“Roger that.”
There was an agonising wait as Control sped through the footage. The computers at the Grand Hall could check a thousand times quicker than a human, but it still felt like an age.
“We’ve got something. Oliver Truss met with the same individual on three separate occasions.”
“Recently?”
“The last meeting was two days ago. The contact brought with him a large parcel.”
“Big enough for two placards?” Lint asked.
It sounded promising. “Do we have facial recog, Control? Can you get me a name?”
“Coming up, Morph. Stand by.”
Twenty-Five
Can’t Trust a Word
DREDD’S BOOT MADE quick work of the door to Kell Sanchez’s apartment. The cramped hab had been turned over, furniture in pieces, drawers emptied out across the stained carpet. The place reeked of human waste and rotten food; flies buzzed over the wreckage of an overturned garbage bin.
“Control, suspected break-in at Edwyn Warwick,” Dredd reported. “Residence of Kell Sanchez.”
A Tri-D set played to the ransacked room, volume turned painfully high. Ruan found the remote and, when the mute button didn’t work, turned the set down to a tolerable level.
More flies buzzed through a door from the main living area, the cloying stink intensifying as Dredd approached.
Ruan fell in behind as he nudged the door open with his foot.
A body lay on the bed, arms outstretched. You could be forgiven for thinking that the man was asleep, if it wasn’t for the blood splattered up the wall behind him.
There was no mistaking the face, with or without the jagged hole in his forehead: Kell Sanchez. Although the handlebar moustache was longer than in his employee picture, and the punk had had a gold tooth fitted.
Sanchez’s body was half under the covers, having seemingly been killed in his sleep. Dredd’s eyes fell to the many tattoos scrawled across Sanchez’s bare chest.
“The Valverde Gang.”
“What’s that?”
Dredd pointed at a tattoo of a laughing skull.
“Crime syndicate operating throughout Sector 187. Known traffickers, specialising in muties and freaks.”
“So the mother and daughter...”
“Were better off in the sweatshop.”
“Reckon Peck was investigating the gang?”
“Make sense. Peck had a fake gangland tattoo in the same place. If Sanchez found out he wasn’t genuine Valverde...”
“He killed him?”
“Maybe. Although it doesn’t explain the mask, or the typed message. Also, why shoot the merchandise?”
“The merchandise?”
“The muties. You saw the shooter in your vision. Look like Sanchez?”
Ruan regarded the corpse, looking the body up and down. “I’m not sure. The perp was taller—wider, too—but that could be down to the woman’s fear. She was hurt, feeling threatened...”
Dredd pulled his snuffler from his belt and held it up to the stiff’s skin. The scanner beeped obediently and he showed the results to Ruan. “I’m no tek, but going by the tissue degradation, creep’s been dead for three days. We know he didn’t show up for work the day Peck was killed.”
“Because he was already dead?”
Dredd slipped the snuffler back into its pouch. “Looks that way.”
In the living quarters, a familiar voice played from the Tri-D. Dredd walked to the door to see MC-1 Today anchor Ken Wallaby collecting Bret Barnet’s award posthumously. Wallaby was in floods of what Dredd assumed were crocodile tears, until he realised what the reporter was saying.
“I didn’t plan to do it. I just wanted Bret to die. I piloted the hover-limo right into that block. Bret always did like having his face plastered over the city.”
On the screen, a pair of Judges rushed onto the stage and grabbed the weeping news anchor.
“Those words...” Dredd said. “I’ve heard them before.”
Ruan joined him in front of the Tri-D set. “Another confession?”
“But I was with Wallaby when Barnet’s flyer went haywire. At least at first. He was heading for his sleep machine.”
“Could have been a cover.”
“Maybe, but—”
Dredd was interrupted by a call from Control.
“Dredd, we’ve found something in the haulage company’s records.”
“Go on.”
“The container where Peck was found: it was registered to Microvost, a subsidiary of Somnus Industries.”
