“You mean investigate you? Were you involved with Char?”
“On and off. It was casual.”
“So you want me to find out if you’re the father?”
“You’re a lot smarter than you look.” Sutcliffe said with a nod of appreciation.
“Uh, thank you?” Zane let a smile peak out of the corner of his lips and then straightened them. He sat into a mock drill sergeant stiff backed rigid posture, “Now get out of my office, you’re wasting my time.”
“Wow, okay, that military training is hard to shake.” Sutcliffe gave him a halfhearted grin, but the smile vanished and Zane realized he’d flinched.
“Sorry.” The detective tried to apologize, but Zane waved his hand at him as he turned back towards the him.
“I’m fine. Go. I have a lot of work to get done.”
His military service was a lifetime ago. When he left, he vowed he would never work on another living soul again and live every day as if it were his last. Up until now that meant party hard and stay aloof.
Life on board was uncomplicated, and he’d liked it that way. But last night sitting and talking with Astra complicated things. A primal need was growing. Not for the baser needs, but of being a husband and father. It was distracting and complicated, and yet this new sentimentality was a wind in his soul that was sweeping away the weight of the past.
Zane shook his head.
For the first time in longer than he could remember, Zane had real work to do. More than that, it was exciting work. Guilt pricked him like a pin. How could he be content right now when there was so much pain? Astra’s smiling face flashed in his subconscious. The urge to wake up next to her for the rest of his life smacked him at the back of his head. Stars! There she was again, smack in the middle of his domestic daydream.
He sat at his desk and outlined an overview of the investigation. First, he set his two constables on the task of overseeing interviews and ensuring all the evidence was tagged while he took a look at the physical evidence.
Now he had full access to the security science labs. It had been years since he truly stretched his forensics muscles. It was time to get to work.
Five
Anxiety flipped and twisted Astra’s belly. Performance anxiety would not do. She could not allow it. Yet there she was, looking up at the silks in the practice arena, a wave of nausea sweeping over her like a tide.
“What’s wrong?” Arlen, another member of the troupe, was by her side. Their voice, an odd mixture of coloratura and bass, softened as a comforting arm circled her shoulders. “You’re white with fear. What’s wrong?”
“My mentor just died. And you’re asking me what’s wrong?”
The long bodied Arlen nodded and reached out to enclose her in the long sinewy muscles of their arms. She sunk into the comfort of a friend. The hermaphrodite race was born and raised on a low gravity arcology that made their torsos long with corded muscles like ropes.
“My people don’t understand grief in the same way as you do, we celebrate the passing of friends to the other side, over the bridge.”
“Maybe one day I’ll understand that, but not today, Arlen. Today I need to grieve.” She could use a friend, a lover, something, to help her forget and feel fully alive. But Arlen was not that person. That person was Doctor Zane Jones, as much as she wanted to deny it.
“What can I do to help you? Do you need me to practice with you?”
“No. I keep imagining Char, laying on the floor, empty of life.” Astra struggled to form the words. “I picture her body sprawled into unnatural angles, completely broken.” Astra gasped and tried to gulp for air as Arlen held her close.
“Don’t torture yourself like this,” Arlen’s voice softened. Their long fingers stroked her hair in a comforting and motherly gesture, but it was the wrong thing to do. She backed away. Images of Char doing the same thing for her, soothing her head calming her with comforting words of wisdom brought tears to her eyes. Astra sniffled and shook her head.
“I’m the ugliest crier in the world,” she said, looking up into Arlen’s wide brown sympathetic eyes.
“Let’s get you to a sink and splash some cool water on that face.” Long bony fingers patted her cheek. “And tea, you need a cup of tea.”
“I have,” she gulped. “I have to practice. I can’t let Char down.” Astra’s gut gnarled and twisted as desperation crept into her voice.
