Sins of the Father

by Mitchel Scanlon

  "It's like I said, he's a criminal mastermind," the first Judge offered in agreement. "You ever seen that show on Tri-D about the detective solving cases in old-time Brit-Cit? You know the one. The hero is this tall thin guy with a long nose. He wears a funny hat, and always uses a magnifying glass to examine the crime scene. 'It's elementary, my dear Watson.' That's his catchphrase. What's the name of the villain on that show?"

  "Moriarty," the second Judge answered him. "Professor Moriarty."

  "Yeah, that's right," the first Judge nodded. "That's what we've got here. Our very own Professor Moriarty." He turned to stare hard at the perp. "What about it, Moriarty? You decided it's time to change your story yet?"

  "You have to believe me," the perp said, shifting uneasily in his chair. "This is all a mistake. My name is Doug Wend and I sell kneepads. I've never taken a grain of sugar in my life!"

  "Listen to him." The first Judge shook his head and whistled through his teeth. "No matter what happens, he sticks to his story. The guy's a genius. I mean, it ain't just the good cop/bad cop thing. By now, he has to have started wondering how come we haven't used a lie detector or taken a DNA sample to disprove his story. He must have asked himself why we're so calm about things. He must have considered the idea that it means we got an ace up our sleeves: something that's going to blow him out of the water, and we're just biding our time before we bring it out."

  "Oh, sure, he's thought of that." The second Judge yawned and began to stretch his shoulders as though he was growing weary of the game. "But Moriarty here knows he can beat anything. He's a criminal mastermind, and we're just a couple of dumb schmuck street Judges. This whole time we've been sitting here, doing our comedy double act like Hooty and Gleev, he's probably been looking down his nose at us. Probably thinks we're a pair of ignorant mouth-breathers." Finishing his stretching, the Judge joined his partner in staring hard at the perp. "Course, what he doesn't know, is the joke's on him. That the only reason we're sitting here is because we're waiting for someone else to join us."

  The door to the interrogation suite opened and a slim, attractive woman in a Judge's uniform entered the room. With a nod to the two street Judges, she advanced towards the perp.

  "Calhoun, this is Anderson," the first Judge said. "In case you didn't spot what it says on her badge, she's a Psi-Judge. A telepath. In accordance with Judicial Order three-oh-three, Sub-section eight, Paragraph two, I am required to inform you that you are about to undergo a compulsory deep telepathic probe. You might want to take a few deep breaths there and do your best to attempt to relax, citizen.

  "I hear it only hurts if you try to resist."

  "He's just a low-level sugar dealer," Anderson said as she returned to the observation room adjoining the interrogation suite and saw that Lang was waiting for her. "Strictly a small-timer. He was on his way to a stash house for a re-up when he got caught in the sweep. He knew Jimmy Nayles was the boss of the mob he worked for, but that was about it. He had never actually met Gruschenko, or seen him. He didn't even know the Organizatsiya were running things."

  "So he gets us nowhere, then?" Lang said.

  She was standing beside the large two-way mirror that looked into the Interrogation Suite. Through it, two street Judges could be seen dragging the struggling perp away to the iso-cubes while he complained at the violation of his mind. With a grimace, Lang switched off the intercom on the wall beside her, cutting off the perp's complaints in mid-sentence.

  "Pretty much," Anderson agreed with her. "What about you? Did you get anything useful from the perps captured in the other raids?"

  "Not much," Lang shook her head. "There was some minor info on gambling dens and organ legging that might be of interest to the Organised Crime Units but so far, as regards our murder, I've performed deep telepathic scans on half-a-dozen perps without finding a single new lead. It's like you say: the perps have all heard of Jimmy Nayles, but they don't know him and they haven't met him. From what I hear, Operation Lazarus was a complete failure. All the raids turned up were some empty warehouses and a few small-fry perps. The entire operation turned out to be a waste of time."

