Unexpected Rain

by Jason LaPier

  “That would explain the checkerboard effect,” he mumbled, giving the body one last look and then turning away.

  “What’s a checkerboard?”

  Runstom glared at the med tech. Her white face and large gray eyes were innocent and quizzical. “Forget it,” he mumbled. He’d only had his thirty-seventh birthday two months ago, but Roxeen’s alarming youth was making him feel old. Though it wasn’t entirely youth, he supposed. He tried not to let it get to him and instead looked back at the rest of the garden. “Let’s get out of this mud pit. I don’t see any more bodies.”

  After slipping and sliding their way back out of the sludge, he set the jacket down on the avenue and made a meager attempt to clean it off. She wandered up and down the street looking for more residents while he cleaned. She didn’t find any, and once he got the jacket back on they set out to go house to house.

  “So,” Roxeen said as they walked, pausing in that way when someone wants to broach a subject they’re not sure they should. “Where are you from, Officer Runstom?”

  Runstom sighed wearily. “Do we really have to do the small talk thing right now? I’m not good at small talk.”

  “Well, I was just …”

  “I know you were just.” Runstom stopped and turned to face her. “It’s the green skin. Right?”

  “Well,” she started, then frowned, dropping her gaze. “I’m sorry.”

  “Look, you’ve got medical training, right? Don’t you understand? It’s the filters and stuff.” Runstom hated trying to explain why he was born with green skin. It was really more of a brownish-olive color, but compared to the stark white of a B-fourean like Roxeen, he was a green man. He didn’t really understand the science behind it either, and he was always trying to forget how much different it made him look from most others.

  “Yes, the filters,” Roxeen said meekly. “The atmosphere combined with the radiation filters where we grow up make our skin favor different pigmentation during development.”

  “Right, something like that,” Runstom mumbled, and he turned away and started walking again. “I’m space-born. You want to know where I’m from?” Roxeen didn’t answer. “Nowhere, that’s where. Born on a transport shuttle, somewhere between one ModPol outpost and another.” He trudged down the avenue and motioned her to follow him as he opened the door to the house on the corner. She stood there for a moment, clearly not content with the condensed version of his life story. She gave him a look he couldn’t quite read and then walked past him through the doorway.

  He stood alone and scowled at nothing. She was just a kid, asking questions a kid would ask. Not only was she young, she was a B-fourean – a domer – living a sheltered life. He decided he’d better go easy on her and he took a deep breath.

  Runstom looked up and down the avenue before following Roxeen into the residence. The whole block was a crime scene. It had to be the biggest crime scene in ModPol history, excepting incidents where entire spaceships had been destroyed, of course. He’d certainly never read about anything this big in the outpost’s library.

  The first four houses shared similar scenes. Debris trailed out of the windows and doorways. Dishes, books, records, artwork, clothing, smaller pieces of furniture, and lots of unidentifiable bits of previously loved possessions. Each unit had a body, all of them dead. They all had managed to keep themselves from being sucked out of their houses, and didn’t have nearly as much of the bloat as the corpse in the garden had. The residents in those four units either died due to injury from flying debris or survived the windstorm long enough to suffocate. Only Roxeen’s scanner could tell the difference. She dutifully examined them with a morbid curiosity that made Runstom increasingly uncomfortable.

  The fifth house was different. The damage inside the house seemed off somehow, but Runstom couldn’t put his finger on why. They didn’t find a body, just lots of broken glass, ceramics, and plastic. They dug around for a few minutes, just to be sure they didn’t overlook a corpse.

  “What was that?” Roxeen said with a start as Runstom flipped over half a lounge chair.

  “Huh? I dunno, just a chair, I guess.”

  “No, shh!” She stood still for a moment, and he turned to give her an annoyed glare. “I heard something,” she whispered. Her eyes were wide with alarm.

  “What?” he said in a hushed voice. He tried not to move for a moment as he listened.

  “In the lavatory, I think.”

