13 Degrees of Separation

by Hechtl, Chris

  When they were finished with the locals it was Nohar's turn. Two fat detectives, one with a spot of powdered sugar on his green jacket, both smelling of sweat came over and tried to stare them down.

  Nohar pointed out to the cop Bob Draskin, junior detective O'shee and Magnum that the kill happened here, though he wasn't sure of a time line. The cop listened, taking notes. Nohar realized he thought it was a confession. He handed over his PI ID to Draskin's partner. O'shee took it hesitantly and then showed it to his partner. Draskin grunted in irritation, looking over his shoulder to Magnum who just shrugged with his hands out and grinned.

  “From what I can gather, the two were here for some reason. The paper said hookers. Hookers don't like to work an area alone, its' like having a fat target on their back. Usually they tell a partner where they are going and for how long. They may even have hiding spots in this area or a room rented to them to get the John's jollies off and then off and on their way.”

  “Probably,” Magnum replied, looking around.

  “What I'm wondering here is, did this Tracy get killed first, and then the other one walked in on the killer, and then was chased down and killed in the other alley?” Nohar mused, rubbing his jaw.

  “Sounds plausible,” O'shee said nodding.

  “Shut it kid,” Draskin growled. “You two know better than to get involved in an active police investigation,” he said looking from one PI to the other. He settled on Nohar.

  “Active?” Nohar snorted bitterly. “You had no leads, I read the paper report. I quote, the police have exhausted all leads and are asking for the public's help. I think this qualifies as public help,” he said. “Though I find it kind of odd that you exhausted all leads in an investigation that isn't quite 48 hours old.”

  Draskin scowled. His Asian partner looked down and away. “Yeah, that's what I thought,” Nohar murmured. “Sweep the Neo killings under the rug. After all, it's not a human so who cares?” he growled softly.

  “That's enough,” Draskin growled. “You want me to revoke your license and stuff you in the pound keep talking...” he growled.

  “I cut you a break, got you leads and found another vic and you bitch at me?” Nohar asked. He started to bristle, hair on end. O'shee's eyes went wide in fright. He could smell a trickle of urine from the small female human. She suddenly reeked of fear.

  “That's enough Nohar,” Magnum said, hand on his arm. Nohar turned a glare on the human. “Come on,” Magnum said jerking his head to the bar. “We're done here. Let's go get a beer and steak and let the officers do their jobs,” he said. “We're done here right?” he demanded.

  “Just don't leave town,” Draskin said.

  “You're all heart Bobby,” Magnum replied, taking their ID's back. Nohar turned in time to catch a rookie cop move the bin aside. He saw a jumbled mess of body parts. The cop gagged, turned and ran for the street to barf. Nohar and others wrinkled their noses.

  “Yeah, lunch, right,” the Tiger murmured.

  “Let's um, go someplace else. Preferably down wind,” Magnum said, steering him away from the mess and the crowd of people who were gathering to watch. “Wanna bet that guy's going to be on the news?” Magnum joked as they walked off. Nohar grunted.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  They ended up a few blocks away at another restaurant, this one country style. The twang of a guitar made the tiger wince. Neo buffalo heads were on the walls as trophies, as were big horn sheep, antelope, and some species he didn't recognize right off. Some others had big long horns... the stereotypes went on and on. The place was dim which he appreciated, with a rustic wood floor complete with wood shavings, smell of humans in heat, leather... right. He could smell beef though, beef and only slightly stale beer so maybe it would be all right.

  In the corner a band was singing an old folk song, 'All my ex's live in New Texas, that's why I hang my hat in Airea 3' he winced again, the singer really needed to either shut up or get singing lessons. His pitch could bend metal. Besides, he'd heard the original version of that song, the new one didn't give the old one justice.

  “So, the hunt is on,” Magnum said, just loud enough to be heard over the noise and what passed as music to the humans.

  “Yeah,” Nohar replied, growling slightly. They took their seats and ordered steaks. Nohar ordered 5 pounds of rare steak, making the girl blink in shock at him.

