The Subjugate

by Amanda Bridgeman

  Riverton appeared on the screen as it always did, in its bald, androgynous form, pictured from the shoulders up, a shimmering gold in color. Human enough to feel comfortable talking to, but not quite human enough to avoid the uncanny valley.

  “Yes, Detective Brentt,” it answered.

  “Request background on the unincorporated community of Bountiful.”

  “Yes, Detective,” it answered. “According to my records it was founded in 2034 by Preacher Graeme Vowker, his wife Elizabeth, and fifty members of their religious group, the Children of Christ. Population steadily increased over the years, however after the events of the Crash in 2040, numbers spiked due to the backlash against technology. The community is considered one of the lead examples of the pullaways and one of the most religious towns in the state of California. There’s no internet, no mobile phones, no computers. However, devoted to its religion as it may be, the town does engage in a symbiotic relationship with the Solme Complex located nearby. This may be of interest, Detective, as the Solme Complex embraces both religion and technology in the treatment of its residents.”

  “Religion and technology?” Mitch said with an air of sarcasm.

  “Well,” Salvi said, as the church shrank in her rearview mirror, the threatening tidal wave receding from view, “someone around here’s been acting unholy of late.”

  Mitch threw her a glance and she looked back to the Raider’s console screen. “Thank you, Riverton. End request.”

  Riverton disappeared from the screen as the Raider’s inbuilt geolocater system sounded, directing them to turn into the vic’s street. They pulled up on the side of the road behind a county police vehicle, parked in front of a suburban house.

  Salvi noticed the crime scene was cordoned off with the old-style yellow police tape, which she hadn’t seen in years. In the city nowadays, the beat cops would set out small discs that would project laser walls of light declaring the “Police Line Do Not Cross” message. It certainly stopped the prying eyes of nosy neighbors, and the discs came with sensors that would alarm loudly if anyone tried to cross without authorization. It seemed odd now to look at the thin piece of tape and think about how little protection it gave such an important investigation site.

  She glanced around the street. A small cluster of neighbors stood back staring at the house, whispering. She accessed her iPort and scrolled through the minimal information Ford had sent them. All they knew was that the victim, Sharon Gleamer, was eighteen years old, lived at home with her parents, and they had been the ones to find her.

  Salvi studied the house as she got out of the Raider. It was large and white, two stories, and immaculately presented. Surrounded by lush green lawn, it had a wide wooden porch decorated with pots of colorful flowers. It looked nice. Perfect, in fact. Just like every other house in this pretty, cookie-cutter street.

  It was a good neighborhood, in a good, clean, old-fashioned town.

  At least, that’s what it appeared from the outside. Now it was time to look inside.

  Salvi and Mitch ducked below the tape and made their way up onto the victim’s porch. They tapped the holo-badges pinned to their left upper chest, activating them, which projected the hologram of their ID and signaled they had commenced recording. The county cop at the front door began noting their details on a clipboard with a paper and pen. Salvi and Mitch exchanged a curious glance, as her partner tucked his sunglasses into a pocket. They knew Bountiful was a pullaway, but they hasn’t expected the local sheriff’s department to be tech-free also. Then again, looking at the officer’s badge, it was a simple old-fashioned one; literally just a badge. Salvi and Mitch’s badges, however, once activated, would record everything, which would then be uploaded and transcribed by their AI, Riverton. It was department protocol, and public knowledge, that the badge must be activated when interviewing witnesses.

  “Were you first on scene?” Mitch asked the county cop.

  He shook his head. “No, Sheriff Holt was. He’s across the road at the Fizzraeli house with the parents. Your forensics team is inside.”

  Mitch nodded, and the officer eventually waved them through into the victim’s house, handing them a pair of basic crime scene coveralls. Again, a little old-fashioned compared to the suits and sole plates they had in the city, in which the materials themselves could pick up and detect all sorts of things, but they shrugged and put them on, then snapped on their gloves and double checked their badge-cams were recording. As they stepped inside the Gleamer residence, they could see straight down the polished wooden hallway into a brightly lit kitchen, and that was where the vic lay. She was on her stomach, her head, shoulders and arms visible through the doorway, dead eyes staring out at them.

