The Falls [05 Diving Universe] 2016

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  A real dead body meant he should have been called to that scene, and he hadn’t been. Yet, somehow, Loraas and her team had contacted Beck and told her to investigate the Kimura family. Hranek wasn’t quite sure why—although he was gleaning from Beck’s description that someone had assumed the dead body belonged to Glida Kimura, again taking over the job from him.

  He was the only one who made the official identification of the dead in Sandoveil, and it wasn’t something you simply did by eyeballing the corpse. Sometimes corpses surprised you. They looked like one person but really were another. Or they looked nothing like the person their DNA said they were. Or they were so disfigured a visual identification was completely impossible.

  He nearly interrupted Beck to say these things, but he stopped himself. She was not the person who called him here, nor was she the person who hadn’t called him to the Fiskett Falls death scene.

  His irritation was getting the better of him. He shifted from foot to foot.

  Finally, he couldn’t take it any longer.

  “How did you end up here?” he asked.

  “I’m unofficially looking into the Kimuras,” Beck said.

  He hated that word, unofficially. “Meaning you’re doing this on your own or someone put you up to it?” he asked.

  “Meaning we don’t have an ID of the body in the waterfall yet,” Beck said, “but everyone was certain enough—”

  “I got that,” he snapped, then felt his face heat. He didn’t want to yell at Bassima Beck. She was a woman he admired, and he didn’t want her to think he was as unpleasant as he actually was.

  She nodded, as if understanding how she had lapsed into too much description.

  “The office belongs to Taji Kimura,” Beck said. “Glida’s wife.”

  Well, finally, something that made some kind of sense. And it also intrigued him. Blood but no body? And a body in the Falls. More than one person had thought that tossing a body into the river above the Falls would destroy that body or at least make it unrecoverable.

  But it wasn’t. It was amazing what the YSR-SR could do, given time.

  “Just show me the blood,” Hranek said, overwhelmed by all the detail. He would determine if someone had died here.

  He was happy now that he had carried his kit with him, instead of fetching it after seeing the scene. He hated returning to a death scene. It was usually trampled and destroyed when he got back—often because the local security office didn’t have the same kind of training he did.

  He’d learned how to operate in a large city filled with crime. Here, a small city without a lot of crime, no one really knew or cared about following procedure to the letter.

  Beck nodded and extended her hand into the narrow hallway. The lights did not come up as the two of them moved toward the main room.

  “Did you shut everything down?” Hranek asked, feeling just a little annoyed.

  “The systems aren’t working,” Beck said. “I thought whoever investigated would want to know that, because turning the systems back on or repairing them would alter the scene.”

  Hranek looked at her in surprise. He had never really worked with her on an investigation; he was pleased to realize that she had a forensic mind.

  “I have lights if you need them,” she said. “I was careful not to trample anything, pick up anything, or change anything. I also have a video record if you need it.”

  “I probably will,” he said, “but not yet.”

  He pulled his own lights from his kit. He had scanlights, like the YSR-SR team had, but he had splurged. His scanlight recorded and analyzed. It didn’t just record the visuals, but the chemical composition of the environment, the ambient temperature, and more. His scanlights also interacted with the building’s computer system, if the system was the standard one used in Sandoveil.

  He suspected this building’s system was standard, but Beck had said it wasn’t on. He flicked off that feature on his scanlight. He’d had lights malfunction when they tried to synch with a system that wasn’t working properly.

  He placed one scanlight in a holder on his belt. He held another scanlight in his left hand. Then he stepped into the doorway between the narrow hall and the main room, and stayed in one position.

  The air itself smelled of old blood. If he were in a more modern city or if he worked in space, he wouldn’t know that smell. But he did, because so many tourists died in the Sandoveil Valley, often in enclosed spaces like small caves or whatever vehicle they had used to travel to their destination.

  This old blood smell had a twist of decay, but the decay wasn’t as pungent as it could have been. Often when he encountered old blood, particularly in a hot, moist environment, the blood had rotted.

  The blood was probably decaying here, but it wasn’t as evident by the smell. And the room was warm—perhaps 75 to 78 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat felt trapped here, as if the air in the room had not recycled in some time.

  “Is something wrong?” Beck asked.

  “Just taking in the ambience,” he said, not expecting her to understand what he was really doing.

  “It looks like someone had been sleeping here,” Beck said. “I’m wondering—”

  “Forgive me,” he said with less curtness than he usually used for talkers at a death scene. “I don’t need that kind of detail. I’m examining other things.”

  He didn’t want to explain what those other things were. He didn’t like talking his way through death, particularly when his initial impressions were sometimes wrong.

  To her credit, Beck said nothing else. She just waited behind him. He could see her out of the corner of his eye. She had folded her hands in front of herself, and she was not moving.

  He squared his shoulders and adjusted the scanlights but didn’t move them yet. He made himself forget that Beck was beside him.

