by Jean Rabe
So they’ve already talked to the crucial people, Ninn noted. Fast. Efficient or careless, or a bit of both. She’d see what feeds AISE would release to her in the next day or so, see who they talked to.
The lieutenant looked at his chrono, checked the far end of the alley where his mates had finished talking to the businessman and the drenched woman. “’Sides, with this bloody ’eat, she’ll start to stink real soon.”
“He. He’ll start to stink.” This from the third officer, the one with the cyberarm. He was the only one with a name displayed on his pocket: Mickey Dern. He still gazed at the singer’s face and recorded the scene. Ninn thought this cop looked more sympathetic. Mickey was younger than the other two, small and wiry, and his expression revealed he was bothered by the crime. New to AISE work, Ninn guessed, at least to this kind of work. Murder didn’t seem to bother veterans much. “I heard him sing once, ’bout a year ago. Took my wife to the show for our anniversary. He was really something, really incredible. Reminded me of Billie Holiday.”
“Billy who?” The lieutenant frowned, then shook his head. “Never mind, Mick. Maybe somebody didn’t like ’is singing. Cut ’is bloody vocal cords clean through. Maybe the Right. I spotted a couple of ’em out front. Maybe a critic. Who knows? We got no fingerprints. Nothing. Just a dead Koori, this one in an expensive dress. Nothing.”
Koori. Ninn winced and messaged at her temples, worked up some saliva.
“Not nothing. You can’t say we got nothing, Lieutenant,” the second officer, the handsome elf, said. “There’s this bite on his cheek. See? The others only had their throats slit, clearly with a heater. This one was also bitten hard. See here, and here.” He pointed at the injuries. “And those aren’t normal teeth marks. Too deep, nicked the bone. Our murderer likely had some cyberdents. But the slash is the same even cut as the others. A heater, like I said. Can’t be anything else. Perp didn’t want the vic to bleed out. This has gotta be the same bloke what did the others. The bite was personal, I figure. Or maybe a loss of control. Maybe the Right, but I dunno. Doesn’t Ballard strap heaters? Think he’s upped his game? Think this is a serial slasher?”
Ballard. Familiar name. Ninn ran it through the encephalon, coming up with only one thread: Jeb Ballard, two arrests for battery on Darlinghurst. Nothing on his victims or his affiliations. She made a note to dig into that more tomorrow.
“Serial?” The lieutenant drew his lips tight. “Keep your voice down—no need to get the crowd into a panic. Some o’ them behind the tape have ’tech and can ’ear us. Well, at least now we know for certain the perp’s got ’tech too. Cyberdents. Eh. That certainly ain’t Ballard or his cronies.” He was talking softly, and Ninn had to boost the receptor to hear him clearly. Definitely needed an upgrade. “Someone with ’tech and a real bad attitude who doesn’t like men masquerading as women. Not a Koori thing. The others weren’t Kooris. And a Right wouldn’t have ’tech, now would he?”
Mickey pulled the bodybag around the singer and closed it, covering the beautiful face. “But maybe the Right’s using someone with ’tech to throw us off. Would be a tactic a mystery writer would throw in, eh? The others weren’t Kooris, but they were…sexually confused. Could all be related. Could be a serial. Could be Right targets. Maybe, LT.”
The others?
The hiss of the heat-sealed plasticene bag shot through Ninn’s head, and she gritted her teeth and adjusted the noise filters down a couple steps.
The lieutenant shrugged. “Maybe. We’ll relook a lot closer at the other cases, Mick. We’ll ’ave a go at it tomorrow arvo. Eh. Later this arvo. Maybe there’s a thread after all.”
“What other cases?” Ninn interrupted, making all three officers’ heads turn, focusing on her like a trio of sharks smelling a chum trail.
The lieutenant chortled. “Don’t keep up on what’s going on in your own neighborhood, Ninny? What the ’ell kinda private investigator are you?”
From the shadows a block away, the Slayer watched the crowd, captivated by the bright, flashing lights of the AISE vehicles. He sniffed the air and sorted out the smells of rain coming, of sweat and excitement and curiosity. His stomach growled. So hungry. He’d nearly given in to temptation and went after the discarded food behind the Chinese restaurant. People threw away so many things that were tasty and not wholly rotten. But he’d needed to deal with the singer first, and then he’d needed to leave or risk discovery. The quarry took precedence, then escape.
