Murder in the Multiverse

by R E McLean

  Alex had assumed she was on some sort of research trip that took her away for long periods. Maybe at CERN if she was lucky. Now it seemed she was just on long term sick leave.

  Alex dropped her gaze to the floor. She shivered. She’d spent a year speculating about the mysterious Doctor Pierce. Envying her. Resenting her even. When she’d asked who she was or what research she was doing, she was met by awkward silences. Now she knew why.

  She looked up to see that the coffin had gone, hidden by a blue curtain the color of cornflowers. Alex remembered standing by her mother’s grave, flinging a handful of soil. She shuddered.

  Behind her, the man had stood up. He took one last look toward the coffin, then crossed himself. He pushed the door and slipped outside. His jacket caught momentarily on the handle and Alex caught a flash of gold on his belt.

  Why was there a cop here?

  5

  Lamborghini

  San Francisco

  25 March, 10:25am

  Mike Long looked around the half-empty parking lot, admiring the cars. A Bentley, two Aston Martins. A Porsche or three, even a Lamborghini.

  “Luxury apartments, luxury cars,” said Monique. “None of them ever driven, probably.”

  “Did Claire keep a car down here?”

  Monique shook her head. “No need of one, when you never go out.”

  Monique pressed the button for the elevator. The two of them waited in silence. It was hot down here and Lieutenant Monique Williams looked uncomfortable in her eighties-style skirt suit and raincoat, both constructed from sweaty manmade fabrics. Mike normally wore his personal uniform of crisp blue jeans and suit jacket over a plain white shirt. But today he was dressed in a dark suit.

  He wondered if Monique knew where he had been.

  The elevator pinged its arrival and they stepped inside. Mike pressed the button for the tenth floor.

  “I want you to get the latest report from CSI,” Monique told him.

  “Right.”

  CSI had spent the last twelve hours here, scouring the apartment for anything out of place and dusting for prints. There were no prints, of course—even the dumbest intruder knew better than to take his gloves off—and so far, not so much as a molecule out of place. Claire had not only been terrified of human contact, she’d also been scared of dirt. The flat sparkled like a pin that had been waxed to within an inch of its life.

  The elevator door slid open and Monique nodded for Mike to go ahead. The corridor was quiet and plush, with heavy carpet and walls that looked—and smelled—recently painted.

  “You want me to start now?” Mike asked.

  “Hmm?” replied Monique.

  “Telling you what I see.”

  “Oh, that. Yes. Please.”

  “Right.” Mike paused. “You think the murderer came in this way?”

  “We’re not sure. But he could have done. Let’s assume he came in through the front door, yes.”

  Mike frowned. “So why—and sorry if I’m speaking out of turn—why isn’t this corridor cordoned off? The lobby? The elevator?”

  “We did,” Monique replied. “Cordon was lifted early this morning. But it’s a public area. Full of prints and DNA. Not much help.”

  “Well, no. Of course. But I guess if we found evidence that Sean had been here…”

  Sean was Sean Wolf, Claire Pope’s ex-husband. He had an alibi, of course. A pretty tight one, even by Mike’s grueling standards. But as a famed recluse, Claire had little or no contact with humanity. Sean was their prime suspect, alibi or no.

  Monique put her hands to her neck, massaging the skin. She smiled. “Come with me.” She picked up pace, heading for a smooth oak door crisscrossed with police tape.

  Mike followed, feeling his breath shorten. He’d studied the photos of the crime scene but had no idea what would be there now. A pool of blood, disarrayed furniture, that mug spilling its contents across the floor? Or would it all have been cleaned up?

  Monique knocked on the door. An officer clad in a white bunny suit opened it from the inside.

  “You have that report for me?” Monique asked.

