district, and served both areas. Meg’s apartment was in a fairly nice tower in the Ice Jade district, mid-level in a corner suite. I grabbed a couple tacos for myself and one for Lucy, and headed by her place to eat them with her before I went to watch the autopsy. At least the next fifteen minutes in my life were at peace while Lucy ate her taco and regaled me with stories from school. All too soon the real world pushed its way between my daughter and me. Sighing, I looked at my watch, kissed Lucy on the forehead and hurried over to try to make most of the procedure.

  “These bruises here,” the medical examiner said once I’d arrived and dressed into a set of protective clothing.

  It looked like, judging from the open chest cavity and organs out in containers for weighing, that she was at least halfway done already. Druiviin, Centau, and Consties had the same color of blood as humans—but organs and such all had slight variations. The stench in the room was one I’d never gotten used to, even though the body hadn’t been dead as long as some, a torso splayed open like that had a terrible scent. The doctor had told me before that even living bodies smelled bad open like that.

  Cassandra brushed her gloved finger along the distinct marks, skirting the bottom bones of the ocular cavity. Beneath the bright lights, the bruises were clearer. They formed the faintest outline of . . . something. “They happened at the time of death—which was about 9:30 in the morning.”

  “I’ll make a note of it. Yeah, the bruises, I’d noticed them earlier. Wanted to ask you about them. So I was right? They happened just before death?”

  “Exactly. They look like, maybe, goggles?” Cassandra’s red hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she wore a lab-coat over medical scrubs and a mask. Only her forehead and blue eyes were visible, though she also wore safety glasses.

  “So,” I looked up, and tried to picture why the victim ended up with weird goggle markings on his face when he died. I recalled the crime scene, placing myself back in it, seeing the room.

  “Goggles,” I repeated. “Like swimming goggles?”

  Cassandra frowned. “No, if they were swimming goggles, then they’d be a snorkeling mask. But this Druiviin didn’t die from drowning. Why would he have goggles on?”

  “Right, right. That makes no sense. What’s the easiest explanation? He was wearing goggles. But they weren’t for swimming. What else is there?” I stared absently at the trough-like sink along the far wall of the facility. “Piloting goggles? Was the vic a transport pilot of some kind? Maybe on an airship between the moons?”

  “Those goggles are generally round and they wrap about the eyes more. If it helps, there was another strange mark on the inside of his left ear. I’ve never seen a mark like it. Could come from a fingernail or something else that happened in a struggle. Only, there aren’t any other signs of a struggle.”

  I moved to her side of the autopsy table.

  “This right here,” she said. “See? Not quite a bruise. Looks like he had an earpiece in. He must have also landed on it when he fell—his head rolled onto it, but his face took the brunt of the fall. Maybe that’s what happened. Because forensics didn’t recover anything at the crime scene, it’s all speculation till they do recover something.”

  “But if you’re right and it’s an earpiece, then we’re looking at something that would use both goggles and sound. Which points to a pilot of some kind. Or something that would be used in a living room. Maybe that Holographic-reality stuff.”

  Cassandra thought about it. Her mouth wasn’t visible because of the mask covering half her face, but her eyes narrowed like she was thinking. “That works with what I’m seeing. If the victim was using a Holo-R setup then it would explain how the assailant would be able to sneak up behind him.“ Cassandra swept her hand out above the body. “There are no signs of a struggle on this guy. No skin beneath his fingernails, none of your garden variety signs of a battle. There would have been two ear pieces in that case, but since he only fell on one side of his head, there’s no way we’d see evidence of that.”

  “But that scenario would also explain the falling forward. Onto his face. And then of course the killer, in order to cover his trail, would take the Holo-R ge
ar to cover his tracks.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got something to go on at least,” she said, then fell silent as she finished the rest of the autopsy. I took a seat nearby and watched. I’d already learned as much as I probably would, but I always stayed for the whole thing in case anything odd turned up.

  Just twenty minutes later, I pulled off the examination gloves, preparing to leave. On my way out, I thanked her.

  “Miko,” I said into my communicator as I exited onto the street and headed for the elevator up to the Spireway platform. I needed to go ask the ex-girlfriend some follow up questions. “I think I know what the victim was doing when he was killed.”