  They began making their way carefully down the hallway toward the body, eyeing their surrounds. A staircase sat flush against the left wall, most likely leading up to the bedrooms. They passed a doorway on the right-hand side that led into the living room. Salvi paused and glanced inside. It was simply furnished with two couches, soft cushions, and a fireplace. On the walls she saw pictures of Jesus and Mary, a wooden crucifix, and framed hand-stitched quotes that looked to be taken from the Bible.

  They continued toward the kitchen, past a closed doorway nestled under the staircase. In the kitchen they found Doctor Kim Weston, the medical examiner, and Chuck Swaggert, the forensics modeler, already at work, dressed in the synthetic city suits. They noticed their colleagues’ arrival and exchanged a nod of greeting.

  Salvi stared down at the young, naked, dead woman. She’d seen enough dead bodies now to be able to handle them, although some were more gruesome than others. The truth was, she always found dealing with the vic’s relatives harder. She pictured the parents finding their baby girl like this. Eighteen years old, soft supple skin, toned body, innocent face; her body sprawled across the pristine white kitchen tiles; bloodied, battered and probably raped. What a thing to come home to.

  Salvi’s eyes flicked to study Mitch. Her partner’s stubbled jaw was rigid, and his eyes focused sharply as Weston ran a scan over the body, committing the vic to data memory. Swaggert moved around carefully, recording the scene from different angles on his camera. Its red laser light scanned the room forming 3D images in its internal software with a bright flash of color accompanied by a three-beat chime that rose in tenor.

  Salvi noticed Swaggert shooting Mitch curious glances in between the imaging. Too many curious glances. She wondered briefly whether the rumors about her partner had made it down to forensics as yet. The evidence seemed to indicate they had.

  She turned back to the body and centered her focus. Sharon Gleamer’s sky-blue eyes stared across the floor at nothing; her cheek lay pressed against the tiles, arms laid out before her, long blond hair scattered messily around her. Salvi scanned the room. There were no signs of a struggle. Her attacker must have killed her elsewhere, then left her here to be found. The question was, by leaving her here like this, was he staging the vic to throw them off the trail, or was he posing the vic to satisfy some fantasy?

  “I estimate the time of death as somewhere between 2pm and 6pm yesterday,” Weston told them.

  Salvi motioned to a blue bath towel already bagged and tagged in the corner of the room. “What’s that?”

  “Her parents covered her with that after they found her,” Weston said.

  Swaggert’s state-of-the-art camera hissed and clicked, its red laser-imaging flashes reflecting off the vic’s dead eyes. Salvi crouched down beside the body. She could see no sign of major wounds on her back. Just some bruising. The same with her wrists, bruising where the killer had held her down. She could see patches of blood under the body, however, and wondered what he’d done to the front of her. If it was a “he”, that is. History indicated that it most likely was, but as her old partner Stanlevski would always say: Never rule anything out, Salvi. Not until you have undeniable proof.

  Mitch moved, and she looked up at him. His green eyes were troubled, and they met hers briefly
, the whites still pink, but they didn’t linger long. She watched as he turned his attention to a printed photo on the fridge, while Weston and Swaggert moved in to turn the body over.

  Salvi stepped back while they did, then paused when she saw the front of the vic. Across her bare stomach the word “PURE” had been engraved with a sharp object, and her neck was badly bruised. Strangled? The left side of her face, which had been pressed against the floor, was battered. That meant her attacker was most likely right-handed.

  Salvi turned to see Mitch standing behind her with his hands by his sides, eyes fixed on the body again. He raised a gloved hand to show the photo from the fridge. Salvi took it in her gloved hands and saw the dead woman with a small group of people standing in front of a large banner that read “God Saves, God Aids”.

  “Pure,” she mused aloud, then glanced back at Mitch.

  His eyes showed agreement before he turned to stare at the body again. He then glanced around the room before his attention fell to the floor. Salvi’s eyes followed and saw the occasional starburst patterns of blood drops. Eyes fixed to the floor, Mitch began to move back down the hallway, following the drops of blood, until he paused outside the door under the staircase. He glanced back at her, then placed a gloved hand on the door handle and opened it. She moved toward him, careful to avoid the blood drops, angling her badge down to record the evidence.