  He looked at the bathroom door and stared in silence, straining to hear. He looked back at her, and shifted his weight around. He suddenly remembered that he was still wearing that damned, bulky jacket and Detective Porter had yet to remote in. He disconnected the CamCap from the port in the jacket and shrugged off the latter. He was about to take the helmet off too, but then had a sudden image of Porter trying to call in right at that moment. The last thing he wanted was a demerit, so he plugged the CamCap cable into the regulation Personal Mobile Device in the inside pocket of his ModPol uniform. The PMD had a weak transmitter on it that didn’t work well for a long distance up-link, but if Porter tried calling in, Runstom would at least know it and could just plug the CamCap back into the jacket real quick.

  “I think there’s someone in there,” Roxeen said. She inched closer to the bathroom while Runstom messed around with his equipment.

  “Okay,” he said quietly. “Don’t move.” He took a step toward the bathroom door, unclipping his holster and touching the butt of his gun. It suddenly occurred to him that if anyone were alive in there, he had no reason to suspect they were dangerous. He kept one finger on the gun anyway, and crept forward. Something about this house was ringing alarm bells in his head.

  He got to the door and punched the release handle, but the door stuck firmly closed. Locked from the inside. Someone was definitely in there; whether they were still alive or not, he wasn’t sure. He broke the silence with a knock on the door.

  “Anyone in there?” It was quiet for a moment, then he heard a distinct, thin cough from the other side. “Hello?” Runstom said, loudly now. “If you can hear me, can you hit the door lock?”

  He heard no other sound. “Shit,” he muttered, pulling a multi-tool off his belt. He jammed the tool into the side of the door-handle mechanism, popping the safety latch. The panel fell away revealing the manual handle. He grabbed it and yanked the door sideways.

  “Shit,” he repeated, unsure of how to react to the scene before his eyes. “I think we’ve got a live one here.”

  The bathroom floor was red and wet with blood. Sitting on the floor, against the far wall, was a tall, red-skinned, red-haired man. His eyes lolled back in his head, but his chest moved ever so slightly, in and out, in and out. The slow motion mesmerized Runstom for a fraction of a second, and he pictured each corpse they’d examined, each a thing, an object to be scanned, but each of them had been more than that only a few hours ago. Each one had once been alive.

  “Oh, my!” Roxeen breathed as she came up to the bathroom door. “He’s … he’s covered in blood!”

  Runstom took a step forward as her words sunk in. He swallowed a few curses before finding the right response. “You don’t get outta the sub-domes much, do ya?” He looked at her, and she turned away from the body on the floor long enough to give Runstom a blank look. “He’s an off-worlder. Probably from Poligart, that big moon in the Sirius system. Or maybe Betelgeuse-3. That’s red skin,” he said, pointing to the man. “That’s blood,” he added, pointing to the floor.

  Roxeen’s mouth moved a little, but she didn’t say anything. “Well, get over here!” he barked at her. “He’s still breathing, but I don’t know for how much longer.”

  She stutter-stepped toward the red man on the floor, fumbling with her scanner. She knelt gingerly in the gooey, half-dry, red-brown plasma that covered the tiled floor, planting herself a few feet away from the resident as she stretched the scanning unit toward him. It began blinking and chirping all kinds of warnings and alarms. Runstom couldn’t use a m
ed-scanner to save his life, but the device practically quivered with fear as it chattered on about fading vitals.

  Liquid oozed out of the right side of the man’s mid-section, and Runstom and Roxeen both stared at the open wound dumbly. Runstom’s mind clumsily sifted through all the crime-scene procedures he’d been re-memorizing on the flight to B-4 as though there would be some rule or policy on how to handle the situation, something to tell him what to do. A gurgled cough came from the dying man, causing Runstom to throw aside the mental handbook and focus on the life slipping away from them in that moment. He lunged forward and put his hands on the open wound, applying pressure. He felt the goo of a QuikStik bandage. An open med-kit lay on the floor underneath the nearby counter. This guy had managed to partially close his wound, but not completely. The ragged way he was breathing and the agitation of the med-scanner led Runstom to guess there was probably a lot of damage somewhere on the inside.