  “You want to be on the wall?” she asked. She pointed to the wall of photos of people. He looked in the indicated direction, ignoring her slutty cowgirl outfit. The leather vest she had on barely kept her double D's from spilling out.

  “Why? What wall?” Nohar asked.

  “Where people gorge on food Nohar,” Magnum replied.

  “Oh no, I normally eat that much as a light snack,” Nohar replied with a diffident shrug and ear flick. The humans blinked at him and then the waitress slowly whistled. She wrote the order down and left, muttering about needing big Eddy to bring it out.

  “A hunt for a real serial killer, it's been a while,” Magnum said. “You think the cases are related don't you. The human prostitute and the Neo's.” he took his glasses off and tucked them into his breast pocket.

  “Don't you?” Nohar asked as the waitress arrived with their drinks. Nohar sipped the water through the straw, glad he had the straw. It wouldn't do to make a mess out of eating and drinking right now. He'd do that when the steaks arrived.

  “Yeah, yeah I do,” Magnum replied. “You got hired to investigate?”

  “Something like that,” Nohar replied, noncommittal. It shouldn't take the humans long to cook his meat, after all, just heat it up, sear, flip, sear, and done.

  “Been on the job long?”

  “You know how long,” Nohar replied snorting. He was fairly certain Magnum knew just when he got into town.

  “Just curious,” Magnum replied, sitting back. “Want my records?”

  “Pass for now, thanks though,” Nohar replied. They might give him a jump, but they might make him pick up the human's prejudices and blind spots as well. “My client wants discretion,” he admitted.

  “Ah,” Magnum nodded wisely. “Pity. I guess we're in competition then,” he said, sipping his drink.

  Nohar snorted softly. “I guess so,” he said as a rather disgusting looking fat human with a tray of meat and the waitress dressed in the cowgirl outfit returned. “Oh, lunch is up,” he said.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  They parted a half hour later, Magnum looked a little green and didn't say much. Apparently seeing a tiger eat had been a little too much for him. Nohar flicked his ears and flicked a bit of meat out from between his teeth. It hadn't been all that bad, a bit tough, but not bad. He looked around, noting the dropping light level. He also noted the people around, all looking on edge and warily looking at him. He wanted to stick around, but no, it was probably not a good idea. Not with everyone on edge. Besides, the cops sitting under the street light on the corner didn't look at all amused at being there. It'd be just his luck to get questioned again.

  He headed back to the hotel, and then settled down in his bed and started processing the loads of intel he'd gathered. He checked the laptop, it had filtered out all the crap he didn't want, but there were quite a few deaths. He'd forgotten to limit it to unsolved homicides.

  Now though, looking... he wasn't sure that his mistake was a mistake at all, it might be one of those happy accidents. Stranger things had happened after all. Some of these deaths were strange indeed.

  He tallied up the totals and something jumped out at him. There had been a lot of accidental deaths in the past year. A lot of accidental deaths and suicides. Something bothered him about it, his instincts screamed to look closer.

  He frowned, picking at the idea. It didn't come to him easily so he started to read the reports. When he did he saw a pattern, one he didn't like. One that threw all the accidents into the doubtful column. He tracked the accidental deaths, and in doing so he found that many of the first suspicious ones
were young neolion cubs. Each are young, under 5 years old. Each death was death by strangulation, a fall, on a train track, or drowning. The identities were withheld because the victims were all minors, but the circumstances... he compiled them. Several were almost word for word identical, identical victim, identical location, circumstances... it read like a bad holo novel drama. What started to bother him was no one else had noticed. You'd think going to the same crime scene 3 times in a year for the exact same thing would have made someone sit up and take notice!

  He wasn't sure if the two crime signatures were related though, after all, one series were children, the other were prostitutes. His damn instincts though... he dug deeper, focusing on the changes to the older kills.

  He switched from the train track deaths to drowning, the trains wouldn't have left much.