  She reached the doorway as Mitch stepped inside. His hand found a light switch and turned it on, then he peered down the dimly lit stairway. It seemed to lead to a basement, out of sight to the left of the stairway wall.

  Bathed in a dull yellowy glow, Mitch’s eyes flicked to hers again, and he began to descend. She followed, her flat-heeled boots tapping on the wooden steps as she did, avoiding any blood spatter that Mitch pointed out to her.

  He stepped onto the basement floor, ducking his head below a low-hanging beam. Salvi, a good head shorter than him, only tilted slightly to miss it.

  Mitch came to a sudden stop, staring at something. Salvi stepped around him and saw a fold-out couch in the middle of the floor with blood stains on the mattress. The room, otherwise used as a laundry and storage space, looked neat and tidy. The killer either cleaned up after himself or had subdued her quickly so there was little struggle. He probably did what he did to her down here so people wouldn’t hear her screams for help.

  Salvi noticed the room held a musty aroma that smelled uncomfortably like a mixture of blood, sweat, sex and a strong cleaning agent. She eyed the blood stains on the mattress again and moved to take a closer look, but Mitch caught her arm, stopping her.

  “Chuck!” Mitch called over his shoulder.

  “Yeah?” Swaggert replied from the top of the stairs.

  “Kill the lights and give us a bio-scan down here,” Mitch ordered. “Watch the drops on the staircase.”

  The basement lights went out and they stood momentarily in pitch blackness before a dull blue light emanated from atop the stairs. They heard the squeaking of the wood as the chubby Swaggert carefully descended to join them. Salvi watched intently to see what biological evidence his light picked up.

  “There’s no sign of forced entry,” Swaggert said, as he scanned the light carefully over the steps and walls of the stairwell, the occasional splash of blood showing up in a startling white. “It’s a relatively clean scene.”

  “No, it’s not,” Mitch said, eyeing the concrete floor in front of them, which lay in darkness outside Swaggert’s blue light.

  Salvi looked down through the darkness and saw light patches of fluorescent green. She peered closer and made out what looked like smudged footprints. Now Swaggert’s blue light was off the stairway, she noticed the occasional faint green smudge leading up to the hallway too. Both Mitch and Salvi crouched down to examine the smears in front of them.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  Mitch dabbed a gloved finger in one of the florescent green smudges and brought it closer to study it, his face now lit in the dull blue light of Swaggert’s scan.

  “Looks like BioLume,” Mitch offered.

  “That natural lighting stuff?” Salvi asked. “The bacteria?”

  Mitch nodded.

  “The vic doesn’t have BioLume lights,” she said, glancing around. “This house is still on electricity.”

  “Yeah, she doesn’t have it.” Mitch stood back up. “But maybe our perp does.”

  Salvi studied the smeared prints again and compared them to Mitch’s feet. “They look about your size.”

  Mitch nodded, placing his foot closer beside the smear. “Yeah. Near enough.” He activated his iPort and engaged his lenses. A silver sheen swam over his eyes as he made a call.

  “Riverton?” he said. Mitch looked down at the BioLume smears, angled his iPort and took an image. “I need you to identify who in Bountiful is off the electrical grid, using BioLume lighting. Upload the information to the case file.” He pressed his ear, adjusting his ear bud. “Yes… Thank you. End request.” He tapped his iPort, ending the call, and the silver sheen vanished from his eyes.

  Salvi looked around the room again. Swaggert’s bio-scan picked up very little. Just those patches on the mattress and some drops on the stairwell.

  The stark white patches, the blood, they had expected to see. But the green patches, alight of their own natural accord, they did not.

  “You better switch your gloves,” Salvi told Mitch, standing back up herself. “You don’t want that bacteria getting on you or in you.”

  A slight smile briefly turned the corner of his mouth. “No. I don’t.”

  Mitch carefully made his way up the stairs again, turning the lights back on as he left the room.

