The Furnace

by Timothy S. Johnston

  I studied the next set of pictures intently. They showed the back of Jimmy’s torso and legs.

  I lay back in my bunk and listened to the fans in the darkness. It took two more hours for sleep to come.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next day there were two murders.

  Anna Alvarez, while retrieving some supplies for Sally Johnson, the solar geophysicist, discovered the bodies in a cargo bay in one of the supply modules. She couldn’t tell who they were at first, because their heads and hands were missing.

  I called an emergency meeting in the common mess. Reggie Hamatsui, the scientist, and Bel Bertram, the station’s information officer, didn’t show. People stood about uncertainly, perhaps torn between anger at the death of two of their friends and fear at the fact that one of them was a killer. I noticed that they had put space between one another and watched their comrades with narrowed eyes. A few had even put the bulkhead at their backs, perhaps in understanding of exactly how dangerous the situation really was.

  One of them was a killer.

  We were completely isolated.

  And worst of all, I hadn’t exactly filled them with a sense of security.

  Lingly, the Chinese scientist, cleared her throat and said in a trembling voice, “But why would someone do this?”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Katrina said. “No one’s had a problem with anyone else on the station.”

  “Now come on,” Sally snapped, clearly angry. “You and Reggie fought all the time about access to the station’s sensors.”

  Katrina’s eyes flashed. “Now just a—”

  “Hardly a reason to kill someone,” Manny said, trying to defuse an imminent fight. He glared at Sally. Katrina looked like she wanted to say more, but another look from the captain stopped her too.

  Shaheen eyed me. “There doesn’t seem to be a reason for any of the deaths, including Jimmy’s.”

  “I haven’t found anything concrete,” I responded, “but there usually is.”

  “You’re just a typical officer,” Godfreid Grossman growled. “You’ll try to pin this on a NOM. I know how it works.”

  “I’ll pin it on whoever’s responsible,” I said.

  “Right.” His eyes were piercing.

  Anna spoke up. “Don’t insult him just because he’s an officer. He’s trying to help Jimmy.”

  The other scowled but didn’t respond.

  I ground my teeth in frustration. I wished the crew would stay silent unless spoken to, as on every other military installation, but this was obviously a unique situation. I had to allow some latitude, as did the captain, but if the insubordination continued, I would have to deal with it.

  The captain shot Grossman a fiery glare that spoke volumes. Then he turned to me. “What do you recommend here?”

  “I need to examine the bodies,” I said. “We’ll have to move them to the clinic.”

  Manny pointed at Larry Balch and Grossman. “You two can do that.”

  “Aye, sir,” they answered immediately, but neither looked happy.

  I said, “I’ll need to spend an hour going over the crime scene first. That cylinder is out of bounds until I say otherwise.” Manny grunted approval. I continued, “When I’m done, I want to question everyone again. Stay here in the common mess until that time. No one leaves.”

  There were a lot of unhappy looks, especially from the scientists, but no one objected.

  “Why wouldn’t someone just get rid of the whole body?” Katrina asked. “Why just the head and hands? What’s the purpose?”

  “The killer is trying to hide something,” Brick said.

  “What?”

  “Who knows?” Malichauk muttered. “He’s probably just sick.”

  Silence fell over the group; they were terrified. It wasn’t just Lingly anymore. I thought that might be a good thing, however. I knew that they could become hypersensitive to any perceived danger, and that meant it would be more difficult for the killer to make his next move. He would either pull in his head like a turtle and refuse to draw attention to himself, or he would make a mistake.

  “I promise to find who did this,” I said.

  “You’ve been trying for four days now!” Grossman blurted. “What have you been doing?”

  “Mr. Grossman!” Manny barked. “He is a lieutenant in the CCF, and you will afford him the required courtesies! Is that understood?”

  Grossman withered under the captain’s glare. “Aye, Captain.”

  The crewman was behaving with more hostility than I had seen since my arrival. News of the murders had affected everyone differently, but the most marked change was in Grossman.

  I turned to Manny. “I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve examined the crime scene and the bodies.”

  “Hurry up,” he whispered. His worry was clear; the personnel were being pushed past normal limits. He and I both knew it was important to retain control over them at all times. Otherwise chaos would take over—a situation the killer could conceal himself in with little difficulty.

  * * *

  I marched to the cargo bay and the two bodies. Balch and Grossman accompanied me. Both turned pale when they saw the carnage within. I ordered them to wait outside until I was done and to keep each other in sight at all times.

  It was obvious the murders had occurred here. There was blood all over the deck, liters and liters of it, but no trail led into the cavernous bay. I searched the surrounding area for the weapon with no luck. It could have been anywhere on the station by then.

  Bel Bertram’s corpse was on its stomach with its arms outstretched. Her legs were crumpled under her torso, and her uniform was stained dark. Reggie was on his back, one arm folded haphazardly across his body. His legs were twisted together on the deck; the right one looked broken. Blood pooled at the severed neck, collected under his body and ran in a stream toward a nearby drain. It merged with blood from Bel’s body before it dribbled into the station’s recycling system.