Always, the quarry came first. Killing would keep him alive. Escape after a killing was easy.
He listened to the crowd and picked through their conversations. Finding nothing particularly interesting, and eventually tiring of the flashing lights, he ambled away and down another alley. There was an Italian restaurant nearby, and there would be discards worth eating in the bins. He was especially fond of fetuccini with Alfredo sauce.
Three
Dreaming Time
The boys talked in a sing-song language that only a scattering of original people shared.
“My blood filled a cup, brother,” the smaller child said. Save for the height difference, the two boys looked like mirrors of each other, skin dark like mud, noses broad, and eyes wide and unblinking. “I barely noticed the pain.” The boy showed his arm with a long fresh scar. The taller child shivered.
“I painted with my blood, brother,” the boy continued. “I painted lines and circles upon my arms and legs, and I painted symbols that came to me in a dream. And while my blood was still wet I pressed leaves against it, and felt myself moving ever closer to the earth. I dropped so close and then I flew and—”
“Father looked for you,” the taller boy interrupted. “Days he looked. He thought you ran away to the city. He thought you left us. Yesterday he finally stopped looking. Yesterday he believed never to see you again.”
The first boy shook his head. “I was walkabout, brother. I do not know how long I was gone.”
“Days and days and days and days.”
“The passing of time during walkabout means nothing. Gone minutes or months, it does not matter. I found the Rainbow Serpent, and he introduced me to my totem spirit, the galah. The Rainbow Serpent was wise and powerful, and he drove me down into the sky while he drank all of my blood and ate my flesh, and then returned life to me and brought me back to this world. I learned new songs and met spirits. My heart sings a melody, brother. It sings that the world will be mine. I traveled through the hills and into the belly of the land, where I rested on a bed of fire opals and listened to my heart.”
The other boy laughed. “You make up stories, Barega. Father will scold you for running away. Heart sings a melody. Ha! Father will—”
“Mother will love me for returning,” the shorter boy countered.
“Father will—”
“—understand. I will tell him of his ancestors who I talked with. I will tell him of the Great Ghost Dance I swam through. I felt the anger of the Rainbow Serpent gathered in the beautiful, horrible, most magical clouds, brother. I ran with the rain.”
“You run with foolish stories. Father will call you a silly child. Father will—” The other boy stood and looked to the west, mouth falling open when he saw a galah circling slowly on an updraft.
“I am no longer a child, brother. I am talmai, mekigar, wirringan—”
“Koradji,” the other boy said with awe, eyes locked on the galah. “I believe you. Koradji.”
“Yes, and I can dream.”
“I want to dream too, Barega.” He dropped his gaze and grabbed his brother’s shoulders. “Please. Take me walkabout! Show me the Rainbow Serpent. I will ask for a better totem than yours. Not a rosy-gray bird so small and noisy. My spirit will be a brown snake or taipan, or I will live near the water and choose a stone fish or a great white shark. My totem will be fearless and fearful, not a pretty parrot. My heart will also sing a melody. When I am koradji, my spirit and I will—”
“You are not koradji, brother. And you will not be
. But I will dream for both of us.”
Barega slipped out of dreamtime, the primordial present-past he’d been traipsing through so often of late. “I still dream for both of us.” Disconnecting with his long-ago self, he concentrated upon the present, and the feel of the duracrete sidewalk beneath his bare feet. He took the city air deep into his lungs and tried to endure the scents of filth and food and things he had no names for. The sounds of the city seeped into his senses, music—which was both pleasant and unpleasant. He enjoyed the strains of a bluesy piece falling out the window of someone’s second floor apartment. He had always loved good blues. So many decades he’d spent in and out of this and other cities; good blues had not changed in all that time. He detested the electronic techno-rock that throbbed out the door of an all-hours bar. Something new age that sounded like glass breaking pulsed from a nightclub.