“You’ll do as Arlen suggests. Do you see anyone else in here? No?” Veronika Elias’s voice came from across the floor of the practice arena. “We cannot perform tonight, in fact, we probably cannot have our show in the main tent until after the investigation team clears it. They’re checking out everything from the anti-grav unit to the blah-blah-blah.” Veronika waved her arms. “I have the Blue Star suits all over my butt with documentation horror. So, rest assured, you will not be on the silks until they give us the official thumb’s up.”
“Up what?” Arlen tilted their head.
“It’s an expression that means approval.” Veronika explained with the patience one gives a four-year-old. Arlen species had a difficult time with metaphor and colloquialism.
“Let’s get that cup of tea.” Veronika waved off Arlen, “I’ll take it from here. You should practice your accordion dancing routine.”
“Yes, Boss.” Arlen nodded and jogged off on their stilt-like legs.
Watching Arlen go, a knot tightened in Astra’s belly, she hurt just thinking about the troupe, her friends, all talking about her. Their lives were affected by the loss, but none as deeply as she and Bo. The little trio of Char, Bo, and Astra was respected as a unique cell within the giant organism of the troupe family.
“I need you to come with me, I have a job for you,” Veronika reminded her in a no-nonsense tone that she was still waiting for Astra to move.
Shaking her head as if to remove the thought, Astra refocused on Veronika. “Alright,” she agreed.
As they left the brightly lit practice arena, they passed through the curtains. The lighting changed to the murky shadows of backstage. The rustle of curtains faded. Frocks with feathers and sequins lined the hallway on costume racks. The quiet swish of Veronika’s skirt was the only noise until they passed through the double doors of the kitchen. Suddenly the soothing shadow changed to bright lights, and the cacophony of clanking and scraping of pots nearly drowned out Veronika’s order to one of the prep chefs.
“Two teas, herbal. We’ll take them at Chef’s table.” Veronika pointed towards a private corner where wealthy patrons paid a high price to watch and then eat with the chef. Behind them was a blackened wall that Astra knew would be switched to clear to see the entire cirque of performance. The entire corner could be self-contained by a stasis field that drowned out the clatter of kitchen noises. Astra slid into the bench seat as Veronika slipped onto the facing bench seat with the table between them.
The clatter of the kitchen was a din of familiarity, Astra focused on the puttering, remembering her early days again, when she came to this place and Veronika took her under her wing, letting her bus tables until she could find her performance niche.
“Remember the first time I let you practice with Char?”
“I don’t want—”
“No.” Veronika reached her hand out to take Astra’s. She gripped it, not letting go, not letting Astra let go. “Remember what I said?”
The jumble of life that came between then and now whizzed by in Astra’s memory as she searched for the day, trying to recall, but the recollections were a blur of the ups and downs of every day, a mixture of the extraordinary and the mundane.
“I had a hard time learning and adjusting. The troupe was so good, so kind but at first I had—”
“Remember what I said?”
“You said that I was strong and capable and I could do whatever I set my mind to,” Astra said.
“I say that all the time,” she said. “I said you were family. You are family. Char and Li’l Bo became your immed
iate family the moment you joined the act.”
“I forgot what it was like before that, I guess.” Astra gave a half-hearted breathy laugh. “I was in a weird place of being part of something and being alone.”
“Bo is like that now, isn’t he?”
“Li’l Bo? Oh choke me, how could I forget about him? Where is he?” She started to stand but the tug at her hand stopped her. Veronika kept the grip, firm but gentle, while her eyes motioned with silent direction to sit back down.
“He’s with the security people, being interviewed.”
“No!”
“Yes. It’s okay.” Veronika patted her hand. Suddenly there was silence. Astra turned her head and saw the lines of the containment field. She looked at Veronika, question in her eyes. “Astra, you need to focus on something else, and they’re keeping him safe and busy. We need to get information to keep abreast of this investigation. We can’t afford to have the Freedom Road’s connection to Quantum exposed. And we can do two things at once.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Because I don’t know how much they know, and we need to put some of your skills to work checking on Char’s past. I feel like this is integrally linked to why she died. And that could lead this investigation to the Freedom Road.”
