by Jason LaPier
CHAPTER 11
Not everyone was interested in the Delirium-G offer, but the number of people that were surprised Runstom. Before long, they had a miniature army of investigators at their beck and call. They searched, they scoured, they dug deep into the room of every suspect. These workers knew all the hiding places; the corners of drawers and cupboards, the inconspicuous maintenance panels, the insides of furniture cushions. No stone was left unturned.
It was a few days later when there was a single knock at the door of their room. When Runstom opened it, he saw no one in the hallway. There was an envelope taped to the outside of the door. It contained a slip of paper with a number on it and a MagiKey card.
They cross-referenced the room number with their list of suspects. They didn’t know everyone’s room, but they had this one. It was Linda Parson, from the city-dome Yorkenshire on Barnard-3. She was a politician; head coordinator of a sub-dome of Yorkenshire called Jersey. Runstom looked over the other notes they had on her. She was only riding the superliner from a research colony in the asteroid field just outside B-4, back in to B-3. She’d made a visit to the colony to support efforts to find a cure for gravity-lag, a debilitating condition that many planet-hoppers experienced. She had coincidentally timed the end of the visit to align with the passing of Superliner #5, and had hopped aboard to rub elbows with some large pocketbooks that also happened to suffer the effects of gravity-lag every few years or so. It was rumored that she planned to run for mayor of Yorkenshire in the next cycle. However, this was a pretty unsurprising revelation since mayorship was the next rung up on the political ladder, making it a common goal for sub-dome coordinators.
Runstom’s favorite detail about Linda Parson was that she’d won the election for Jersey head coordinator against her closely matched opponent, Timothy Eagelson, when it was unexpectedly revealed that Eagelson’s wife had undergone controversial magnetic-flux therapy to treat her depression. Despite the Eagelsons’ denial of the whole ordeal, the press managed to get a hold of some damning documentation of the procedure, and many pundits questioned whether the Eagelsons might be part of a particularly small and unpopular cult whose beliefs centered around the power of magnets over the body and mind. Parson won the election in a landslide. A suspicious political victory; Runstom allowed himself to feel a lightness, a small amount of hope, because this put her high on his list.
Runstom and Jax put on their cleaning-crew uniforms and found the room. It was on the fourteenth deck, room number 1468. They knocked politely and waited a few minutes. After a silent exchange of anxious looks, Runstom stuck the MagiKey card in the door and they went in.
The place was a mess. Clothing was strewn about the room recklessly. There was a definite smell of something sour, something past its prime. There was even a hint of smoke, like something had burned at some point. Something plastic.
“Okay,” Runstom said. “Let’s hit the cupboards and the closets first. Then we’ll check the hatches and—”
“Uh,” Jax said, interrupting him. He was standing next to the desk in the room. He cautiously lifted a soiled towel (soiled with what, they chose not to investigate), and revealed a large, silver box.
Runstom came over and they inspected the box. It was about thirty centimeters tall, and thirty centimeters wide, but not a perfect cube; maybe forty or so centimeters long the other way. There was a small panel on the top that featured a handful of buttons and indicator lights. There were large red arrows painted down each of the long sides of the box. A black cable stuck out of the back of it, and coiled about two meters in length along the floor.
“What do these buttons do?” Runstom asked. “And the lights – what do they do?”
“Only one way to find out.” Jax grinned, giving Runstom a look the officer wasn’t sure how to read. “Plug it in. We either do it here, or take it back to our room and do it.”
“That’s the operator in you talking,” Runstom said, fingering some screws in the sides of the box. He looked Jax in the eyes. “An engineer would say, let’s pop it open.”
Jax’s mouth twisted in multiple directions, then he let it curl into a smile. “A playful jab from Officer Runstom. Someone’s in a good mood.” He looked around the room. “We could find something to stick under the towel. I wonder if she would even notice that it was gone.”
“Probably not.” Runstom nudged a thin, cardboard box on the floor with his toe. The box was lying on its side and documents were half-spilling out of it. “She doesn’t appear to be very organized.”
