by John Zakour
“Yes, Mr. Johnson?”
“Playback please.”
The lights in the room darkened and the large wallscreen began replaying the audio and visual recording made the night of the murder. Once again, we saw Ona lead her sisters into the dining room and take their places at the sumptuously prepared table.
“I’ll say once again, how happy I am that you could all come this evening on such short notice,” Ona said, “although I’m sure your schedules can’t be nearly as full as mine.”
“Yes,” Foraa mumbled, “being a whore must be so demanding.”
“Please, Foraa, don’t be so cruel,” Twoa said. “Whore’s actually work for a living.”
“Zach,” Tony said, “we’ve already seen this recording.”
“Not like this you haven’t,” I said. “Trust me. Computer, scan ahead to point number one.”
The action on the screen lurched forward, speeding up for a nano or two as Ona led her sisters to the table. Then it slowed back to normal as they all took their places.
“W worked especially hard on the table for this evening,” Ona said. “He began four days ago. Six if you count the polishing. Sadly, he’s not as fast as he used to be, but I think you’ll agree that everything is perfect.”
“Or at least very nearly,” Foraa said.
“Computer, freeze it there,” I said.
The playback froze on the image of Foraa, standing at her place at the table, staring down at the setting.
“Zoom in on her hand,” I said.
A cursor highlighted her left hand and enlarged it to clearly show her gloved index finger gently touching the handle of a tiny fork.
“Murder attempt number one.” I said. “The handle of that small fork was coated with T and D. A deadly poison that enters the bloodstream through the skin. The culprit, W.”
I pointed dramatically toward W, who remained seated and rolled his eyes.
“Shocking,” he said.
“W had been embezzling credits from Ona’s household budget for years in order to purchase an illegal super-android body to replace his human frame which had become withered with age. But Foraa found out about his plan and threatened to expose him to Ona. So W coated one of the forks at Foraa’s place setting with poison and left it slightly askance, knowing that Foraa, like all the Quads, was a stickler for perfection. She saw the fork out of place, nudged it with her fingertip, thus infecting herself with the poison and sealing her fate. There was just one problem.”
“Her glove,” Tony said.
“Yes,” I pointed to the screen, running my hand along Foraa’s black faux leather glove. “Foraa wore gloves so the poison never made contact with her skin. W should have known that. After all, Foraa had been wearing gloves like that since she was a child. Perhaps age has affected your memory as well as your body, eh, W?”
W folded his arms across his chest and turned away.
“And to think I served him tea,” he mumbled to Opie.
“And I gave him a beer,” Opie replied. “What’s your point?”
“Zach, we already know about W’s attempt on Foraa’s life,” Tony said. “And we know he’s not the killer.”
“True,” I said. “Let’s move on. Computer, skip ahead to point B.”
The playback jumped forward again as the Quads sat and conversed in fast motion. Ona tried to say a few words as Twoa and Threa bickered about the nymphs. Then the playback slowed down and returned to normal speed.
“Oh please, sister,” Threa said to Twoa, “you couldn’t spell justice if it wasn’t monogrammed onto your spandex.”
The nymphs laughed and let loose another glitter-dust cloud.
“That’s enough, ladies,” Ona said.
One nymph flew toward Twoa and hovered in front of her chest,
“J-U-S…Double-D, I mean, T.”
“That’s it,” Twoa said.
Twoa swatted the nymph away and the other two leapt at her.
“Slay the super bitch!”
“Freeze it there,” I said.
The recording stopped and I pointed to the far edge of the frame away from the action to where Foraa sat, quietly watching her sisters’ tussle.
“Isolate and enlarge this portion,” I said.
The computer did as requested and Foraa’s calm form soon filled the screen. I motioned toward the screen but moved past Foraa’s image and went instead to the small spherical bot that appeared to be hovering two meters behind her.
“As you can see,” I said. “Foraa’s attention at this nano focused on her sisters rather than on this tiny security bot back here, allowing the bot to do this.”
The playback resumed in slow motion and we saw a tiny flash erupt from the small bot as it fired a dart.
“This bot has just fired an assassin-type smart-dart, which is loaded with a highly concentrated amount of a deadly poison. This is murder attempt number two of the evening. The culprit, or culprits, I should say, the Pfauhans.”
I spun around and pointed an accusing finger at Sturm and Drang as they sat at the table. They seemed not to notice whatsoever. Sturm was speaking with his press agent on his vid while Drang was looking longingly at Twoa’s super hero blouse.
“Do you find that constricting in warm weather or does the material breathe?”
“The Pfauhanss had been stealing Ona’s designer clothing and selling it to collectors through illegal auction sites for years. They’d made a fortune doing this and had come to rely on the income, especially since they had priced themselves out of the medical research market. Foraa found out about their dealings and threatened to expose them to Ona so the only way they could maintain their cash flow was by killing Foraa.”
“But they failed,” Tony said.
“That’s right, Tony. Here’s why.”