  The bunny blushed. “Not yet. We were interrupted by—”

  Monique’s arched eyebrow kept the bunny from finishing her sentence. She nodded and shuffled away in search of the most senior CSI. Mike watched her stop in the kitchen and talk to a short, blonde woman in her forties, who glanced over at Mike in between answering his boss’s questions. Mike couldn’t make out their conversation but the woman sounded impatient, as if she was tired of being asked questions she couldn’t answer.

  “Go on then,” Monique reminded him. “Tell me what you see.”

  Mike closed his eyes. “Well the first thing’s the door. No sign of forced entry. And,” he looked back at it, “it certainly has enough locks.”

  He took a step back and squinted at the door. There was a heavy black bolt at the top and another matching one at the bottom. Two deadbolts between them, each of which had a brushed nickel lock plate that looked rarely touched. Between those was a standard brass lock and a security chain. And between those and the top bolt was another, smaller bolt in brass, this one having no hole or plate to slide into. It was a waste of metal.

  “Five and a half locks. Like you said.”

  “Look again.”

  Mike put a hand on the door, counting in his head. There were definitely five working locks plus that useless brass bolt. He wondered why someone as security-conscious as Claire Pope would have a lock that did nothing.

  Then he thought of something, and opened the door to check its other edge.

  “Two hinge bolts,” he said. “Which makes seven and a half. Like you said.”

  “Good,” said Monique. “You sure?”

  Mike pulled the door fully open and examined it from the other side. He ran his hand up its edge. Fingerprint dust caught on his skin.

  “Sure.”

  “Good. So am I. Now, tell me what else you see. I’m not going to give you any more prompts.”

  Mike took a deep breath. Was this some kind of test? Or was she genuinely looking for a fresh pair of eyes? He looked back at the door. The wood around the locks was pristine.

  “No sign of forced entry,” he said. “If the killer came in this way, he was let in.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Which makes no sense.”

  “How so?”

  Mike turned to Monique. Behind her, in the kitchen, the head of the CSI bunnies was pulling faces at them. She looked as if he wished she’d taken some other assignment this morning.

  “She was a recluse. She never saw anyone,” he said.

  “She had a mattress delivered. Less than an hour before estimated time of death.”

  “A mattress?”

  “It’s still in its wrapper, on the bed.”

  “So could the killer have been one of the delivery guys?”

  “That would make sense. Infiltrate the delivery company, only way to get to her. Except we have CCTV of them both leaving. No one coming back.”

  “No CCTV from later?”

  “Nothing. The system went blank for about half an hour, right around the time we think she died.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Hmm indeed.”

  “She had to have seen someone. How did she get her groceries? Her Amazon deliveries?”

  Mike thought of his own apartment. He had his groceries delivered every Friday evening. It was the only night he knew he wouldn’t be late at work, and besides, he needed beer for the weekend. But the drivers couldn’t stop for long at his flat, with it being in a restricted zone. So they would drop them at the Korean takeaway downstairs. The owner’s ten-year-old son would carry them up to his flat in exchange for the gargantuan bar of chocolate he always included in the order. Most weeks they were already waiting when he got home, but sometimes he arrived as the boy was ferrying the bags up, doing it in as few trips as possible. His record was seven bags in a trip, although one of those d
idn’t really count as it only contained a satsuma.

  “Maybe she did have someone she spoke to. Someone who took in her deliveries. Groceries, all the rest of it. If I was a hermit, I’d get some neighbor’s kid to do it for me. Just one person to deal with, and kids are less likely to ask questions than their parents.”

  “Good thought. You stay there. I’ll check.”

  Mike watched Monique pick her way toward the white-clad senior CSI. They exchanged some words and Monique returned to Mike, shaking her head. “Next door is a single man who’s away right now. Opposite is empty. And the other side is a young couple who say they’ve never seen anyone come or go from this apartment.”

  “You believe them?”

  “I don’t think we have any reason to suspect them, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Mike shook his head. “No. Nor do I. But it’s difficult to believe that no one ever came here. She’d have starved.”