He saw the neon lights of a dancehall; in pink and gray tubing above the entrance was the image of a flying galah. Pella’s Rosy Parrot, the sign read. Believing his totem had led him in the correct direction, he continued east, where the duracrete gave way to bricks, stopping finally at the edge of a growing crowd.
Barega was fascinated by the races and colors assaulting his vision, and the conversations blotting out the blues and techno-rock and the shattering glass that pretended to be music. He stood on his tiptoes and peered into the darkness held back by police spotlights.
“Hey, old man,” a joygirl cooed. “I can show you the real Cross, show you things you’ve only dreamed about.”
Barega shook his head. The pretty young Asian girl knew nothing about dreaming.
Four
Ninn’s Case
“A private investigator, eh?” The handsome AISE elf glared at Ninn.
She’d thought one of her “own kind” would have been more receptive to her presence, but he clearly didn’t want her here.
“I said…where’d you come from, mate?” His last clipped word was anything but friendly.
She gave him an insincere smile. “Walked from my office on Darlinghurst and took a right on Roslyn.” Ninn pointed to the street behind her. “Came in under your flimsy barricade.”
“This is an AISE investigation,” the elf stated. “You can see that.” He huffed as he eased himself up, and then brushed at a spot of blood on his pant leg.
Not spotless after all. Despite the heater there was blood. The victim’s? Or had she got a piece of her attacker? Ninn almost pointed it out to him.
“Don’t be a yobbo. Get back behind the police line.” The elf waved an arm at Ninn, revealing a cyber-relay system on the back of his hand.
Ninn shook her head. “I am a detective. Registered.” She showed her left palm, displaying her ID chip for whatever minimal effect it might have. “Cadigal Hamfyst—Cadi, the troll over there—asked me to stop by. Hired me to see who slashed his singer. I’m fine to be here. And I’m not in your way. What other murders?”
“Don’t you PIs ever take a listen to the news?” the elf looked to the lieutenant, who was busy examining the area around the singer’s corpse.
Actually, I don’t often hear the news, not lately. Not much reason to.
However, Ninn seemed to remember something she’d heard on the street about someone killed in the area a few weeks ago, a couple of suspicious deaths before that. She hadn’t paid it any heed, though now she thought she should have. There typically weren’t many murders in the Cross—not compared to the rest of Sydney. But there were plenty of other crimes and vices, most of which the neighborhood either tolerated or wholeheartedly espoused. She wished she’d brought Mordred with her; he usually paid more attention to the local scuttle, thrived on gossip, and likely could call up the details on the murders. Ninn would ask him later, but for now she’d prod AISE.
“The other murders—” Ninn pressed. “What can you tell me about them? Related, you think? And when—”
“Ninny’s ’Merican, in case you’re curious,” the lieutenant said, identifying her accent for his fellows.
“New York?” The elf’s attitude suddenly brightened.
“She’s from Chicago, Draye,” the lieutenant answered. “South Side, if I remember right.”
“Big city girl. Chicago,” Draye said. “Toddlin’ Town. Big shoulders.”
The lieutenant turned his attention back to the sealed bag, tagged it. “Ninny, if you’re curious about the other murders, go run up some local news vids. I haven’t got time to do your digging, or to get you up to speed. Don’t expect AISE to help you earn a paychit. You drew one too many from us as it was.” His lips pulled back into a mirthless smile.
So familiar. But I can’t place him exactly. Frag it! He definitely remembers me from my time with AISE. Who the blue blazes is he? Did all the booze wash his name away?
The AISE elf stepped toward Ninn and pointed a blunt finger at the crowd. “Get back behind the bloody line, Toddlin’ Town. Got a hearing problem? Don’t need anyone else wandering around and contaminating—”
“It’s dinky-di, officers. I want her to stay.”
Ninn smelled the troll approaching, his strong aftershave lotion announcing him.
Cadigal was about the same height as Draye, short for a troll, but with thick upper arms, like pressed hanks of soybeef. He looked more like a construction worker than a businessman, particularly one who owned a tawdry house. He stood in front of a half-dozen showgirls gathered near a door propped open with a bottle, the back entrance to Cadigal’s Corner. The troll patted a heavy-busted ork in a tight white dress who was crying softly, then strode toward Ninn, his ring-encrusted hand thrust out.