The computer restarted the slow motion playback and we watched as the dart flew toward Foraa and struck her in the back of the neck. The computer enlarged the images at the point of impact so that we could clearly see the micro-tip needle strike the back of Foraa’s neck and first bend then break from the impact, completely failing to pierce her skin.
“The Pfauhans forgot that Foraa, like all the Quads, was impervious to most projectile-type weapons. The dart, as you see, couldn’t penetrate her skin. It fell into the collar of her jacket where it disintegrated as designed in seconds. For those scoring at home, that’s two murder attempts and two failures.”
“That’s all very nice, Zach,” Ona said, “but we know this already. I thought you were going to reveal the identity of Foraa’s killer.”
“I will, Ona,” I said. “I just want to point out here that two of the people in your employ made attempts on Foraa’s life that night. Murder attempts that were necessary in order to protect illegal activity that had been going on under your…um force field.”
“Your point being?”
“My point is that you have so isolated yourself from the reality of the outside world that your judgment has become clouded. You need to be more careful with the people you employ.”
“Clearly,” she said, giving me a glare.
“Okay, Zach,” Tony said, “let’s skip ahead to the real killer now.”
“Fine. Computer, take us to point C.”
The recording jumped forward again. This time by only a few seconds. The spat between Twoa, Threa and the nymphs had ended and Ona had restored order. We watched now as Ona popped the cork on the wine bottle and set it down in front of her.
“Now, while we let the wine breathe for a few nanos, as I was saying, after everything I’ve done for this world, after all the good that I’ve created with my wealth; aiding under-privileged children, funding disease research. After devoting my vast fortune to raising the quality of life for every downtrodden person in the first through fourth worlds, I just want to say that it is you, my family that is still foremost in my heart.”
The playback stopped and I turned to the audience, most of whom looked at me questioningly.
“And that, for all intents and purposes, is when the murder took place,” I said.
“I don’t get it, Zach,” Tony said. “Nothing happened. No one moved.”
“Something happened, all right, Tony. We just didn’t see it,” I said. “Ona, what’s wrong with what we just saw?”
Ona had sat forward as soon as the recording had stopped, wanting to speak but she had followed my lead and restrained herself, waiting until my prompt.
“That wasn’t my complete speech,” she said.
“What?” Tony asked.
“That was my ‘great humanitarian’ speech,” she said. “I give it a lot but it’s missing the portion that talks about my driving programs for environmental renewal and reinvention. That part isn’t there.”
I could tell by the gleam of her eyes that Ona was starting to figure things out. She was clearly replaying events in her mind, trying to see where this was all leading. When the look of shock and disbelief came to her eyes I could tell that she’d found the answer.
“You mean the recording has been tampered with?” Tony asked, glaring at me.
“There was some kind of…technical glitch when Ms. Thompson’s computer first downloaded the material to us,” I said. “It accidentally skipped over a small portion of the playback. The glitch wasn’t discovered and rectified until tonight.
“Pretty odd coincidence that this glitch happened at such a vital point in the playback,” Tony replied.
“True. But, as I recall, the experts in your department studied the recordings quite closely,” I said. “If their well-trained eyes didn’t notice the glitch then certainly you can’t blame any of us for missing it.”
Tony and I stared at one another, neither of us totally comfortable with where this line of conversation was leading.
“Since we started putting these jobs up for bids, we’ve gotten some pretty lousy experts,” Tony mumbled.
“Let’s just hope that when this all turns out well in the end,” I said, “we can all just forget about that silly glitch.”
“Agreed,” he said. “Now let’s have a look at the corrected version.”
I nodded. “Computer, if you please.”
The screen rebooted and the scene we had just watched began again. This time, however, it included a murder.
Ona picked the wine bottle up again and, without letting her imperious gaze leave her sisters, pulled the cork with a corkscrew. Then she set the bottle down in front of her.
“The poison saturated the wine,” I said. “Oddly though, there was no trace of it on the cork. That means that the poison was added to wine after opening.”
“Now, while we let the wine breathe for a few nanos, as I was saying… after everything that I’ve done for this world, after all the good that I’ve created with my wealth; aiding under-privileged children, funding disease research…”
And then it happened.
It began innocently enough. One of Threa’s nymphs took to the air and flew toward the unconscious nymph in the wine glass. Twoa saw the nymph out of the corner of her eye and tried to slap it away. The nymph avoided the swat but bumped directly into the wine bottle. The impact caused it to tip, as though it were about to spill.
Both Twoa and Threa moved quickly, albeit a little clumsily to steady the bottle. They both grabbed at it and it squirted between their hands for a few nanos before Ona finally steadied it with her hand.
“driving programs for environmental renewal and reinvention…”
She glared at both Twoa and Threa who moved quickly back to their places. Ona waited a beat and then finished her speech.
“After devoting my vast fortune to raising the quality of life for every downtrodden person in the first through fourth worlds, I just want to say that it is you, my family that is still foremost in my heart.”
“Computer, take it back just a little,” I said.
The recording rewound to the point where the wine bottle began to tip.
“Enlarge the bottle and give it to us in slo-mo.”
