Burnside's Killer: Extended Version (The Hunter Legacy Book 6)

by Timothy Ellis

  On the edge of the screen was another familiar face, and I shot forward again.

  "Heads up," I said, but the women had already seen it.

  I should have known they'd be ahead of me.

  "Lindsay Thayer," said Janet. "Speck, approach the brunette in the black dress, but don't engage. Keep your eyes moving so that she doesn't see you focusing on her."

  The view moved closer to Thayer, revealing an exceptionally attractive woman in a form-fitting dress, sipping a martini, and giving off an attitude which suggested the people in The Bridge were there because she allowed them to be.

  "She must have left her ship while we were distracted with setting this up," I said. "But it's a stroke of luck she's out where we can keep an eye on her."

  Speck and Fritz sipped their drinks and glanced around, doing a passable job of not attracting attention from the people around them.

  "Who is this chick, anyway?" Speck asked, obviously directed at us.

  "Nunya," I replied.

  "Nunya who?"

  "Nunya fucking business, dipshit. Now shut up."

  He suddenly slammed his entire drink in a shot, which told me he was pissed off. Like I cared.

  Thayer nursed her drink, and focused on the main area of the club. I told Speck to follow her gaze, and when he did, what he saw inspired a massive itch inside my brain.

  She was looking in DeLeo's direction.

  "What the hell?" I breathed.

  "Something wrong?" asked Jane.

  Most of the cops I know approach a crime scene like it's a spreadsheet, each piece has its own little compartment, and you fill each of them until you've got them all. Then you take a step back, look at the entire thing, and try to find a pattern.

  I do it a little differently, reading the scene like I've opened a book in the middle, and I need to figure out what happened in the earlier chapters based on what I'm reading now. It's a soft-focus approach which relies on instinct, and a cynical knowledge of the darker motivations of the human mind, but it serves me well.

  Now I was starting to wonder if we weren't reading from a completely different book, and the one we thought we'd opened was actually something we'd made up ourselves.

  "Thayer is eying up DeLeo," I said.

  "He's a handsome man," said Jane, which prompted an odd twinge of jealousy in me I ignored. "What of it?"

  "You said it yourself. A man like him would have a price on his head."

  "So?"

  At that moment, Thayer finally moved, sashaying towards the area where DeLeo and his entourage sat. She walked with purpose, each step sure-footed, like a stalking panther.

  "So what if we've been coming at this situation from the completely wrong direction?"

  Twenty Seven

  I muted our conversation so that Speck and Fritz couldn't hear it.

  "What are you saying?" asked Jane.

  "That savant mind of yours should remember the information from James Patterson's home computer," I said.

  She nodded, then exchanged a confused look with Janet.

  "The search I found," I said. "It was for information on Hunter's Redoubt. Charts, intel, schematics, yadda, yadda."

  "And?"

  "It wasn't specifically about Jonathon Hunter."

  Their eyes narrowed at the same time, which probably would have creeped me out if I hadn't been so focused on what I was trying to get across to them.

  "Don't you see?" I asked. "What if I had the right place, but the wrong victim?"

  Jane tilted her head.

  "You're saying the assassin might not have come here to kill Jon?"

  "That's exactly what I'm saying. What if she came here for DeLeo instead?"

  We all looked at the screen to see Speck's gaze following Lindsay Thayer's shapely rear end swaying its way to DeLeo's table. A few moments later, DeLeo looked up to see who was approaching, and a leering grin spread across that chiseled face.

  "He's spotted her," I said. "Can you get audio from their location?"

  Janet glared at me.

  "I've already crossed a half-dozen lines by spying through Speck's eyes. If word got out that we were listening in on private conversations without their knowledge, this station would be a ghost town within days."

  I couldn't argue with her, so I turned back to the screen. DeLeo was chatting up Thayer now, motioning for the man sitting to his left to vacate his seat for her. What a gentleman.

  "You can at least scan for weapons, right?" I asked.