The AISE elf went back to the lieutenant and the bodybag, glancing toward the alley ends and calling to the other officers to watch for the coroner. Ninn kept her ear trained on the law trio and kicked in the audio inscriber so she could talk to Cadi now and later play back the AISE conversation she was missing. She turned off her visual recorder and paused while another, briefer, wave of dizziness struck. The aftereffects of too much booze still lingered. She’d captured enough images for now anyway, had the AISE officers Draye and Mickey tucked away in her noggin. Should have brought Mordred, definitely; he was good with details.
“Thanks for coming, my friend.” Cadi grabbed Ninn’s thin hand between his two sweaty palms and shook it vigorously. Despite his mass, there wasn’t much strength in the grip. “This is terrible. Just terrible. Ella was the best. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. The very best. A headliner, a real crowd-pleaser. This is going to hurt business bad. I liked her a lot. I loved her.” This last he said softly.
“Who found her, Cadi?”
The chunky ork in the white dress choked back a sob and waggled her thick fingers. She swaggered toward them.
“Hurdy Gertie,” Cadi said by way of introduction. “Uh...Harold Naughton, actually.”
“S’call me Gertie,” she said. Her voice was husky and masculine, not bothering to sound like a woman at the moment. The cheeks of her round face were streaked blue and black from makeup that had run from the heat and her tears. Ninn noted that while all of the performers seemed upset by the murder, numb perhaps, Gertie was the only one actually crying. Her shoulders shook, and she shoved her fist against her mouth. “Ella,” she said, her voice muffled. “Ella Gance was my best friend. We were gonna go to Brisbane someday. Talked about it just yesterday, in fact.”
“You found her...” Ninn’s tone gently urged her to explain.
“I already told the Aces. Fraggin’ lumpers, they—”
Cadi nudged the ork.
The tears increased. “She was late, Ella was. They were calling for her from the wings. Thought she might be out here…smoking you know, maybe having a drink or a slip, most likely a slip ’cause she’d just bought some. I didn’t want her to get in trouble, miss her number. So I came out to check. Didn’t see her at first. S’was dark.” She paused until she regained some semblance of control. “Didn’t look hard enough. I really didn’t thi
nk anything...bad...had happened. If I’d found her then, maybe...maybe medics could’ve saved her. Didn’t look hard enough, pigs I didn’t. She missed her next number, and I came out after my second, had a few minutes before I had to change. I looked again. Thought she’d, you know—been with a fan. S’wasn’t like her to miss a number, but it happened every once in a while. If the nuyen was good enough. She wasn’t a joygirl, never, but if the nuyen was good enough, Ella always needed nuyen, she sometimes—”
“And that’s when you found her? The second time you came out here?”
She nodded. “I told you I had a few minutes. So I walked toward the park, thought I might see her by the fountain. She liked the fountain. S’was so dark. I almost tripped over her. Oh, God—”
Cadi draped an arm around the ork’s shoulders. “Gertie came and got me right away. I called you a little while after I called the lumpers. Called the locals and here the Aces showed up.” He laughed sadly. “Ace lumpers. Holy dooly! What the hell are they doing here? Maybe having a fifth murder down here finally woke ’em up.”
Five murders, Ninn mused with an internal wince—she fragging well should have paid attention to the news.
“Five!” Gertie’s demeanor changed and she snarled. “Drekkin’ lumpers. They’re drongoes, the lot of ’em. The Cross ain’t prone to much crime, it ain’t. Not bad crime.”
Cadi cut in, “Bangers run from time to time, spray graffiti, break the antique streetlights, and sometimes harass tourists. You live around here, Ninn, you know what we got.”
“Lumpers don’t help with shit, ’specially Aces,” Gertie hissed. “If them Aces came around once in a while, Ella’d still be breathing.”
“But they’re here now,” Ninn whispered. Ninn knew “lumpers” was what the local police were called, and they were only noticed by their conspicuous absence in the neighborhood. And AISE, Australia’s elite police, typically wasn’t caught dead in the area. Apparently they were considered “lumpers” too.