“I guess it’s a matter of whether she plans to use it again. We’ve already considered it might have been a one-shot thing.”
“Yes, but then she would have gotten rid of it,” was Runstom’s logical conclusion.
“That would make sense,” Jax said, rubbing his nose. “But then again, she hasn’t bothered to get rid of whatever is producing that nauseating odor.”
“Good point. So, to reiterate – if this is the device we’re looking for, we don’t know if it was used for a one-shot attack or if the owner is planning to use it again, say, when we get closer to Barnard-3.”
“So we’ll just borrow it for a night and then bring it back tomorrow,” Jax said. “Whether it was going to be used again or not, the owner won’t miss it for a while. We won’t be within range of B-3 for another week at least.”
“Alright. Let’s get moving.” Runstom made a move to pick the box up off the desk, but it was stuck there. He put a little more effort into the action, and it popped off after a moment of tugging. Something sticky was revealed on the desktop, and the pair looked at it disdainfully.
“Here’s a question,” Jax said. “If they have all these cleaning crews on this ship, why has this room not been cleaned in a month?”
“Because I told you motherfuckers to stay the fuck out of my room,” slurred a voice that followed the opening of the door. “Hey,” the woman said halfheartedly. “You should put that thing down. Actually, take it with you. Just get rid of it, it’s garbage.” She eyed the box, then looked up at Runstom, then over to Jax, then back to Runstom. “Yeah. Jettison it, okay? Or incinerate it. Whatever you guys do.”
The two men stood motionless and dumbfounded. Linda Parson, a middle-aged woman, wearing a platinum, formal-wear jumpsuit, stumbled about the room with purpose. From a cupboard she produced a small foil package. She tore the package open. “You boys hungry?” She leaned in toward Runstom, and he could smell the sweet tang of alcohol from several paces away.
He felt his face harden. The officer had seen this level of degradation before. Linda Parson was a successful woman. She was on a goddamn cruise. She wasn’t stressed about her life or her work. No – she was drinking herself stupid to escape something. The mark of a guilty conscience. Runstom shoved the box into Jax’s hands and walked over to the door, slapping the trigger to force it closed.
“Linda Parson,” he said.
She turned to look at him, then looked back at Jax and the box. She took a step back to try to get them both in view, but there just wasn’t that much room, and she fell backward, landing on the bed. “Hey!” she said, agitated. “Who the fuck are you guys?” She looked long and hard at Runstom. “Why are you painted green? Are you cleaners or what?”
“No, Linda Parson,” Runstom said. “We’re not cleaners.” He looked at Jax.
“I’m a LifSup operator,” Jax said. “From block 23-D, Gretel, sub-dome of Blue Haven, Barnard-4.”
“What?” Linda Parson said, bewildered. Then a look of recognition crossed her face. “Oh, shit,” she breathed. “Oh, shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit—”
“My name is Detective Runstom, of Modern Policing and Peacekeeping. Here are my credentials.”
“Oh fuck.” The woman didn’t bother to look at Runstom’s creds. “How did you find me?”
The men exchanged looks, and Runstom wondered if Jax noticed that he threw the word Detective in front of his name. With a hard stare he willed the operator to play
along.
Jax set the box on the floor in front of Linda Parson. “Show us how it works. Please.”
She looked at the box, then to Jax, then to Runstom. The officer said, “You’d better do as he says, ma’am.” She stared at him blankly. His voice rose ever so slightly. “Show us. Now.”
Goosebumps formed on the woman’s arms. She sank off the bed and knelt in front of the box. “Are you going to arrest me? I didn’t know what it was for!”
Jax looked at Runstom briefly, then knelt down beside her. “Linda. You’ve been set up to take the fall for something. Something terrible. If you help us, we can help you. Tell us about this box.”
“No, I didn’t know,” she started. “Wait, yes – set up – that’s what it was. It’s not my box.”
“And someone showed you how to work it, right?” Runstom strained to be consoling rather than hostile. “Just show us how to turn it on.”