  There were no boot marks in the blood, no sign of the murderer at all. The crime scene was clean. The killer was thorough and smart, that much was certain.

  I snapped multiple pictures of the cargo bay and the bodies. Then I called Balch and Grossman to move the corpses to the clinic.

  * * *

  The two crewmen laid the bodies on adjacent procedures tables. The corpses were now naked and pale. The sound of blood dripping into the catch basins under each table was disturbing and brought home why I was at SOLEX. Three deaths now, two of which had occurred right under my nose. It didn’t look good; so far my investigation had produced more questions than answers.

  I sent Grossman and Balch back to the common mess. I wanted the entire station’s complement together, watching each other, until I was done.

  I bent to my work. Thankfully, the previous eleven years had desensitized me to this sort of thing. Disembowelment, decapitation, torture and mutilation no longer affected me. These weren’t people anymore, they were just meat. There was no more pain, no more suffering. That was all done with. The only thing left for me to do was to locate the person responsible for the bloody messes I scraped off the streets and decks of the places I traveled.

  The killer had dismembered both Reggie and Bel. That much was clear. But more telling were the knife wounds in their torsos. Here were two obvious examples of murder—not just mutilation after accidental death.

  Bel had a knife wound in her upper back. The blade was probably the same one that had severed their heads and hands: eight to ten inches long, not serrated, very sharp. It had penetrated her heart and killed her within moments. She’d probably been stabbed, fallen facedown on the deck, and then been dismembered in her dying seconds. Her still-beating heart had managed to propel some blood from her carotid artery onto the deck a meter in front
of her. There was no evidence of a struggle: the killer had approached her from behind.

  There were multiple knife wounds in Reggie. The first was in the lower torso. His small intestine was severed and the intestinal contents had spilled into his body cavity. Had he survived, it would have caused a massive infection. The second wound was in his chest. The knife had penetrated deep into his heart. What was most interesting about Reggie, however, were the knife wounds on both his forearms. If his hands had still been attached, I would have seen slash wounds on the palms, I had no doubt of it.

  He had fought back. He had seen his attacker. He’d watched Bel die, had probably backed away, terrified, then belatedly realized what was happening. He’d attempted to defend himself, but unarmed and scared, he hadn’t had a chance.

  There was nothing else of interest in or on the bodies. No illnesses, abnormalities or distinguishing characteristics. Using the diagnostic computer, I placed the time of death at 0630 hours that morning. Less than three hours ago.

  I took multiple photos of both bodies, front and back, and moved them to the freezer.

  * * *

  I grabbed Shaheen from the common mess, and Manny approached to ask about the situation. I shrugged him aside with a grunt. It wasn’t the most tactful way to treat the captain of the facility, but his curiosity could wait for now. There was work to be done.

  Shaheen and I marched to the station’s command center; she peppered me with questions the whole way. I remained tight-lipped. She shot me a sideways glance, huffed once, then said no more.

  We soon entered what was essentially SOLEX’s bridge. Control consoles ringed the small enclosure. They displayed vital station statistics and the status of the environmental systems, power generation, the continuous microwave beam to Earth, artificial gravity, and so on. Multiple screens showed views outside the station, the sun visible in most of them. It was so huge that I couldn’t see beyond it; the entire globe of the fiery star filled each screen. Sunlight flickered around the command center.

  “I want to see the surveillance in that cargo bay,” I said.

  Shaheen went to the nearby security console and called up the datafile. She tapped on the keyboard for several minutes before frowning in consternation. “No luck. It’s been shut off.”

  As I expected. “For what time period?”

  “From 0600 hours until now.”

  I blinked. “It’s still off?”

  “It’s been shut down permanently, Tanner,” she said, fixing me with her blue eyes. “Whoever did this knows our systems well. I can’t get it back on. Surveillance is gone.”

  * * *

  Back in the common mess, I ordered everyone to the far bulkhead, where I could keep a watchful eye on them. The scientists moved quickly and without objection. The officers were a little more hesitant, but did so to set an example for the others. The crew, on the other hand, collectively grumbled under their breath as they slowly shuffled into position.

  I didn’t speak until their backs were against steel.

  Finally I said, “The killer attacked Bel from behind and she died quickly. Reggie fought back but didn’t have much of a chance. They died this morning at 0630 hours. I couldn’t find the weapon, the hands or the heads.” I studied them silently for a minute, watching their expressions change as they absorbed what I had said. Most registered shock, then anger or fury. Grossman and Balch were still pale and didn’t show much expression other than sickness after what they had seen.

  Lingly spoke up. “How could someone get rid of...of...”

  “The body parts? There are a number of places. They could be in the garbage chutes right now.” They cringed at that; the idea that human remains were now part of their recycling system was a pretty foul thought. “The killer could also have ejected them into space.”

  “But how?” Anna Alvarez asked.

  “The scientists have ejection chutes in their labs.” I turned to Lingly. “Of all people, you should have known that.”