  Monique nodded. “You’re right. Which is why those cameras are so important.”

  “Can I take a look around?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Mike headed back into the hallway. It was spacious, which was lucky since most of it was cordoned off. A dark bloodstain bloomed on the thick carpet. The wall was splattered with dried blood, and the doorknob to the bedroom was crusted in it.

  Mike stepped over the cordon, taking care where he trod. He took a pair of latex gloves from his top pocket and opened the door.

  It was a large room decorated in bland shades of beige. The bed was king size, with a plastic-wrapped mattress perched on it. The pillows were stacked neatly on the floor and a quilt folded next to them.

  Mike wondered what anyone examining his own room would think, if his apartment were to become a crime scene. The quilt would be scrunched into a corner, the floor covered in half-read Lee Child novels and the bedside table full of coffee mugs in varying states of decay.

  He moved to the bed, his footsteps silent in the thick pile carpet. On the bedside table was a Kindle and a half-full glass of water. The glass was dusted with gray powder. For a moment he wondered why they hadn’t taken it away for a DNA sample but then remembered there would be no shortage of Claire’s DNA around her body.

  He picked the glass up and sniffed it: just water, nothing added. He placed it back in the same spot and picked up the Kindle. He brushed the screen, and the book Claire was reading before her death flashed up, sending a shiver down Mike’s spine. It was a business title, something he’d never heard of. He made a mental note of the title and resolved to download it, in case it told him something valuable about Claire’s character and state of mind.

  “Anything useful?”

  Monique was leaning on the doorframe. Her reedy body sagged against it and she’d taken off her brown patent court shoes. Her large-toed feet, wriggling in brown hose, looked disrespectful against the cream carpet. Mike frowned but said nothing.

  He put the Kindle back on the bedside table, once again leaving it exactly as he’d found it. “She was certainly the neat and tidy type.”

  Monique surveyed the room. “You can say that again.” She walked to the window; Mike could hear the static crinkling as her legs moved together.

  Monique stopped at the window and fumbled with the heavy drapes. Mike followed and grabbed the pole that controlled them. He twisted it and the drapes swished open.

  “Thanks,” said Monique. “Used to that kind of thing, are we?”

  “Hardly. My place doesn’t even have drapes.”

  Monique gave him an inquisitive look but said nothing. Mike shrugged.

  Monique leaned her forehead against the glass and closed her eyes. “Can I tell you something?”

  Mike nodded, waiting for a tidbit, something about the crime. What did this bedroom tell him, that could possibly be relevant? It was clear that Claire was a woman with total control of her life and surroundings, which made her murder all the more inexplicable.

  “I’m completely stuck,” Monique said. “Flummoxed. Perplexed. Mystified.”

  Mike looked past Monique to the kitchen where the CSIs were packing up their equipment. The senior bunny had disappeared. He had no idea what to say, so he said nothing.

  Monique sighed. “Claire Pope was a recluse. She rarely met a soul in person. Her last real human contact was with her ex-husband, years ago. She doesn’t seem to have had any enemies. There’s no sign of anyone breaking into this flat.” She turned to Mike. “Why did this bastard kill her? And, more to the point, how?”

  Mike swallowed. “They stabbed her with her own letter opener.”

  “Oh, we know that. That’s not what I mean, and you know it. The question is, how did her killer get in here, and what was his motive?”

  Mike licked his lips, working through everything he’d seen. He put a hand on the glass of the sliding door in front of them. Beyond was a magnificent view of a fog-shrouded Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge a dull red off to the left.

  Below them was a narrow balcony, and a six-story drop to the street.

  He leaned against the window, craning his neck to look left and then right. The neighboring apartments had similar balconies, separated by a four-foot gap. No normal person would risk crossing that.

  “Are you saying you want me to take this to the MIU?” he asked.

  Monique nodded. She was staring out at the view and rubbing the bridge of her nose.

  “Not for definite. Not yet.”