  "Yeah, that's what I hear, too," Anderson said. "From the sound of it, the Organizatsiya must have got word that Gruschenko was dead and cleaned everything out." She shrugged. "Still, I wouldn't go shouting that opinion out too loudly hereabouts unless you want to make enemies of the Sector House hierarchy. After putting so many resources into these raids, no one is going to admit the operation was a wash-out. No doubt, they'll give out news releases to the media in an hour or so, trumpeting Lazarus as a great success. 'A telling blow against organised crime in this city.' That kind of thing. It's politics. Nobody wants to admit that Judges are just as human and prone to mistakes as everybody else."

  "Where does that leave us, then?" Lang asked. "We were hoping the Lazarus raids would scare up some new leads on the Gruschenko killing. Right now, they look to have got us nowhere."

  "Agreed," Anderson said. "Frankly, at this precise moment in time I'd say we're at somewhere less than nowhere. You remember the calls we put in to MAC and PSU, asking for info on earlier sightings of the perps, and so on? I've had some calls back and it seems like we're batting zero on every front. The only area that's produced any new information is when I asked the Organised Crime Unit for the low-down on Gruschenko's potential enemies. They came back with a list as long as my arm. Not surprisingly, given he was a mob boss, Konrad Gruschenko was a man with a lot of enemies. Honestly though, I'd be surprised if any of Gruschenko's business rivals were behind the murder. When you want to kill a mob boss, you hire someone to shoot him or put a bomb in his car. Everything about this killing - the strangulation, the message carved into the victim's body - suggests a more personal motive. I don't think we---"

  "Control to Anderson!" Abruptly, Anderson's radio blared into life. Her hand going automatically to the radio unit on her belt, she pressed the transmit button and responded to the call.

  "Anderson receiving, Control. Over."

  "Just had an update from MAC," the dispatcher told her, his voice terse over the airwaves. "I understand you requested notification earlier this morning of any homicides matching the MO of the murder of Konrad Gruschenko, AKA James Nales."

  "Affirmative to that, Control." Exchanging a significant look with Lang, Anderson boosted the volume of her radio so the other Psi-Judge would be able to hear it clearly. "What have you got for us?"

  "A homicide at Sigmund Freud Block. According to the first Judges on the scene, the victim was strangled and a message was found carved into his torso. The words were: 'Your sins will find you out'. That sound like it matches your case?"

  "Word for word, Control. You said 'Judges on the scene'? Am I to take it this is an ongoing investigation, not a cold case from the files?"

  "Affirmative to that Anderson. Like I said, I just received the update from MAC - otherwise, I would have let you know about the crime earlier. The homicide was called in forty minutes ago by one of the victim's neighbours.

  "Looks like, whoever your killer is, he's been a busy boy."

  ELEVEN

  MEMENTO MORI

  Anderson had seen a lot of crime scenes over the years, but for pure Mega-City weirdness few could compare to the scene awaiting her inside the apartment at Sigmund Freud. As she stepped through the doorway with Lang behind her, she saw the apartment's hallway was stacked floor-to-ceiling with row after row of crates and boxes. A cramped passageway had been left down the centre of the hall in-between the stacks to allow access to the rest of the apartment, but the overhanging piles of boxes either side had encroached on even this slender space. As she advanced along it she was forced to walk sideways, holding her breath at times as she attempted to squeeze through the narrow gaps.

  "Looks like the victim was moving house," she heard Lang say behind her. "With all this stuff, it would have had to be to someplace bigger."

  "No, I don't think he was moving anywhere," Anderson told h
er. Pausing, she ran a finger along the surface of one of the boxes and held it up for Lang to see it. "From the amount of dust on some of these, they've been here a long time." Picking a box at random, she pulled open the lid and glanced at the contents. She saw a broken plate, a selection of vid-slugs, some playing cards and a half-eaten Gooey Bar - all sealed, labelled, and vacuum-packed in plasteen shrink-wrap. Picking up the Gooey Bar to show it to Lang, she pointed at the label. "According to this, he wrapped this Gooey Bar eight years ago. Maybe the victim was some kind of collector."