“You mean Char came here through the Road?
“Yes, Astra. With Bo.”
Somewhere deep down, Astra knew that, though they’d never spoken about it.
Veronika was still speaking, “I don’t know if they’ll look that far back into her past. But we need to find it out first, and if we can, deflect the investigation from the Road.”
“And Zane?”
“Just go to him, be with him. Just be his friend. I think you both could use that right now.” Veronika urged. “And whatever else you learn while being around him could help us keep the Road safe.”
There was the briefest flicker in Veronika’s eyes. It made Astra frown down at her tea. She took a sip of the hot and sweet herbal concoction and considered what her boss was telling her to do. When she came to Quantum all those years ago, Veronika was like a beacon of strength. Over the years, she’d watched as the cabaret ushered people through, always wondering who were Road refugees and who were just employees. Never knowing.
Veronika Elias had a face that could make you believe anything, and words that would make you do just about anything she asked. But as a caretaker of the Freedom Road, she had to be that person, the one that nobody really knew. She was the one that protected everyone in her care, and it was clear that Veronika Elias took her assignment very seriously.
“Alright.” Astra nodded. “I’ll do what you advise.”
“Good, now I advise you to drink that tea.”
Troubling thoughts invaded Astra as she left the kitchen a short while later. And where would “spending more time with Zane” lead?
Six
Autopsy. When he did them, Zane could usually disassociate from the body in front of him. Though this was Char Melana’s body, it was not Char.
The person of Char Melana had left the husk behind and gone beyond. Not religious, Zane didn’t believe in mystic mumbo jumbo, but he did hope in something else after leaving his mortal remains. In the end, however, he knew logically that a body was there for the mind to use. When the mind was no longer using it, it ceased to be the person.
He readjusted the scope and the table to do a full scan. With luck, he would not have to do any invasive procedures. But he did have to put a hand to and take samples from her hair, her skin, and beneath her fingernails. His initial scan at the sight of the incident, had turned up nothing of consequence but he still hadn’t gotten the results back from the silks and surrounding floor residue.
In medical school, he was taught that there was only so much that artificial intelligence and autopsy tables could do. The organic mind—the creative mind—could take logical leaps intuitively in a way that line of code couldn’t.
As he set about his work, programming the table to take the readings, collecting samples, he concentrated on finding the truth. That kept him occupied, focused, and centered. He took each sample and spoke aloud for the official record. “Subject is female, human, between thirty-five and forty years of age,” he began. He continued his clinical narrative for the audiovisual recording until he was satisfied that he had ticked every box. Then, he stood there and stared, pondering, putting the pieces together in his mind.
When he was done, he covered the body. Medikit in hand, he wheeled her towards the morgue to lay alone in a cold room, until they docked.
Logic said this was no longer Char. Reasoning said there was no purpose to it. But he still took out the single pink rose from his medikit that he had placed there before coming to the morgue. Heart thumping, his steady surgeon hands unwavering, Zane laid the rose on top of the sheet.
Then, he zipped his medikit bag closed, ripped off the surgical gown, and left. The reverence of that Zane had taken during the autopsy was a cloud that buoyed him through the corridors back to his quarters.
The second that he stepped through his doorway he started to strip. Every item of clothing went into the laundry chute. He stood, naked, shaking, taking long slow breaths before getting into the shower to wash away the stink of what he’d had to do. And when he was done, he redressed and went back to security to join DC Dodge in the interview room.
The young man across from Zane and DC Dodge was no more than fifteen according to the files, but his bulk and body made him look closer to eighteen. With the lack of background data on Bo, Zane thought he could even be eighteen. Out of curiosity, he scanned the boy, taking passive samples, and sent them to the lab with the autopsy tests.
To put the young man at ease, Zane sat in on the interview. To further put the boy in a comfortable state, they were not in one of the stark white interrogation rooms but instead in a comfortable office that smelled of chocolate chip cookies. Meanwhile the three sat on warm caramel colored couches.