There it was, as the bottle began to tip, Twoa and Threa lunged for it, grasping the neck and body with their finely shaped hands. Their actions at first glance appeared a little clumsy as one then the other grasped and lost hold of the bottle. But enlarged and in super slo-motion, we could see the clumsiness for what it was, a perfectly orchestrated dance of death.
Threa’s hand moved smoothly over the bottle’s opening as it slipped from her grasp. As it did so, a small compartment in one of her rings opened and dumped a tiny payload of black powder into the bottle.
Then the bottle flipped to Twoa’s hand and a tiny vial appeared from between her gloved fingers. Smoothly she emptied the vial’s black, powdery contents into the wine just as Ona’s hand came down to steady the bottle.
It took less than two seconds, start to finish for it to happen, but the deadly trap had been set.
44
The recording stopped. The lights came back on and, as one, everyone turned their gaze to Twoa and Threa.
“That’s…that’s preposterous,” Twoa said. “Clearly someone has tampered with that recording.”
“Why would we kill Foraa?”
“It could have been because she wouldn’t join your lawsuit,” I said. “The three of you together could have forced Ona to settle and divide your father’s fortune. Her claim that she didn’t want any the wealth complicated things to no end. But that’s not why you killed her is it?”
“Why then?” Tony asked.
“The truth of the matter is that Foraa wasn’t the target,” I said. “Ona was. After all this time, Twoa and Threa realized that the only way to get Ona’s fortune was over her dead body. So they poisoned the wine knowing that when Ona proposed her toast, it would be the last words she would ever say. Two and Threa would just pretend to drink. That way they’d get rid of Ona, and lay claim to her fortune. Killing Foraa here would be just a bonus. They’d have to split the fortune in half rather than thirds. And they used Ona’s DNA to create the poison rather than your own to avoid suspicion.”
“But how did they get Ona’s DNA?” Tony asked.
“From the Pfauhans,” I replied. “HARV hacked into the records of their auction sites. Several of the dresses they sold, the sweat-stained dresses, were purchased by dummy corporations controlled by Twoa and Threa. They were able to distill enough DNA from the sweat and skin follicles on the dresses over time to create the DNA tag for the poison.”
“This is all some wild fantasy,” Threa said.
“You’d know, wouldn’t you, Threa,” I said. “But there’s one more thing. Computer?”
The computer flashed a picture onto the wall screen of the dying clue that Foraa had drawn in the wine.
“This equation, which Foraa drew in the wine puddle before she died,” I said, “is a carefully constructed clue to the identity of her killers. It’s well hidden but it had to be because she had to hide the information from the killers from themselves, who, as we know, are genius intellects. The solution to the equation is V.”
“You mean the letter V?” Tony asked.
“Not the letter actually,” I said. “The number. A Roman numeral, signifying five or…”
“Two and three together,” Ona said, turning sadly toward Twoa and Threa. “How could you?”
“Don’t start with us, Ona,” Twoa said before turning to Tony. “I want to speak with my army of attorneys.”
“They’ll meet you at the stationhouse.” Tony said.
He nodded to his detectives, who stood Twoa and Threa up and shackled their hands with neuro-cuffs. For good or bad, the case seemed closed.
And that’s when everything suddenly went very, very bad…
It began, unsurprisingly, with a message from HARV.
“Hey boss,” he whispered in my head. “How’d the big scene go?”
“About as well as it could, all things considered,” I said. “Do you have the autopsy results?”
“
Yeah, well, about that, boss. The autopsy is one of those classic good news/bad news things.”
“HARV, have you ever noticed that your ‘classic good news/bad news things’ never seem to contain any real good news?”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” he said.
“Okay, let’s have it.”
“The good news is that Dr. Shakes and I were able to perform a complete autopsy on Foraa Thompson.”
I closed my eyes and rubbed the bridge of my nose gently, preparing myself for the inevitable trouble that would follow my next four words.
“And the bad news?”
“It turns out that she’s not dead after all.”
45
Tony knew right away that something was wrong and he was at my side before I could say another word. I had the presence of mind to activate my wrist communicator and bring HARV’s visage to the tiny screen.
“What’s wrong?” Tony asked.
“Just about everything,” I said. “HARV define for us please what you mean by ‘not dead.’”
“Not dead? Who’s not dead?”
“First of all, she didn’t die from the poison in the wine,” HARV said. “There were no traces of it in her stomach or in her blood.”
“Is he talking about Foraa?” Tony asked.
“We saw her drink the wine, HARV.”
“True, but did we see her swallow?”
“What?”
“As I said, there was no trace of the wine in her stomach or in her esophagus. Even her throat was clear. I did some volume estimates from the visuals recorded by the computer and I’m fairly certain that the volume of wine in the puddle beside the body and on her lips accounts for the entire glass.”
“She took a mouthful and spit it out?”
“That’s the logical assumption.”
“And she faked the rest?”
“So it would appear.”
“Are you saying that Foraa’s not dead?” Tony asked. He was clearly having trouble grasping the situation (not that I could blame him).