  “Holo-R?”

  I paused, then kept moving. “How’d you figure it out?” I punched the call button on an exterior elevator, tacked onto the side of a pale orange jade tower.

  “Bank records I pulled up. Lennox Fogg ran an in-game store called Fogg’s Toggs. That’s why he didn’t leave his condo for work at regular times. He kept his store open ten to twelve hours a day, sometimes more. The transactions used real Syndicate Marks, not the Coalition cryptocurrency. He’d been doing quite well, it looks like, according to his bank accounts.”

  “I thought the ME would recover something that would tell us about the murder weapon, but she didn’t. It was clean except for organic matter.” I rode the elevator up to a Spireway station—I hated to use the subway. It didn’t work well with my claustrophobia. As big as the City of Jade Spires was, that closed in feeling was often inescapable, but there were ways to get away from it. And one way I broke free of it was taking the Spireway when I needed to travel. “Oh, and time of death was 9:30. So possibly, the murderer knew Fogg was in the game world when he was murdered. We’re potentially going to be investigating suspects that were Holo-R gamers, then.”

  “Meg says we need to look at other ex-girlfriends too. Love and jealousy are often motives. Meg says.”

  “Meg would know, wouldn’t she,” I said, thinking about the reasons we broke up. I sighed. “Look, sorry, forget I said that.”

  “Hm. OK.”

  “But she’s right. Have you chased down anything with other girlfriends or possibly exes?”

  “Haven’t yet. I’ll get on that.”

  “And Miko, has Daxan found anything?”

  “He went with Meg to canvas the rest of the tower and the businesses near the residence tower. I stayed at the station.”

  “Then how about if you also make a list of any large bank transactions as well—any big sums going out or in and the names associated with them.” I hung up.

  The Spireway platform was crowded, but I’d kept my breathing under control while I was in line during my conversation with Miko. The next gondola that came to my queue was mine. Voices around me merged with the sounds of the trams skidding along the cables and squealing to a stop. There was the pneumatic sound of gondolas hissing away from the platform once they were loaded up. A blue one pulled up and three humans and two Druiviin loaded out, then I jumped in, punched in my destination, and the boat hissed away.

  I hit the button on the controls to have the windows lower so that I could get some air flowing through and get the sense of openness that I needed. The wind whipped over my arm and through my fingers that were shoved out the window, and came into the gondola and lifted my hair. Evening sunlight filtered with the orange glow of Ixion glinted off the tower spires shooting out into the sky around me. People walked across bridges that connected the upper reaches of the city like lace and spider webs. Sirens echoed up through the slot canyons of stone and glass. The City of Jade Spires was no utopia, though that’s what the Centau had hoped to make when they built it and invited the other humanoid races here. Humans weren’t quite up to the moral standards of Centau and Druiviins yet. It was like inviting a snake into Eden—humans were bound to fuck it up. Those Centau were ever hopeful. Naive, but hopeful.

  The wind across my body, whistling through my ears as I leaned around corners and surfed the Spireway, dissolved the tension in my neck and shoulders where I held the gritty weight of all the crimes I dealt with daily. Up here in the spire-tops, I was free and Kota was the utopia the Centau wanted it to be. The seedy murders, the corruption in the government and police ranks, the drug rings, criminal trafficking, all of it sank into the spire shadows far below me and I could forget about them.

  The Spireway: it was such a stress reliever. The city should brand it that way.

  ***

  “So we’ve recovered the e-comms from the victim’s computer system,” Meg said. I could hear paper rustling over the line. “There were a few disgruntled customers who sent him enraged emails. The bad news is that they’re all off-moon, so they might not be the best suspects.”

  “Keep looking,” I said, thinking about it. We had little to go on so far. The victim spent most of his time in a holographic online world rather than mingling with people in a real-space fashion. The most likely explanation was that the murderer came from that world. But how did we bridge the gap of actual space? Had they hired someone to carry out their dirty work?

  Meg continued. “I’ve got Daxan cross-checking flight information using the registered real names of those users. Gabe, they have such hilarious names for their game characters. Try HumungoRod6969 or GiantGirth.”