  Salvi glanced at Swaggert, then motioned to the room. “Over to you, Chuck. Start modeling.”

  He nodded, double chin wobbling. “Will do,” he said, killing the blue light of his bio-scan, then raising his 3D camera to her face and snapping a shot.

  “Jesus!” Salvi said, holding her hand up to protect her eyes from the red laser flash as it danced over her.

  He laughed. “You’re wearing your lenses,” he said. “Relax.”

  She looked back at him with a plain expression. “You never dated, did you?”

  His grin fell away and an unhappy look took its place.

  “Asshole,” she muttered, heading back up the stairs.

  She stepped into the hallway again, blinking away the after-effects of the red light from her vision. When it was near enough gone, she looked back toward the kitchen to see the top of Sharon’s body through the doorway, those pretty dead eyes staring out at her. Had she been killed in the kitchen, Salvi would’ve said those eyes had been staring at the front door in the hope that someone would save her. But they hadn’t.

  Mitch emerged from the kitchen, his hands covered by fresh gloves, and they spent the next while examining each room inside the house; the bedrooms, bathroom, the yard, the entries and exits. But everything looked neat and tidy and innocent, and very Christian. Aside from the body in the kitchen and the bloodied mattress in the basement, that is.

  When Salvi was done examining the scene, she deactivated her badge recording and found Mitch studying Sharon’s pretty pink and white bedroom.

  “Let’s go talk to the parents now, huh?” she suggested.

  Mitch nodded and they descended the stairway.

  Free of their coveralls and gloves, they crossed the street to the porch of the neighbor’s house and knocked on the door. Salvi glanced around to see the other neighbors still standing in the street. Some were praying, heads down, hands clasped together. And some were staring at her and Mitch as though they’d been the ones to kill Sharon.

  “Yes?” a child’s voice demanded. They turned back to the screen door to see a girl of maybe eight years old with long red plaits, wearing a frilly yellow polka-dot dress and socks to her knees.

  Salvi and Mitch projected their badges. The girl gasped, taking a step backward.

  “We�
�d like to talk to Mr and Mrs Gleamer,” Mitch said. “I believe they’re inside.”

  The girl stared at Mitch for a moment, looking him up and down, then at Salvi.

  “Only the devil uses technology,” the girl said, unmoving.

  Mitch glanced down at his badge, then at Salvi’s. He looked back at the girl. “Are they here?” he asked again. “The Gleamers.”

  A plump woman in a gray dress with flushed cheeks moved anxiously toward the door. “Sophia, let them in.”

  “They’re strangers with devil devices,” the girl said firmly, as the woman elbowed her out of the way and unlatched the door.

  “They’re police, from the city,” the woman scolded quietly. “You saw their badges.”

  “Mrs Fizzraeli?” Mitch asked.

  “Yes, come in.” Although she was more welcoming than the child, Salvi noticed she kept her eyes on the ground, refusing to look at either of them.

  “We don’t allow technology here,” the young girl said to Mitch, her narrowed eyes darting to his badge. “It’s sinful.”

  “Well, these are special circumstances,” Mitch answered patiently, stepping inside as the woman motioned the girl away.

  “This way,” Mrs Fizzraeli said. She led them through to a living room not dissimilar to the Gleamers’ house across the road. Pictures of Jesus and of saints adorned walls, and Salvi paused as she noticed a home-made wooden pulpit standing in one corner where a Bible lay upon its ledge. The redheaded child moved toward it, standing up on a box, and laid her hands on the pages. She glared back at Salvi as though she were the devil himself and the girl was guarding the book with her life.

  Salvi looked away to the vic’s parents, huddled together on a couch, their faces and eyes flushed with despair. Beside them sat the sheriff. Noticing the visitors, he stood and approached. Blond haired, early forties, standing around 5’11 and weighing maybe 190 pounds, he had a soft belly and sharp eyes.

  “Ben Holt. County sheriff.”

  Mitch shook his hand. “Detectives Grenville and Brentt.” He motioned to Salvi as he glanced back at the grieving parents. “You didn’t separate them for questioning?”