  "Of course. Two of the men with DeLeo are armed with stunners. Nothing on Thayer's person."

  On the screen, Thayer's demeanor had changed from when she was studying the room. Now she was all smiles, batting her eyelashes at him, and touching his hand as she laughed.

  "That's our killer's MO right there," I said. "Getting close enough to the victim, for them to let their guard down."

  "Except for one key difference," said Jane. "She has no murder weapon. Even if she gets him alone, how is she going to kill him?"

  I frowned. She had me there. Antonio DeLeo may not have been on Jon Hunter's level, but he could certainly take care of himself, especially against an unarmed attacker. And our killer wasn't a fighter, as evidenced by the fact there were never any signs of struggle on the victims.

  "Okay, okay," I said. "You've got me there. But you've got to admit, it's strange that a freighter captain is suddenly dressed to the nines, in a high-end nightclub, chatting up a dangerous man who's worth an awful lot of money dead."

  "Not that strange," said Janet. "Maybe she's angling for a sugar daddy, as it were. She's an attractive woman, and I don't imagine her career is all that lucrative. It's Occam's Razor."

  I was overcome with a feeling of déjà vu.

  "Occam's Razor isn't about the simplest explanation being the right one," I said.

  Jane interrupted me before I could say more.

  "I know, it's the explanation which requires the fewest questions. And that still points to Jon being the target of the killer, because DeLeo raises more questions. How did the killer know he was here, and how did she know his false ID? Why would she risk killing him on such a secure station, if she could possibly lure him somewhere else? It would be much easier to get close to him in other ways."

  I could feel the scowl creeping over my face. These two had being right down to a science.

  "That's not to say Thayer isn't the killer," said Jane. I could tell by her tone she was trying to sound diplomatic. "In fact, it's likely she is. But it seems unlikely that DeLeo is the target. That said, we obviously should keep an eye on the situation."

  "All right," I huffed. "I guess I can't argue with you. But just for the record, I'm not convinced."

  Jane smiled.

  "You wouldn't be you if you were."

  Janet played with the controls, and the audio feed from Speck kicked back in.

  "…going to answer me or what?" he fumed. "Hello? Hello?"

  "Shut up," I said. "You're drawing attention to yourself. Find a position near the woman you were following, sit down, and observe."

  He muttered something under his breath, but did as he was told. Out of the corner of his eye, I could see Ingrid Blakstov had found a new victim, as she talked the ear off of a bored-looking man in a suit. I assumed he had approached her looking to score, and had ended up trapped by her sales pitch. Served him right.

  Fritz was getting noticeably drunker, swaying slightly in his stool next to Speck. We watched DeLeo and Thayer converse for the better part of an hour without incident.

  They seemed cozier than they had before. DeLeo kept leaning in and talking in Thayer's ear, while she laughed like whatever he said was the funniest thing she'd ever heard.

  "Izzis it?" Speck slurred. "We just gonna sit here all night? Not that I'm complaining."

  A server placed fresh drinks on the table in front of them. Fritz eyed his warily for a moment, I assumed he was seeing double, and trying to determine which one to pick up.
<
br />   "He's right," I said. "I don't see a reason to keep them there any longer. I mean, we can assume that DeLeo and Thayer are going to end up in the same room tonight."

  "So it would seem," said Janet. "And to be blunt, what happens behind closed doors on the station stays behind closed doors."

  I was about to tell Speck to pack it in, when Ingrid Blakstov's toothy grin appeared next to him at their table.

  "There you are!" she cooed. "I was wondering where you went to!"

  "Uh, hey," Speck said uncomfortably. "You again."

  He shifted in his seat, as she took a stool between him and Fritz, who simply nodded in her direction.

  "I was just wondering if you had time to think about what we were talking about before," she said.

  The discomfort in his voice made me chuckle. His urge to get her between the sheets was obviously fighting with his urge to run full-tilt towards the nearest airlock.

  "Yeah, look," he said. "About that. I don't think that church is the thing for me, y'know?"