  She looked stunned. “I guess so, yes, but I just associate those chutes with hazardous materials! I couldn’t imagine stuffing a human head—”

  “There’s one in the clinic too,” Malichauk said in a meek tone.

  Reggie had told me two days earlier. “There is indeed,” I said, watching the doctor. “But there isn’t a chute big enough to get rid of the bodies.”

  “There’s the air lock.”

  “Too difficult to drag them there. Messy.”

  “Are you suggesting a scientist did it?” Sally snapped. “Just because the labs have ejection chutes?”

  I searched the faces that glared back at me. I had clearly incensed Sally, Katrina and Lingly. I raised a hand to calm them. “I didn’t say one of you did it. I said someone could have used those chutes to dispose of the...parts.”

  “We don’t lock the hatches to the labs,” Lingly said. “We never have.”

  “And I never said you did.” Their anger slowly subsided and I sighed. “Look, someone on this station is guilty. But I’m not going to accuse anyone until I know for sure who it is.”

  I gestured for Manny to accompany me into the corridor, where we could speak in private. He looked shaken up.

  “What are your procedures for a situation like this?” he asked in a whisper.

  I winced. “Truthfully? I’ve never been in one.”

  “Never?”

  “Usually I chase a killer when they have a place to run. I’ve never backed one into a corner like this and not known who it is. Most often they make a mistake and I make a capture. In this situation, who knows what he’ll do? His behavior is escalating, there’s no doubt of that.”

  “You’re sure it’s a he?”

  “Given the strength needed for these murders and mutilations...none of the women fit the profile.”

  “Why do you think he killed Bel and Hamatsui?”

  I frowned. “I don’t think it was random. There’s more going on here than three murders.”

  He paused, and then, “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t tell you until I know everything. But there is definitely a reason for the killer’s method.”

  He grew furious. “This is my station, Tanner. I demand to know—”

  “I can’t tell you. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Why? Because the Council sent you? Because you’re the best at this job?”

  “Because frankly, Captain, you could be the killer.”

  He looked down and saw my hand on my pistol. His jaw dropped. “You’re serious.”

  “Absolutely.”

  He stared at me in shock for a minute before he finally backed down. “I guess you are.” He exhaled. “So what do we do?”

  “You’re the captain. You’re still in charge. The orders have to come from you or we’ll lose control. They’re all scared—you can see that.”

  “Yes.”

  “We can’t let them fall apart.” I leaned forward until I was an inch from his face. “I’m on the right track. I can feel it,” I said. “You have to trust me.”

  A long moment. “Okay,” he muttered. “I’ll follow. But you better figure out what the hell is going on, and fast. Now, what do you want?”

  It was true that I had never been in a situation like this before, but the procedures seemed obvious. “Pair them up. Never let them separate. Tell them to keep an eye on their partner at all times. Let them go about a modified work schedule. All meals continue together, here, in the common mess. All free time too. At night we’ll confine them to their cabins and lock their hatches.”

  He blinked. “Do you think that’s enough?”

  I hesitated. “We have no other choice.”

  * * *

  I let Manny spell the rules out to his people. They mostly accepted what
had to be done, all but Grossman, who continued to complain.

  “These rules are his, aren’t they?” he snarled.

  “They’re the rules you’re going to follow, Crewman,” Manny said in a flat, angry tone. “And that’s enough of that.” Grossman stopped talking but this time didn’t fall back so meekly. He stared at me for a long while; I pointedly ignored him and tried to concentrate on my thoughts.

  We ate lunch together. You could hear a pin drop. I sat with Sally, Katrina and Lingly, the three remaining scientists. After a few minutes, they began to talk about Reggie. What a nice man he had been, and so forth.

  “How often did you two argue?” I asked Katrina.

  She glared at me. “Don’t look for motive where there is none. That’s just stupid. Sure we had differences, but I was in the right in every instance. He constantly ran into my allotted time. That would make anyone mad and cause any number of arguments. But it’s not enough to kill one person over, let alone two. Or three!”

  I nodded. “I agree, actually. I’m just asking you to be honest with me about your feelings.”

  Her nostrils flared, but her tone calmed somewhat. “Well, now you know. He pissed me off sometimes, but I’m going to miss him. This is horrible.”

  “We’re all going to miss Reg,” Sally said, touching her arm.

  Lingly said, “Tanner, did he—I mean—did he die fast? Was he in pain?” She blanched when the other women turned to her. “Is that wrong for me to ask? I’d feel terrible if he suffered.”

  “He didn’t suffer,” I said. “He fought back bravely, but died quickly. He felt pain, but likely for only a few seconds.”

  But it had still been a gory end, I wanted to add.

  I held my tongue.

  * * *

  Afterward, still in the common mess, I pulled Rickets and Manny aside. “What was Bel Bertram doing in the supply module at that time?” I asked. I could believe that Reggie would be there—the scientists were always grabbing equipment for their experiments. And the crew was still waking up then, so Reggie had probably gone down by himself to get what he needed. But why had Bel Bertram been there?