  Ring City had a power house north west of the city in the foothills. Instead of using a hydroelectric dam to contain the water, they tapped water coming from the mountains through the forests north west of the city. The snow melt had a great deal of force behind it.

  Some of the water from the canyon river was diverted into a flume. On top of the flume was a trestle and train track. When the water reached a high hill above the power house it was diverted once more, this time into narrow pipes called a header which concentrated the flow into a tight powerful stream running at 800kph when it hit the bottom and the turbines in the power house. The power house had six turbines, but usually only three or four were in use in late spring. During the spring melt all six and the excess flow system were in use.

  The water came crashing out from under the power house, spewing out from under the arches and then back to the main river. New Seattle had a similar system, in fact the system here outside Ring City had been copied from the Seattle one. It was more modern even though it was a century old, with a recent upgrade in turbines to make it more efficient. It could now put out over 14,000 kilowatts of power, enough to power ninety-five percent of the city. Ring City was shaping up to be a Major city... but it was all tourists, logging, and fishing.

  He shook himself to regain his focus and continued reading. According to the reports several bodies had been found in trash traps and in eddies and even in one of the turbine intakes. The bodies were found both above and below the power house. It was theorized that the people had been playing on the flumes and had fallen in and drowned.

  Now though, Nohar didn't buy that. One maybe, but 22 in a year? When the flume had a record of only 2 deaths in over a century of use... and all of them were from workers who had slipped on slippery wood? No, something else was going on here, something sinister.

  Unfortunately the bodies were too badly damaged to get much from them. Or so the local paper said. Again, he didn't believe that. The water may have flushed most forensics off a body, but a lot of data could be gathered. You could normally tell for instance, if an injury was made post or premortem. They weren't saying that though. Again, he suspected someone was just sweeping the mess under the rug.

  Most of the early deaths had been Neo's. Only recently had human fatalities started to surface. That told Nohar something was very wrong. It was a pattern of escalation, but the police were focusing on recent events, not looking at the older crimes for clues. Usually a serial killer was sloppy in the opening moves. Most killers planned the act in minute detail, but didn't plan the aftermath. He'd have to start there.

  The river deaths were out though, he was fairly certain he wouldn't get a lot there, and besides, some of the bodies had been cremated. Dead end. But he could look elsewhere. First he had to do some research, in this case, on scene research.

  Chapter 5

  He went to one scene where a 1 year old neolion had allegedly fallen off a three story building and died, crushing his skull and snapping his neck. He looked up to the building. “It doesn't add up.” He climbed to the roof, it was hard to get to the lowest railing of the fire escape, hard for him, a full grown Neo tiger. He made a note of that, if he had such a hard time how could a cub who could barely walk have done such a feat? Once on the roof he checked, sure enough the doors were chained from inside, just as he had suspected. Only an adult could get up there, and it was difficult, he ruled.

  Grimly he realized his hunch was paying out. He hoped he was wrong, but he wasn't going to bet on it. But to find out he had to be sure, which meant bending and breaking a few rules and laws.

  ...*...*...*...*...

  He found the Neo cemetery and exhumed the tiny body in the night. He brought the body to the coroner's office, which doubled as a mortuary next to the police headquarters. The coroner came in and flipped light on to find Nohar standing there in the corner with the tarp wrapped body on the exam table in the center of the room. “What the hell? What are you doing in here? I'm calling security!” the coroner said, backing away.

  “Take a look human,” Nohar growled, good eye sparkling in low light. He pointed to the tarp. “Prove me wrong and I'll be on my way.”

  The Coroner called security. The guard showed up, as did a detective. The detective is curious, but waves hand in front of his face. “The body wasn't properly interred. But let's see what he's talking about Doctor,” the sergeant said, pointing to the tarp.

  “Oh what the hell...” the coroner put blue latex gloves on and hesitantly pulled tarp off. The humans backed away. “What the hell? What did you do to this kit?” The coroner demanded. Then he saw the toe tag. “What the hell” he read it. “This says this happened six months ago?”