She nodded slowly, looking from Runstom to Jax. “Okay,” she said finally. She ran her fingers over the panel and hit one of the switches. Nothing happened. “Um,” she said, her face twisting in confusion.
Jax picked up the long black cable and handed the end of it to Runstom. “Off – err – Detective. Could you find an outlet for this please?”
Runstom took the cable and plugged it in. Linda Parson tried the switch again and the box whirred to life. The side that the red arrows were pointing to slid open and a small transponder-dish emerged from the inside of the device. “It’s a transmitter of some kind,” she said weakly. “But I didn’t know what it transmitted. You gotta believe me!”
“Okay,” Runstom said, putting his hands out. “Relax, Linda. Take a deep breath. Tell us what happened.”
She tried to breathe deeply, but it came in shudders. “I got the transmitter when I was on Glomulus Serpentus. It’s a research facility, near the asteroid ring. They use them to beam data back and forth between different-sized asteroids. For gravity-lag research.” Runstom nodded, waiting patiently for her to get to the point. She continued, “Anyway, one of the workers on the base gave it to me. He told me I’d need it for my cruise back to B-3. It was all boxed up. I didn’t even know what it was when they gave it to me.”
“So when did you discover it was a transmitter?” Jax asked.
She flipped open a panel on the box, revealing a small slot. She poked at it, and a thin, little black square came out, about two centimeters long. “I had to put this in it. And then just take it to the outer deck, and set it down under my table. Turn it on and sit there for about twelve hours.” She gave the black square to Runstom, who looked at it for a few seconds, then passed it to Jax. “It’s some kind of chip. It arrived in a package, a few days after I got on board.”
“What kind of package was it, Linda?” Runstom said, calmly.
“Um.” She began fumbling over her words. “It was a box of cookies. It was a brown-wrapped package, like from one of the interplanetary delivery companies. Inside, it was a box of cookies. And this chip was hidden in that. He told me I’d be getting the chip in a package. He said to use the chip in the transmitter exactly four days after the package arrived.”
“He?” Runstom stepped closer to her. “Who is he? Who told you to bring a transmitter on board?”
She swallowed hard. “He … I don’t know his real name. He’s X.”
“X?” Jax asked, and Runstom waved at him before he could ridicule the nickname.
“What delivery company was it that brought the cookies?” Runstom asked. “Do you remember? Do you still have the package material?”
“No,” she said, quietly. “I threw it away.”
Jax made a choking sound. “That’d be the only thing she threw away,” he muttered under his breath, earning a sharp glance from Runstom. He frowned, then held up the chip. “The stealth program that infected my LifSup system – I’d bet everything I own that it’s on this chip.” He paused for a second. “I mean, pretend I actually own stuff – stuff that’s really valuable. We need to get to a computer terminal or something with a port on it that can read this.”
“What about the box?” Runstom said.
“It’s just a transmitter. I doubt there’s anything else of value in it. Of course, that would be assuming we believe Coordinator Parson’s story.” Linda Parson hung her head while the other two talked.
“Right.” Runstom knelt beside the woman. “Linda. Tell us about X.”
She lifted her head and stared forward at nothing. “I don’t know who he is.”
“But he knows you. He has something on you,” the officer prodded. “You’re in debt to him.”
“Yeah.” She nodded slowly. “It was the Jersey head coordinator elections. It was such a close election. I knew if I missed that chance, I’d never get a shot at a mayorship in the future. Losing an election can destroy your career. No one understands the risk you take when you run!”
“So you set out to make your opponent look bad,” Jax said.
“Well, yeah. But it wasn’t my idea. It was one of my aides, during the campaign. She said she knew a way to give me an edge. She said I wouldn’t have to know how, that someone else could take care of it.” She sniffled a little bit, and cleared her throat. “I said okay, just as long as no one got hurt. My aide said that X would take care of it. I just kept campaigning. After a couple more weeks, I even kind of forgot about the conversation. When Eagelson’s wife made the news, I was as blown away as everyone else.”