  The windows were shaded. One seemed partially blocked, as if someone did not want any chance of anyone looking in. Blankets on the couch, chairs at an angle—Beck was right: This looked less like an office, more like a temporary sleeping facility.

  Food containers from a nearby restaurant sat on a table. He was familiar with those containers, having examined them in several investigations. Once opened, they would start self-cleaning within four hours if not closed and refrigerated again.

  He’d tried to break the self-cleaning function on the containers several times and failed. If someone had wanted those containers to malfunction, that person would have to work very hard at it.

  Therefore, he didn’t even have to examine the containers. He knew the musty odor did not come from them.

  “Did you examine the bathroom?” he asked Beck.

  “Examine, no,” she said, and he felt his heart start to beat a little quicker. “But I did glance in there. There’s no body or injured person. I made sure of that much before I called this in.”

  He nodded. His heart rate lowered. So the blood was the only thing that didn’t fit. He examined the floor in front of him, then ran a scanlight over it. Blood splotches had blended into the old carpet. Someone had walked over them, just recently. Probably Beck.

  “Do you have evidence-capture shoes?” he asked her, without turning around. He didn’t want to see her expression change as she realized she had contaminated his death scene.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He started, surprised. Not many Sandoveil officers would have thought to do that. He couldn’t remember the last time a security officer working alone had thought to turn on the evidence-capture feature of all their standard footwear. Hell, most Sandoveil officers didn’t wear standard footwear because, they claimed, it was uncomfortable.

  When he didn’t say anything, she added, almost defensively, “I turned them on when I stepped inside the office. I had no idea what I might find here, and I wanted to be able to walk freely.”

  “Good,” he said. He didn’t want to tell her that she had already stepped in some of the blood. In the half-darkness, she probably hadn’t realized
it. He hadn’t seen it either until he had used the scanlight.

  “When would you like me to transfer the evidence?” she asked.

  “When I tell you.” He made sure his tone invited no more conversation.

  Hranek looked at the dried blood spatter under the light. The splotches were huge—fist sized. Whoever was bleeding was bleeding badly. But first, that person had rested in one place. Perhaps the splotches of blood came from blood on clothing.

  It wouldn’t do to speculate. He would need to follow the evidence.

  He had to spend hours here. Every square inch of this small room needed to be examined, as well as the hallway they had traversed and the sidewalk outside.

  “I need an assistant,” he said.

  “I’ll be happy to do what you need,” Beck responded.

  That was when he realized he had spoken out loud.

  “No,” he said, still looking at the floor in front of him. “I need my assistant. Get Glynis Okilani for me, please.”

  There was a momentary pause. He realized then that he had spoken to Beck the way he spoke to the people who worked for him.

  He silently cursed himself. He had planned to treat Beck with a bit more respect. Hell, with actual respect.

  “Sure, I’ll contact her,” Beck said. “Would you like me to stay?”

  He couldn’t take back the harsh tone now, and he found that even though he was a bit peeved at himself, he didn’t want to. He had a job to do, and the damn woman was going to ask him question after question.

  “Someone carried either a severely injured person or a dead body out of this room,” he said, without looking at Beck. He was still staring at the splotches. Evenly spaced, but the splotches themselves weren’t even.

  “Yes.” Behind Beck’s calmness, he heard an impatience that matched his own. Apparently, she was smart enough to realize what had occurred here, even without the forensic evidence.

  He said, “There should be surveillance all over the streets. Some camera should have caught whomever it was carrying that body away. Find that footage.”

  “All right,” Beck said, and this time, she didn’t sound like she was humoring him. “Is it possible to give me an estimate of how many days or hours I should go back?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t have enough evidence yet.”

  And he wasn’t sure he would. Except, perhaps, if the system kept a log of when it was shut down. He had a hunch it had been placed on a timer, to shut down at a particular time.

  Whether or not that timer was activated by the killer or by the victim was a question he couldn’t yet answer.

  But he was going to try.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  MARNIE SAR CROUCHED over the body bag. It rested on the ground between the vans and the edge of the trail itself. The area smelled of seaweed and damp air and, maybe, just a hint of her own sweat.

  She was getting tired. She had been on-site for hours now, and they hadn’t made a lot of progress. And now she had come down to the ground level to view the body Tevin Egbe’s team had pulled from the pool.

  Just as she arrived, he had contacted her: He had found a second body, still submerged. Marnie didn’t want to think about that, not yet. Because this body was creating its own problems.

  Two members of Tevin’s team, Ardelia Novoa and Jabari Zhou, had carried the body here and then had contacted Marnie. She had come down here, expecting answers.

  And all she had gotten were more questions.

  When Marnie arrived, Novoa had opened the body bag, then stepped back. Zhou had stood just behind her, as if guarding the body—against what, Marnie did not know.

  They had placed ground lights all over the area. Marnie had initially decided to identify the corpse using those lights, but after she had looked, she took out her own flashlight and pointed it at the face.