  Fritz honked a laugh beside her.

  "Ya think?!"

  Her smile didn't falter for an instant. She was obviously practiced in the art of convincing men to listen to her spiel.

  "You may not believe in the universe," she said, taking him by the arm. "But the universe believes in you. And it's opening a door for you right now, I can feel it."

  "Yeah, he wants to open your door, all right," Fritz slurred.

  The girls seemed to be enjoying the reality show that was playing out in front of us, and I couldn't blame them. If we couldn't get a fish from this expedition, at least we could have a few laughs. After about another ten minutes, Speck finally managed to extricate himself and Fritz from Ingrid's clutches. They stood up, and turned to head for the door.

  Speck turned one last time in the direction of DeLeo's table. The former gun runner and his companion were gone. I turned to Jane and Janet.

  "Here's hoping my theory is wrong," I said. "Otherwise we'll be in for an interrupted night."

  Jane pointed out Speck and Fritz were too drunk for the midnight transport, and Janet told them they could spend the night in their quarters, but she wanted them gone on the first ship out in the morning.

  "Thass gratitude for you," Speck slurred, as he shut down the feed from his eyes.

  The screen went dark.

  "At least we can say we did our due diligence," said Jane. "And I think we've identified our killer, at least, even if we may disagree on the target."

  "From your lips to the universe's ear," I joked, mimicking Ingrid Blakstov' sing-song voice.

  The girls both laughed, which helped wash away some of the doubts that'd been creeping in ever since I first saw DeLeo's face on the screen. We bid each other goodnight, and I stalked my way back to my suite, making sure to keep from being seen head-on by anyone.

  But as it turned out, I ended up losing a lot of sleep that night.

  Twenty Eight

  "Dick."

  I could see a door opening on the side of a church, and behind it a perky blonde with a wide smile. She was holding a drink in one hand.

  "Dick."

  The closer I got to the door, though, the farther away it seemed. Every step forward somehow took me a step back, until the woman was just a dot on the horizon, and the church seemed small and insignificant.

  "Burnside!"

  "Whuh?" I pitched forward in bed, my heart racing. "Whozat?"

  "It's Janet," said the voice from the coms. "I need you at security ASAP. We have a situation."

  I blinked hard, trying to focus on what time it was. I'd been asleep for about three hours.

  "What's going on?" I asked, as I slid out of bed, and pulled on my underwear.

  "Not over the coms," she said. "Just get here."

  The connection ended, leaving me to imagine all sorts of things while I finished dressing. I had to force myself not to run to the security office.

  "Holy shit," I breathed, as the reality on the screen hit home.

  "That's one way to put it," said Janet, looking, as always, fresh as a daisy despite the hour. "Another would be, there's been a double homicide on my station. And we may have caused it."

  The vid feed showed two bodies lying face down in a corridor in one of the undeveloped sections of the station. The blood pool under them told me they were dead, and the clothing told me who they were.

  Speck and Fritz had taken their last breaths in this life.

  The vid feed was coming from a security droid, rather than one of the surveillance cams. A routine patrol had found them about thirty minutes earlier. Janet was reviewing security footage on another monitor as I took in the grisly murder scene.

  "Nothing," she said. "But that's not surprising. There are no functioning security cams in the undeveloped areas. The only time we have eyes in there is during the droid sweeps, which only happen once a day."

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to process it all. Our spies end up dead a few hours after we send them on their mission. It can't be coincidence. After several long moments, I'd composed myself enough to ask the most relevant question.

  "What's the cause of death?"

  "I was waiting for you to arrive before I looked into it," she said. "We should get down there."

  "You're letting me out into the station?"

  "As I said, the area is undeveloped. We'll take a service car which will keep you out of the public eye."

  "Good," I said. "I don't know about you, but I'd rather our killer didn't know anything about me."