“Which in turn is owned by Jocelyn Piper,” Dredd said, as the woman herself appeared on screen. She was being grilled about her links to Limo-A-Go-Go, manufacturer of Bret Barnet’s ill-fated transport. “Stand by, Control.”
Dredd grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. “I’ve told you before, I have no stake in Limo-A-Go-Go, one way or another.”
“No,” agreed the reporter. “But their navigation computers do use the FlightMax software produced by one of PiperTech’s companies; software that experts are now claiming is simple to hack, as seen in the case of the Bret Barnet hijacking.”
“This is complete and utter nonsense, and yet another example of our corrupt media’s crusade to blacken my name. All these accusations prove is that you can’t trust a word journalists say...”
“Or politicians,” Dredd said, indicating to Ruan that they were leaving. “Control, send a meat wagon to Edwyn Warwick. One stiff, Kell Sanchez. Bullet wound to the head, unknown weapon.”
“You staying at the scene, Dredd?”
“That’s a negative. We’re heading for Somnus Industries, following a lead on the Peck case.”
“Helmets already on route to Somnus, Dredd.”
Dredd shot a puzzled look at Ruan. “Already? At whose request?”
Twenty-Six
The Net Tightens
“THIS IS A raid, everyone stay where you are!”
The workers on the Somnus factory floor obeyed Judge Morphy’s order without question, largely due to his and Lint’s raised Lawgivers.
“Brandon Kronecker. Where is he?” Lint barked. The workers stared at him, too terrified to answer.
The communicator in his helmet buzzed.
“Dredd to Morphy, come in.”
“I’m a little busy right now, Joe.”
“You’re at Somnus, right?”
“Right.”
“I need you to check a component number for me.”
“A what?”
“Just do it, Morph. I’m following a hunch. Unit 74141/KS.”
Morphy could hardly refuse. He’d always told Dredd to follow his gut. He stalked over to a Somnus employee standing by a computer terminal, a chubby man who looked so scared Morphy thought he might blub.
“I need to check a component in your machines. Unit 74141/KS.”
The chubster looked at him in bewilderment.
“Look it up.”
“N-no need,” the worker stammered. “It’s a torpidity convertor. Used in the hibernation matrix. A small, but vital—”
Something clanged on the gantry above their head. Morphy looked up to see rubber-soled shoes racing along the metal grill.
“It’s Kronecker!” Lint shouted.
Morphy’s gun was up, tracking the fleeing shoes. “Brandon Kronecker, stay where you are.”
The perp didn’t stop. Morphy couldn’t reliably shoot through the gantry.
“Ricochet,” he said, subtly adjusting his aim and pulling the trigger.
The bullet bounced off a ceiling strut to hit Kronecker in the chest. He was thrown back over the railings, landing with a crunch in front of the two Judges.
“You’re under arrest for rabble-rousing,” Morphy informed him. “We have footage of you paying Oliver Truss to protest at Jocelyn Piper’s event.” His eyes went to a familiar star tattoo on Kronecker’s shoulder. “And by the looks of that ink, you’re the punk who brought a rocket launcher to the rally.
Why do it? Why try to kill your own boss?”
“I wasn’t t-trying to kill her,” Kronecker stammered. “Sh-she paid me to do it. It was all her idea. Please... it hurts.”
Lint ignored the pained plea. “Piper paid you to disrupt her own rally? That doesn’t make sense.”
Dredd voice came over the comm. “Does to me. Somnus uses cheap mutie labour to make the components of their sleep machines, shipping the parts into the Meg via Dependicorp.”
Morphy shook his head. “So much for Making Mega-City Work.”
“The attack on the rally was designed to make Piper look a victim. Plus, there was a journalist snooping around the consignments from her mutie sweatshops. It looks like the Valverde gang are running a trafficking ring from the depot, picking up mutants trying to escape Piper’s inhuman working conditions. If the truth got out, her political career would have been shot to hell. She needed the story buried. Next thing you know, Peck is dead, the first in a murder spree aimed at discrediting the press.”
“But how is she doing it?”