  “Almost seven. Take a look doctor.”

  “I don't have to, I remember. The kit fell and snapped his neck. Accidental death,” the coroner said with as much dignity as he could muster.

  “I said take a look!” Nohar roared. The humans cringed. Nohar pointed to the body. “That is a one year old kit. I went to the crime scene. There was no way for that child to get to the roofs of either building, no way. The doors are locked, the fire escape is beyond his reach even if he leapt. It was damn near beyond mine and I'm a full adult!” he snarled.

  The coroner stared, eyes wide. Nohar could smell urine, human urine. The coroner looked at the body, head turning slowly.

  “The wounds do not match the crime scene. And like a good little human you swept it under the carpet because it was a Neo,” Nohar snarled just as Magnum came in. “Come in to take a look?” he demanded. Magnum nodded.

  “Take a good look,” Nohar snarled. He picked up a scalpel and held out to the doctor. “Take the skin of his head off. You'll understand then,” he growled.

  “Are you serious?” the detective asked. Nohar nodded.

  “Bobby, tell him to do it,” Magnum said quietly. “He's on to something here,” he said quietly.

  The detective looked over his shoulder to the PI. “You don't call the shots here,” he said diffidently.

  “I...” the coroner blinked.

  “On my honor as a sergeant of the Federation Army rangers, 501st battalion, doctor, I will not harm you. I need your help. Please,” Nohar urged, trying to keep his fur down and ears relaxed. It was difficult with the guard holding a revolver in one hand, not quite pointing it at him. “Doctor,” he said. “I know you don't care for Neo's, but we have a killer on the loose.”

  “What makes you think this is victim one?” Magnum asked.

  “I'm not sure. There may be more. Probably are more actually,” Nohar sighed as the coroner slowly moved forward, arms crossed, still looking at the body. It was a mess, decomposition hadn't been kind to the body. “But we've got to start somewhere, and I'm fairly sure this has been overlooked.”

  “Do it doctor,” the detective said, nodding. The coroner looked at the detective. “If he's right this could add more intel to the case.”

  “Right,” slowly the coroner took the scalpel from the Neotiger. “You are a sleeper?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Come on Tigger, let me get you a coffee and a donut,” Magnum said. “You don't want to see thi
s,” he said.

  “I've seen worse,” Nohar rumbled, flicking clay and bits of other dirt from his coat. He, like all other Neotigers hated being called Tigger. He was fairly certain the human knew that, and had called him that stupid nickname on purpose to tweak him. He'd been in the military long enough to get used to crap like that. If you couldn't take a joke you shouldn't have joined.

  “What am I looking for?” the coroner asked, putting a mask on.

  “Peel the skull. Take a good look at the bone. You'll understand,” Nohar said.

  “You've seen this before?” the detective asked.

  “Not in a long time. Centuries,” Nohar said and closed his good eye briefly in pain.

  “Can you skip to the end and tell me?” the detective asked.

  Nohar flicked his ears but shook his head. “Just watch,” he said. The coroner quickly peeled the skin back, once he had gotten in under it the decomp made it much easier. The skin had already started to separate from the tissue. He peeled it back as the humans got masks of their own. The guard nodded to the detective. Nohar looked at the detective, he'd missed some signal. The guard however wasn't doing anything rash, he'd holstered his pistol and turned. He left the room.

  Nohar had a brief flashback of various butchery he'd seen in combat before he blocked it out of his mind. He needed to focus, focus like he never had before.

  The coroner looked up briefly as the door closed and then went back to work. After 15 minutes he stopped. “I see evidence of bone fracture. It's consistent with a fall.”

  “From both sides doctor?” Nohar demanded.

  “From...” the coroner looked at the skull again and then rolled it. He winced, seeing how it had been crushed. “I stand corrected. You were correct, this is a homicide.”

  “It's... I don't get it,” the detective said craning his neck to look over the coroner's shoulder. “What am I missing doctor?”