  The face was a strange, grayish-white that reflected the light in unpleasant ways. The milky eyes were something Marnie had seen before, so they bothered her less than the bloating around the lips and nostrils. The lips looked just a little blue.

  She didn’t recognize the face. She had expected to. She had known Glida Kimura—not well, but well enough. And from above, that body had looked like Glida’s.

  From above.

  Marnie sighed, put the flashlight back on her belt kit, and closed the bag. A waft of decaying flesh reached her as she disturbed the air around the corpse.

  Then she stood, her knees cracking painfully. She didn’t hear the sound, just felt it. It was nearly impossible to hear small noises this close to the Falls. The roar of the cascading water seemed to have grown louder as the night progressed, even though she knew that wasn’t possible.

  It was just the way she was responding to exhaustion and stress.

  Tevin let her know that the positioning of the second body was no accident. This person, whoever she was (and Marnie was pretty sure this was a she), might have died accidentally, but the other person hadn’t.

  Not that the distinction mattered. The presence of two corpses, one clearly murdered, meant that the entire investigation now belonged to the death investigator.

  Marnie had to secure the scene and make one more decision. She needed to decide if she wanted to continue a search, or move everything from rescue to recovery.

  Normally, she was very decisive about these things, but she’d had the wrong information all afternoon and evening. She had operated as if all she needed was a formal confirmation of Glida Kimura’s death, when in actuality, she had no idea who this corpse belonged to.

  Which put those shoes in a completely different light.

  If Tevin had discovered the second corpse before he had recovered this one, Marnie would have assumed that the second corpse belonged to Taji Kimura. Then Marnie would have called off the search, thinking the mystery of the two shoes had been resolved.

  But now, with an unidentified corpse here, cause of death unknown, and another corpse still in the pool, cause of death suspicious at best, Marnie had no idea what to do.

  Her teams had been searching half the night for clues about the body in the pool, with another set of teams exploring the trails with the idea that they might be searching for a missing person.

  Marnie had been very clear about all of that: Sometimes, when a person observed another person’s sudden death, the survivor behaved erratically—running from the scene or trying to backtrack and forgetting how they came.

  She had tracked down tourists who had become horribly lost after such a tragedy.

  If one of her team had asked her three hours ago who they were searching for, she would have said, Unofficially, I suspect we’re searching for Taji Kimura. But her team was well-trained. They hadn’t asked any of that.

  They had done what she asked. They had searched. They continued to search.

  She sighed.

  Two pairs of shoes. Two bodies. No one would fault her for moving the operation from a rescue/recovery to a full recovery.

  She ran a hand through her hair, startled to find it damp. She hadn’t realized the Falls gave off that much spray, even this far away from the wall of water.

  Novoa’s gaze met hers. Zhou was still looking down at the now-closed bag.

  Marnie’s shoulders slumped.

  “I don’t recognize her,” she said, and her tone sounded even more defeated than she felt. Not that she had wanted Glida dead. But Marnie had wanted to wrap this up quickly and easily.

  There was going to be nothing easy here.

  Novoa nodded, as if the news hadn’t surprised her.

  “We’ll take the body to the death investigator, then,” she said. Standard procedure for this kind of death. Usually they had to leave the body in situ, but that had been impossible here.

  If Marnie knew Tevin—and she did—then she could trust that he had recorded everything before pulling the corpse from the water.

  “I’ll let Hranek know it’s coming,” Marnie said. And as she spoke those words, she realized what
she was going to do next.

  She was turning over the entire investigation to him. She would block off the paths, mark the scene, and let him determine how to handle everything from now on.

  Including the recovery of the second body.

  She would let Tevin know.

  He would not be pleased.

  TWENTY-SIX

  CAPTAIN HARRIET VIRJI sat on the edge of the bed, head bent, fingers tangled in her short brown curls. So much for time off.

  She had been sound asleep when an engineer from Sector Base E-2 contacted her with the startling news that one of the runabouts was missing. The engineer—Bristol something—had wanted to know if the anacapa drive was programmed for a quick launch away from a site, with an automated return programmed in.

  It was not. Virji did not believe in preprogrammed settings. Even though it seemed like they caused less work, in reality, they caused more work. They had to be unprogrammed and then reprogrammed, sometimes in the middle of a difficult situation. Why add something for convenience that wasn’t going provide any convenience at all?

  She needed to sit up straight and reclaim her identity. She usually wasn’t a woman easily defeated by bad news.

  She wasn’t defeated now, but she was tired. The last year had been one crisis after another, though, and even the most highly trained officer with the highest possible stress tolerance got tired.

  She had gotten tired.

  She had been looking forward to this trip—her reward—for six months now.

  She had booked this lovely cabin in the woods in the Payyer Mountains, just outside of Sandoveil, because it seemed as far from the Ijo as she could get.

  The fact that Illya Markosian had to be in Sandoveil at the same time was simply one additional perk of the trip.

  She ran a hand over her face. Illya. She had promised him three weeks of bliss after he finished his work here. He finished this afternoon, and they had had a lovely evening.