“Implanted memories. What if McKenzie and Wallaby were seeing other people’s memories?”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” Dredd admitted.
“Dreams?” Lint suggested. “Could they be implanted in their sleep, while using Somnus sleep machines? They were both journalists.”
“It would explain McKenzie’s contradictory memories. You got any proof for any of this, Joe?”
“Just a working theory, Morph. Let’s just say I’ve been forced to walk in someone else’s shoes recently. It opened my eyes to how disorientating it can be.”
“You’re not kidding,” Lint said beneath his breath.
“What’s that, rookie?”
Lint ignored Dredd, pulling his Lawgiver on Kronecker. “Somnus has the contract to maintain Justice Department sleep machines, right?”
At first, Kronecker didn’t answer, lost in his pain, so Lint repeated the question, this time with his foot on the man’s chest.
“Yes!” Kronecker screamed. “Yeah, we do!”
“Who do you send in to make repairs?”
A meek voice sounded from across the factory floor.
“Er... that’ll be me.”
Lint whirled around, his aim settling on a dark-skinned woman with a mane of frizzy hair.
“Were you at Sector House 9 in the last 24-hours?”
The woman shook her head, never taking her eyes from the barrel of Lint’s gun.
“N-no. I was due to go, but...”
She trailed off, as if realising she was about to incriminate herself. Lint took a step forward, the factory’s fluorescent lighting reflecting off his white helmet.
“But?”
The woman looked uncertain. “But I was told to stay at home. Someone else went in my place.”
“Who?”
“I’m not supposed to say. I was given a bonus to keep quiet.”
“Who?” Lint’s finger tightened around his trigger.
“Please, don’t shoot,” she begged. “It was Acton. Acton Hendry.”
“Never heard of him.”
“I have,” Dredd growled over the comm. “Jocelyn Piper’s bodyguard.”
IN KELL SANCHEZ’S hab, Dredd pulled a datapad from his belt. “Control, I need access to Edwyn Warwick Block security footage.”
“All of it?”
“Just show me Tuesday’s. Patch it through to my pad.”
An icon flashed in the corner of the screen, indicating incoming data.
“Computer, run footage through Comp-Ident, cross referencing PiperTech employee, Acton Hendry.”
Stills from the block’s security footage flashed across the screen, too fast for any eye to follow, even Dredd’s. Then the pad gave a beep, pausing on a grainy shot of the Edwyn Warwick concourse. The computer picked out one figure, striding through the entrance, words flashing across the display:
+++ MATCH FOUND. HENDRY, ACTON.
DATE STAMP: TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 16, 2081 +++
“The day Sanchez was shot and killed,” Dredd said.
Ruan ordered the computer to enhance the image.
“Recognise something?” Dredd asked.
“Only the coat, although last time I saw it, I was looking through the eye of a critically injured mutant.”
“In the container?”
Ruan nodded. “I’d bet my badge that the bullet that killed Kell Sanchez will match the gun that killed Ben Peck.”
Dredd deactivated the datapad. “Stop the press. We’ve found our Deadliner.”
Twenty-Seven
The Piper Palace Massacre
JOCELYN PIPER SAT back in her chair and let out a deep sigh. That had been the fourteenth interview since the crash. This was exhausting. She rubbed her tired eyes, looking forward to the day when she could retire to actual bed, rather than use her own sleep machines to stay on schedule.
A light flashed on her comms unit. Surely not another interview. She wasn’t scheduled to talk to Shout Out Mega-Cit for another half hour.
Massaging the bridge of her nose, she answered her PA’s call.
“Yes, Maddie. What is it?”
“Sorry to disturb you, Ms Piper, but there appears to be a gunfight in reception.”
Jocelyn stared at the comms unit in belief. “There’s what?”
BULLETS BLAZED THROUGH the lobby of Piper Palace, Jocelyn Piper’s personal stratoscraper. The reception had been decorated as ostentatiously as possible, every piece of furniture a gaudy testament to Piper’s wealth. The carpet alone cost more than the City’s annual budget deficit. Rather less, now it was soaking up blood, the furniture smashed into equally showy shrapnel.