“When did you learn it was X?” Runstom asked.
Parson sighed. “Two days after the election results were in. I got a bouquet of flowers. I mean, I got lots of gifts from friends and supporters. But one bouquet had a note that just said, ‘Congratulations on your victory.’ It was signed ‘X’. Normally I wouldn’t have given it much thought. But something in the back of my mind warned me.”
“Did you ask the aide about it?” Jax asked.
“She was gone. She collected her last paycheck and didn’t show up to work after the election.”
“Okay,” Runstom said. “So when did you hear from X again?”
“It wasn’t until I got the cookies. There was a card. Wait, I think I still have it!” She got up off the bed suddenly, wavered for a second or two, then went into a set of drawers and dug around. She pulled out a small, white, folded-over slip of paper and handed it to Runstom.
He opened it and read it. Jax tried to lean over and get a look, but the officer just folded it back up and stuck it in his pocket. “Okay, Linda. We’re going to take the transmitter and the chip. You’re not going anywhere for a while, so we’re choosing to trust you. We’ll be back to check on you ever other day or so. If you know anything else, it’d be wise to let us know.”
“I just can’t believe this,” she said, her voice cracking. “I heard what happened to that block on B-4. I didn’t believe it was me who did it. But now I know. I killed those people. I killed those innocent people!”
“No, Linda,” Jax said, stepping in front of her. “You loaded the gun. I pointed the gun. But someone else pulled the trigger. This is not your fault, just like it’s not my fault. Do you understand?”
She stared at Jax, or maybe through him. Runstom thought about his words, words he knew the operator was telling himself as much as he was telling Linda Parson.
Runstom said, “We’re going to find this X. Just don’t talk to anyone else about this whole thing. Nothing links you to any of this. Just ride out this cruise and then go home. We’ll keep in touch.”
“Okay,” she said, with a swallow. “Thank you.”
They walked most of the way back to their room in silence. When they reached their hallway, Jax finally spoke.
“So what are we going to do now?”
Runstom sighed. “I should be arresting her, or at least detaining her. Bring her in for questioning.” He stopped.
“But you won’t do that. Why not?”
“I’m not sure,” Runstom said in a distant voice. “It fe
els – it just feels like there’s a lot more to this.”
Jax didn’t ask for any more clarification. He thought back to Runstom identifying himself as Detective while talking to Linda Parson. As soon as Detective Runstom reconnected with ModPol, he’d go back to being Officer Runstom. And then it would be out of his hands. How far was this guy willing to go? How badly did he want to know the truth? How badly did he want to prove himself? Would he see it through to the end? Jax wasn’t sure if it wouldn’t be smarter to just turn himself in with the evidence they had up to this point, or if they needed more. Knowing in his heart that he’d been set up, he didn’t want to put his faith in the ModPol judicial system just yet.
“And what did the note say?” he asked.
Runstom thrust the box into Jax’s arms and got his MagiKey out to open the door. Then he took the box and set it down on the desk in their room. He pulled out the note and handed it to Jax. “First, you need to pull this box apart and check it for any other memory modules that might be able to store the code that was beamed down to your LifSup system’s receiver. Second, we need to find out where the trash goes on this ship. We need to get a hold of that package that those cookies came in.”
Jax read the note.
My back itches. Place the metal cookie in the box exactly four days from this very moment. Take the box up to a sitting deck on the port side, plug it in, and flip the green switch. Stay with it for twelve hours. —X
“What the hell does this mean? My back itches?”
“I scratch your back, you scratch mine,” Runstom said. “As a politician, Linda Parson knew exactly what that means. She got help from our mysterious X, and she owed him a favor. She could either comply, or he could expose her. He probably has all kinds of evidence that ties her to the Eagelson controversy – which was probably fabricated.”
“So if she didn’t perform this seemingly simple task, she knew she’d be committing political suicide,” Jax said. “She’d probably even go to prison.”
“Exactly,” the officer said, sifting through some of their notes.