  As much time as I’d spent in space, I’d never really adapted to space station travel. On the Torus, there were lifts going up and down, and trains running around about a third of the levels. Here though, the same travel car went everywhere. And none too gently either. Every time it changed direction, there was a lurch, and the stomach didn’t quite keep up. I looked at Janet, and she gave me a half smile, which seemed to say it was on a list somewhere to be fixed.

  Both bodies were in similar positions, on their bellies, their arms beside them, their heads turned to face right. The sheer violence of the attack was written all over the scene.

  Janet looked at me, and I nodded. She ordered the security droid to turn Speck's body so that it was facing up. Multiple lacerations all over his head and torso. Broken collarbone, fractured ribs protruding from his chest.

  "Fascinating," Janet said from beside me, startling me out of my thoughts. "Turn over the other one."

  The droid did as it was told, and what happened next almost made me throw up. If I hadn't known who I was looking at, I never would have been able to identify him. The body's head was nothing but a blob of pulp, like an overripe lychee nut that had exploded. The chest wall had collapsed inward from some sort of powerful blow, and the right shoulder looked like it had been separated. Fritz hadn't just been beaten to death, he'd been annihilated.

  "Well, that was unexpected," said Janet.

  "This makes zero sense."

  "Everything ultimately makes sense. You just need the proper perspective."

  Janet's platitudes did absolutely nothing for my black mood, and I rounded on her, furious.

  "Tell that to these two!" I barked. "Maybe it'll help ease their journey to the afterlife!"

  Her eyes widened, and softened at the same time, and she did something which shocked me almost as much as the deaths had. She apologized.

  "I'm sorry. I wasn't taking into account how you'd feel about this, and I shouldn't have been flippant. Can you forgive me?"

  I took a deep breath and nodded.

  "Nothing to forgive, you are who you are. It's just a little overwhelming."

  "Do you have any ideas?"

  "Not right now. We need to get back to security. You recorded the footage from Speck's feed, I assume?"

  "Of course."

  "We need to review it as soon as possible, if we don't want to start tripping over even more bodies."

  "Do you think it's
related to our assassin?"

  "It's too much of a coincidence for it not to be." I looked her in the eye. "Isn't it?"

  Twenty Nine

  I was rubbing my eyes by the time we reached the end of the vid recording from Speck's perspective at The Bridge. Having Jane as a third set of eyes on the footage would have helped, but Janet said she was running errands for Hunter again, and wouldn't be back for a while.

  No matter how hard I looked, though, I didn't catch anything of substance on the second viewing. Finally, when we reached the part where Ingrid Blakstov had obscured our view of Thayer and DeLeo, I was ready to pack it in.

  Janet had other plans.

  "Wait," she said, pausing the feed. "Do you see what I see?"

  I didn't. Hell, by that point I could barely focus, so she pointed to what she was talking about, zooming in on the area in question, bringing Thayer and DeLeo's table closer to the screen.

  "There," she said, lifting a finger towards Thayer. "Her eyes."

  Now she'd pointed it out, I could see it plain as day. Thayer was looking in the direction of Speck and Fritz, and her expression said she didn't like what she saw. Less than a second later in the footage, Ingrid had blocked the view, and by the time she moved out of the way, Thayer and DeLeo were gone.

  "What did that look say to you?" Janet asked.

  "It said our gal Thayer was very unhappy with something she saw." I scratched my chin. "We have to go on the assumption she somehow figured out Speck and Fritz were spying on her."

  "If that's the case, we also have to assume she knows you're here, or at the very least, she's being watched."

  "Any idea where she is now?"

  She shook her head.

  "In DeLeo's hotel suite, most likely."

  "Not necessarily. She managed to get out and kill Speck and Fritz, which means she left DeLeo at some point. Is there any way she could do that without being seen?"

  Janet nodded.

  "It's possible she went the same way we did. The public travel cars are all monitored, but the maintenance ones are not. It's an oversight I'll correct in due course."

  I chewed on it for a minute. Just because something was possible didn't make it probable, even if Thayer had the ability to reach these two, how did she know they were there?