Judge Dredd was pinned behind a statue of Jocelyn Piper as Venus, rounds pinging off her artistically amplified assets, while Ruan was sheltering behind a rapidly diminishing chaise longue. Piper’s security detail was hunkered down across the lobby, next to sets of elevator doors that looked suspiciously like they were made from solid gold. Acton Hendry was calling the shots—literally—his men armed with Widowmaker 1887s.
Dredd had wanted the bodyguard alive, but that was looking less likely by the second. Backup was arriving out on the sked in the form of Morphy and Lint, but the pair would be cut down the moment they approached the front door.
A bullet slammed through the statue of Venus, embedding itself in Dredd’s shoulder. He couldn’t help but cry out.
“You got winged, lawman,” Hendry called across the lobby. “You’re dead meat, whatever happens. Why don’t you save us all a lot of trouble and shoot yourself through the head?”
Enough was enough. Dredd had wanted Hendry alive, but there would be plenty of other conspirators to confess.
Dredd threw his gun arm around the statue and yelled, “Hi-Ex!”
The Lawgiver bucked as the explosive shell streaked across the lobby, not at Hendry’s gunmen, but the gold-plated ceiling above their heads.
KA-BOOM!
The cloud of dust engulfed both Dredd and Ruan, but the rain of bullets had stopped. The front doors were yanked open and Morphy and Lint ran in.
“Dredd, you’re hit,” Morphy said, noticing the blood trickling down Dredd’s tunic.
“It’s nothing,” Dredd grunted.
They ran into the billowing dust. Piper’s minions were half-buried beneath the contents of what had once been the first floor.
He kicked at slabs of masonry until he found Hendry hacking up blood beneath a slab of rockcrete the size of Dredd’s Lawmaster.
“Acton Hendry, you are charged with the suspected murder of Ben Peck, Loreen Peston and Bret Barnet.”
“You’ve got no evidence,” Hendry spat. “You’ve got nothing.”
“Only a matter of time.”
“Shame you won’t be around to see it!”
With extreme effort, Hendry swung up his arm, a stub-nosed revolver in his hand.
Dredd’s execution round obliterated Hendry’s brain befo
re the bodyguard could squeeze his trigger. He fell lifeless to the rubble-strewn floor.
“Threatening a Judge,” Dredd told his corpse. “Sentence is death.”
CONTROL CHOSE THAT moment to report that the Judges raiding Hendry’s residence in Kevin Costner Block had found a trilby hat, complete with press card, a fake Judge’s uniform and a computer showing recent access to a FlightMax navigation system, namely the hover-limo of Bret Barnet.
“Missed the evening edition, Control, but better late than never.”
Morphy stepped up beside Dredd, calling in Pat Wagons to transport the living to the Sector House and the departed to Resyk. Behind them, Ruan looked around the devastation of the lobby, her brow creasing into a frown.
“Morphy, where’s your rookie?”
Twenty-Eight
Guilty as Charged
JOCELYN PIPER WATCHED the carnage on her screen and knew it was over. There was no way even her army of spin doctors could salvage this.
“Maddie, have my flyer ready,” she called over to the comms unit on her desk, grunting as she tried to cram the vintage typewriter her father had given her into the waste-disposal unit.
There was no reply from her PA; the little spugwit had probably fled. This was the trouble with young people today. No commitment. From now on, she’d only employ robots.
With a final shove, the typewriter disappeared into the chute, tumbling to the iron teeth that would grind it into dust.
She turned, finding a Judge standing facing her, his mouth a grim line. His Lawgiver was raised, his aim sure and steady.
No, wait. Not a Judge, not yet. The kid wore a white helmet and his badge displayed the word Rookie rather than his name.
But she knew it anyway.
“Jocelyn Piper, you have been found guilty of numerous crimes,” the youth said. “You ordered Acton Hendry to kill Ben Peck to cover his investigation into your mutant workforce.”
Judge Dredd: Year Two Page 33