  “Her ex could have done it, you know. The jump.”

  “You think so?”

  “He’s a dancer.”

  “It’s sixty feet down.”

  Mike looked down again. He shivered. He was scared of heights; or, more accurately he was scared of the ground at the bottom of them.

  “His alibi?”

  “He was on stage.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Yeah.”

  He turned and leaned on the glass. It was chilly.

  “Boss,” he said. “I’m not comfortable with this.”

  She shifted her weight and stood in front of him. “Why not?”

  “It’s just a locked room mystery. There has to be an answer.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  Mike hesitated. “I don’t think you should send me over there alone. Not after what happened.”

  6

  Pearl

  Silicon City

  24 March, 9:35pm

  Claire Pope stood at the plate-glass windows that flanked one wall of her apartment, cradling a coffee. She had to check the Hong Kong markets in four hours and needed to stay awake.

  She yawned and checked her watch; half past nine. She’d been up since six, responding to emails from the company that arranged shipping of her products from China to the European and US markets.

  Her own home, of course, wasn’t littered with the cheap, gaudy objects that had made her so wealthy. And her own earpiece was unadorned. She preferred to keep things simple, but was more than grateful that not everyone shared her aesthetic. The trinkets that she’d made her fortune from were about as tasteful as a bull in rainbow-colored Spandex and a lime green sombrero taking a stroll through a china shop.

  She plugged the earpiece in and opened her personal karma room. For five minutes she floated on a sea of perfectly temperature-controlled, just ever-so-slightly salty water surrounded by purple violets that bobbed on the ripples bathing her tired skin. She closed her virtual eyes and let herself drift, doing her damnedest to clear her head. She was close to reaching the programmed relaxation level expected when she was disturbed by a large, pale brown object landing on her chest. She cried out as it pushed her down into the water, flailing with her arms and legs to keep her head above the surface.

  The object barked and started licking her face. She screwed up her eyes to imagine the sea floor just beneath her and put her feet down to stand in the water, grabbing Leo’s fur and pushing his soppy great face away from hers.

  “Leo! How did you get in h
ere?”

  Dogs couldn’t normally go into the Hive. It had been tried, of course—after all, what was a virtual paradise without man’s best friend—but it turned out that they were too mobile, too clumsy, and too downright stupid to maintain the minute amounts of focus required to pass the barrier between the real and virtual worlds. Not to mention their habit of pulling out earpieces and eating them. The only way a dog could get into the Hive was via the subconscious of its owner. Or frequently, the subconscious of a neighbor who was either scared of a given dog or sick to death of its incessant yapping. Lots of dogs died that way. Virtually, at least.

  Cats, by contrast, were all over the Hive. Skulking in corners, staring at you from the shadows, leaving little holes where they’d buried their poop. Sneaky little suckers, the lot of them. If Claire had control of the Hive she’d ban them. Let’s face it, if Claire had control of the real world she’d ban them. But instead, all she could do was sue anyone who tried to adapt her product for the use of cats. A cat wearing a Pearl! Who ever heard of anything so obscene.

  She blinked her eyes open to find herself standing at her window, cradling the coffee. It was still warm—the little heat pouch she’d dropped in had made sure of that. She sipped it and let herself fall back into thoughts of work, and the pile of emails sprouting in her inbox.

  Claire loved email. It had a pleasingly old-fashioned feel to it, and allowed her to retain her precious privacy. Most people preferred to use the Hive to communicate, seeking each other out in chat rooms and other virtual spaces, yakking away as if they were in the same room. They’d even added modifications last year to let you share the sensation of exchanging bodily fluids. The intention was to give a boost to the porn industry, as if it needed one in a world where anyone could get jiggy with Jennifer Lawrence or Chris Hemsworth whenever they wanted to, at least in their head. But there were side effects, and the most unfortunate of these was the feel of another chat room visitor’s spittle landing on the skin of your face as their conversation became animated.