“For the record, would you state your name?” The blonde detective, DC Dodge, asked. Her face was a mask of impassivity. Zane was unimpressed. They were supposed to be making him comfortable.
“Beauregard Melana,” he said.
“Your name isn’t Li'l Bo?” Zane tilted his head the young man as he pronounced the nickname as he’d always heard it. It was a gentle jibe.
But Li’l Bo didn’t smile. He stared at his hands, held them together in his lap, his body taut, muscles rigid.
“No, Bo is short for Beauregard. They started calling me Li’l Bo when I was small and it stuck. And since I’m not very little,” He flexed a massive bicep, and made it bounce. “It’s become a sort of joke.” Bo shrugged the way that teenage boys do when they try not to care about something that’s actually bothering them.
“Ah, irony and sarcasm,” said Zane.
Dodge continued, “Age?”
The blonde detective continued with asking mundane questions while Zane observed. Li’l Bo answered the questions, eyes wide, knee thudding up and down, thumb slapping his thigh. Even though reaching out wasn’t how this worked, the doctor wanted to reach out and tell him everything was going to be fine. The kid was a suspect just like everyone else who had been close to his mother.
“When did you find out that your mother was pregnant?” Dodge asked, her voice becoming off-putting after lulling the young man into a secure place.
“She was what?” The young man stiffened, gaze darting back and forth between Zane and Dodge. “She was going to have a baby?”
“We’re not sure yet,” Zane said. He turned to Dodge and flipped a ‘what did you go and say that for?’ frown at him, then whispered, harsh tones a spitting staccato. “I don’t have anything back from the autopsy about a pregnancy either. That’s just what we’ve been told by a witness,” he hissed the last word and turned away from Dodge, ignoring the glare from the detective. Zane managed to switch to a softer tone, “Focus Bo. Focus on the events of the day. The more we kn
ow, the sooner we can figure out what happened to your mother. Sometimes the smallest detail is the most important.”
Dodge sat up taller in the straight-backed. Zane looked across the lounge table at Bo as a loud snuffle and sob escaped the young man. “Did somebody kill my mom? Did someone hurt her? It wasn’t an accident?” He put his forehead down on his lap, body shaking as at long last the young man gave into grief.
“Let’s give him a minute,” Zane said.
Dodge nodded towards the door. “We’ll be back. I’ll get you that cola you asked for,” she said. But Bo’s head was still down, ignoring everything in the room. He wasn’t going to be much use to anyone.
As soon as they got outside, Zane turned on Dodge and gunned his anger in a volley of authority. “You can’t leave him alone. Have someone call Astra or Veronika. I don’t like this one bit. Bo is a minor and you cannot interview him without parental or guardian consent. His mother is dead. You called me into this interview at the last minute. Why? Because you thought you could get more information out of him if a friend was there?”
“Calm down. Veronika Elias gave permission to interview him,” Dodge said.
Zane stood, shaking as though a bucket of ice water had been tossed over his head. “She did what? Why?”
“It’s for his own protection. We needed to take him into custody,” said DC Dodge. “We’ll know more about whether this was murder or not after your autopsy results are back from the lab. But there’s no evidence that the safeties failed. That, the engineering crew have already determined.”
“Why wasn’t I informed? I’m lead on this. You need to keep me in the loop, Detective. What else do you have that you didn’t tell me about?”
“You were in the autopsy, I’m sorry, I should have told you right away,” Dodge offered. She really did look contrite with a sympathetic wrinkle at her brow. The DC’s soft-spoken voice dropped, “Background checking so far is turning up nothing on either her or Bo. True, the victim was a circus act and they’re notoriously lax on personal documentation, but even those folks have some kind of records in the system. And we can’t find any information about either of them prior to her joining the cabaret on LS Quantum.”
Cosmic Cabaret Page 13