  “Can you do anything for him?” Runstom said, craning his neck to watch the red man’s face while keeping his hands on the wound. When the med tech didn’t reply, he looked at her. She stared through him with those big gray eyes. “Roxeen!” he shouted.

  “They said they would all be dead,” she said softly. “They said there wouldn’t be anyone alive.”

  “Yeah, well they were fucking wrong, Roxeen! This guy is breathing!”

  The dying man coughed several times in succession. “Uhhhnnn.”

  “Hey. Hey!” Runstom tried to look into the eyes rolling around in the red man’s head. “Hey, look at me! Help is here, you’re going to be okay.”

  “Uhhhhnnn,” the man groaned. “Eh,” he coughed a strange sound like he was trying to speak. “Eh. Eh.”

  “That’s it, talk to me.” Without taking his eyes off the man, Runstom spoke out of the side of his mouth at Roxeen. “Get another QuikStik, so we can close this wound. And we need some syn-plasma. He’s lost a lot of blood. Hey buddy – talk to me. Where are you from?”

  “Ehh. Ehhh. Kkkkssss.”

  “Come on, buddy. Stay with me.”

  Roxeen dropped the med scanner to the floor, where it continued beeping and flashing more intensely, locked on to the patient’s vitals. She broke open her own pack, unrolling it across the still-wet tiles and revealing all manner of emergency medical product.

  “Ehhh. Kkkksss.” With an effort, the man raised his blood-stained hands, bringing them up to his face. He tried to put them together, shakily forming a cross with his index fingers.

  Roxeen had gotten another QuikStik out of its package and moved Runstom’s hands away so she could apply it. With his hands free, Runstom tried to hold the red man’s head straight.

  The man looked into Runstom’s eyes. He crossed his index fingers again, holding them in front of his face for a few seconds before dropping them weakly and going limp. He exhaled one last time and closed his eyes.

  The med scanner blared one last mechanical scream and went silent.

  CHAPTER 3

  After several hours, the Modern Policing and Peacekeeping officers, their remotely connected detectives (Porter did eventually call in), and their accompanying medical technicians found thirty-seven residents and one maintenance worker. Two people who lived in the block were later found to be in the Blue Haven dome during the incident and were detained for questioning, but quickly released. Of the thirty-eight found in block 23-D, nine were still alive. Two of those were unstable and died before the med techs could get them out of the block. The other seven were taken to Gretel Hospital and were in various medical conditions, and despite the likelihood of permanent physical and mental damage, all were expected to live.

  The twenty-nine found dead were all scanned and recorded. Many had died from blunt-force trauma and lacerations or suffocation. Many had suffered from various other disturbing ailments, the medical names of which Runstom did not care to remember, mostly related to decompression and lack of oxygen. The remains were removed and the ModPol officers were given one more day to comb the desolate block. This time they were without the CamCaps and weighty jackets. They found no other remains and the clean-up crews moved in to go to work the next day.

  “Seems like we should be in there for a couple more days,” Runstom said, sitting at a table in a break room in the depths of the Blue Haven Police Department Precinct One. “It’s a crime scene, and they’re already cleaning up all the evidence.”

  “Evidence?” McManus snorted, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “What the hell are you talking about, Stanley? Only one guy could have done this and he did it from outside the block.”

  “It’s Stanf—”

  “Mac is right, Stanley,” Horowitz said. “It’s a pretty open-and-shut case. The dicks like the operator. The sooner they get a confession out of him, the sooner we can go back to base.”

  Runstom looked at each of them, frowning. Horowitz wasn’t even looking at him. She was idly flipping through a mag-viewer in front of her on the table, most of her long, straight, black hair pulled into a ponytail, leaving a clump of bangs to fall to one side, obscuring her face. McManus stood rigidly near the counter and peered suspiciously into his coffee cup. Halsey was half-dozing in his chair, startling awake with a snort when he began to tip over. There were three pale-faced Blue Haven officers looming on one side of the room, smiling mildly, thin hands clasped together at their mid-sections. Runstom thought that if he were to try to read their faces, he’d be looking at a blank page.