  I laughed. “Is it just a place to go find someone to tap in real life? A virtual meet-up service?”

  “I haven’t been on the inside. Maybe? But I mean, do these guys actually think that’s going to make the ladies swoon?”

  “Depends on the lady.”

  “Can we call them ‘lady’ if they’re on the prowl for humongous rods and girthy dicks?”

  “Well, now you’re insinuating that a woman’s preferences for a certain type of sex are intrinsically dirty.”

  Meg scoffed. “I’m not saying that at all. I have my own preferences.”

  “As I well know.” I could almost hear the blood rushing to her face, which gave me a strange satisfaction. Divorce was her choice. I’m hard to live with, she says.

  “Knock it off,” she said, her voice an embarrassed whisper.

  “Alright, look I’m sorry about that. Gotta run. I’m dropping in on the ex to ask some questions.”

  “Find out how they met.”

  She said it as I was hanging up. “Obviously,” I muttered at my communicator. Classic Meg. Getting the last word in before I hung up. Now she’d take credit for the question if it turned out that it led us to more pertinent information.

  And I didn’t doubt that it would.

  My gondola docked and I jumped out onto the crowded platform, taking deep breaths to get me through the press of bodies, employing some self-talk techniques that usually helped. The evening commute had begun.

  The ex lived eight miles from the victim. Which meant that they hadn’t met by bumping into each other at a local haunt. And since the vic hadn’t worked a regular nine-to-five job, my money was on either the Holo-R world, a mutual acquaintance, or a dating service—which, it was beginning to appear that perhaps the holographic world was something like that.

  Her residence was on the bottom floor of row-houses tacked onto the edge of the rich districts of the city. These areas were optimized for laborers that worked on the farms and sold their wares in the markets, among other places. It wasn’t the slums yet, but closer to that than Fogg’s tower suite in the wealthy jade districts of the city. The sidewalks were busy outside. Fifty feet away an open air market outlined the street in vibrantly colored tents. The evening was humid as the setting sun cast Kota in a hazy yellow light, tinted with the pale colors of Ixion.

  Humans, Constellations, and the occasional Druiviin crowded the streets and sidewalks as people returned home from work or went to the market. I banked on the fact that the ex-girlfriend was home as I knocked because it was that time of day, not to mention she was probably in a bit of shock from seeing the murdered body of a friend.

  “Hello. Trixie Kander?”
I said when she opened the door. Her eyes were wary and puffy, like she’d been crying. Her stomach protruded in a very pregnant way, so I figured I had the right woman. I flashed my badge, then put it back into my jacket pocket. “I’m Detective Bach. I work homicide in the Ice Jade district. I’m here investigating the murder of Lennox Fogg. I’d like to ask you some follow up questions if that’s ok, if you have the time?”

  She blinked, stunned, and then stepped out into the street and shut the door behind her. The move bothered me, but I waited for an explanation before I used my dickhead-detective voice.

  “Can we just—,” she said, heading toward the market on the sidewalk, gesturing for me to join her. “Sorry, I’ll answer your questions. Just not there.” She jerked her head back toward her apartment.

  “What’s wrong with back there?” I asked, walking after her. “Is this a bad time?”

  “My boyfriend will be home soon. He hates cops.”

  I smirked. “Why? Has he been in trouble before?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug.

  The bodies filling the street began to press in on me. “I’d prefer to do this off the street.”

  “What do you want to know,” she asked, ignoring what I’d said—which also bothered me—and crossing her arms over the top of her belly. Her black hair fell across her face, but when I glanced at her as we walked, I could see the worry in her downturned eyes. She didn’t want me in her house and I doubted it had to do with her boyfriend. That was a suspicious emotion from a suspect. And telling. But it didn’t necessarily mean that she’d been the one to bludgeon Fogg to death.

  We cut into the cacophony of the market and her shoulders seemed to relax as the crowd absorbed us. People bustled between stands, bumping into each other and me, their arms laden with woven bags of produce, breads, dried meats, and sausages. I took deep breaths again, trying to focus on the questions and not the uncomfortable closeness of the crowd eating into my space.

  “Trixie, can I ask? How did you know Lennox? Where did you meet?”