  “Hey, Whitey,” McManus said. “This fucking coffee is cold.”

  “Ah, thank you, officer,” the middle one said. “We’re glad you enjoy it.”

  McManus looked into his blank, gray eyes and then shrugged as he took a slug from the cup, then grimaced before taking another. Runstom frowned at the other ModPol officer, unnerved by the skin-slang. The residents of Barnard-4 were all extremely pale skinned thanks to low-grade filtration mechanisms and the distance from the center of the solar system. People growing up on B-3 – like the other three ModPol officers in the room – were closer to the star, and by necessity benefited from more expensive filters. They all had skin colors that ranged from pinkish yellow to light brown, closer to the hues of many Earthlings.

  “Anyway. I don’t know what you’re complaining about, Runstom,” McManus continued, starting a slow pace around the room. “Are you saying you had a good time combing through a giant trash heap, hoping to find the bloated remains of a B-fourean?”

  “They weren’t all B-foureans,” Runstom said, quick to make his argument. “One guy was—”

  Halsey interrupted him with a giggle. “Yeah, Stanley wants to go play dick. He wants to in-vess-ti-gate. Maybe go un-der-cov-er. Just like his dear ol’ mum.”

  “You got a problem, Halsey?” Runstom stood up.

  McManus moved in front of him. “Is that it, Runstom?” he said quietly. “You think you’re better than us? Detective Runstom, is it now?”

  Runstom imagined slugging the other man across the jaw, sending him sprawling to the floor, but he was determined not to be baited. “Officer McManus,” he said in a low voice, matching it with an even stare. “Are you attempting to instigate me?”

  McManus gave a huffy snort. “No, Officer Runstom.” he said through clenched teeth. “I’m not trying to instigate you.” He took a sip from his cup, bringing it close to Runstom’s nose. “I’m just really, really bitten off about how terrible this fucking coffee is.” He slapped the empty mug down on the table and walked out of the room.

  Halsey gave half a laugh and then leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Horowitz continued flipping through her mag-viewer. The Blue Haven officers maintained their indifferent smiles. Runstom stood in silence for a moment, focusing on suppressing his anger. After he’d given himself enough time to calm down, he announced that he was going for a walk. No one responded, so he left the room quietly.

  The local precinct was set up like a maze of hallways and rooms, but everything was arranged in a way that made it
impossible to get lost. Domes were all designed on paper by engineers, and everything turned out to have an unnatural symmetry that Runstom could never get used to. Even if you tried to get lost, you couldn’t wander long before somehow ending up where you were supposed to be.

  There wasn’t much to do in the Blue Haven precinct – they didn’t even have a library – so Runstom stopped when he came upon a door that led to an inner courtyard. It wasn’t very large, but it had some plant life. Even though the trees and bushes were laid out in perfect position, nature still had chaotic reign over the formation of branches, leaves, and bark.

  Runstom sat on a bench and tried to breathe deeply. Despite the presence of naturally generated oxygen in the space, the sweet sting of manufactured air was still detectable. He tried to ignore it and think about the case. He was still reeling from the fact that the investigation on the ground was more or less over already. Thirty-one people had died, seven others were injured in the ordeal. How could the investigation of the crime scene be over so quickly?

  The detectives, Brutus and Porter, didn’t believe it was an accident. They were charging the block operator on duty with murder. Runstom knew they didn’t have much in the way of evidence. But even so, maybe they were right. As a rule, you look for the simplest explanation and you’ll find your suspect. The only person who could have opened the venting doors was the operator.

  So why was Runstom unable to accept such a simple conclusion? He sighed as he sat in the fabricated grove of trees and shrubs. He’d been spending too much time in the outpost library. Poring over old cases with complexities that were just plain absent here.

  They did have one key piece of evidence: the operator’s console logs. What they didn’t have was motive. Runstom wished he could be a fly on the wall in the interrogation room at that moment, where they were currently questioning the operator. Would they get a confession out of him? Would they discover the man’s motive for killing thirty-one mostly unrelated people in one fell swoop?