  "In that case, can't say I think much for his taste in collectibles." Following Anderson's example, Lang had opened another of the boxes. She lifted out a transparent bag filled with used tissues. "What kind of freak collects his own snot?"

  "Probably a psych-case," Anderson said. Noticing another box was filled with specimen jars she inspected the contents, only to recoil with a wince of disgust. "Trust me, you're lucky you only found the tissues. Turns out that snot wasn't the only solid waste this guy collected."

  "Anderson?" She heard a man's voice call to her down the hallway.

  Turning, Anderson saw a street Judge had appeared at the end of the hall and was now beckoning them towards him. As she came closer, she saw the name on his badge read "Farnham".

  "Control said you were coming," he told her. "And you must be Lang?" He nodded to the other Psi-Judge. "I take it you noticed the dÈcor?" He indicated the boxes.

  "Yeah."

  "The entire apartment's like this," Farnham said. "You'll have to watch your step - some of these stacks aren't put together too good and it doesn't take much to topple them. This whole place is one big Health and Safety violation. If the tenant wasn't dead, he'd be looking at cube time." He shook his head in disbelief. "I tell you, fifteen years on the streets and you think you've seen everything. But this guy was something else. It's like he was the ultimate pack rat. The guy never threw anything away. You realise he was even hoarding his own shit in jars? There's boxes full of the stuff."

  "I noticed," Anderson said. "Where's the body?"

  "This way," Farnham beckoned them towards a doorway off the hallway. "It's in the living room."

  Like the hallway, the living room was packed with boxes. Following Farnham into the room, Anderson estimated there must be thousands of them, arranged in vast walls and towers of plasteen and synthi-board that choked every available centimetre of space. The only areas free of boxes were a narrow passageway left for access and two small islands of freedom around the sofa and the Tri-D player. Turning a corner with Farnham in the lead, Anderson saw that several of the stacks had collapsed in untidy disarray, leaving a mound of boxes at one end of the living room like the rubble from the fallen ramparts of a conquered city. A body lay on top of it, attended by a pair of weary Tek-Judges collecting forensic data. Registering the newcomers' arrival, the Teks glanced briefly at Anderson and the others before resuming their work.

  The body was that of a middle-aged man wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown. From the outset it was clear this was the work of the same perps who had killed Konrad Gruschenko. The victim's eyes were red and swollen with internal haemorrhages; there were wide bruises around his throat; his tongue lolled from his mouth, distended and purple. Most pertinently, Anderson could see the man's pyjamas and dressing gown had been ripped open, revealing the same bloody message carved into the bony flesh of his torso.

  Your sins will find you out.

  "Fingerprints and DNA confirm the victim's name as Joseph Alvez Kapinski," Farnham said, pulling a comp-unit from his belt to check his facts. "Date of birth: 3/4/2071. Fifty-five years of age. Unemployed. No criminal convictions. According to the records, he's been receiving psychotherapy for the last twenty years. Diagnosed as suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, aggravated by acute collection mania."

  "Guess that explains the boxes," Anderson said. "What else can you tell us about him?"

  "Not much. Seems Kapinski didn't get out a lot. Neighbours say he kept himself to himself. Credit card records indicate he had his groceries delivered to him here from the block mart. Paid his bills and taxes over the Megaweb. The guy was pretty much a shut-in. I put a call in to his shrink to see if he could give me any more background, but I haven't heard back from him yet." He glanced at his wristwatch. "It's still outside office hours. That probably explains it."

  "When the shrink does get in touch, can you forward any info he gives you?" Anderson asked. "We're currently working on the theory there's a personal angle to these killings. It could be that something in Kapinski's background may help us close in on the killers."

  "I thought the other victim was a mob boss?" Farnham said. "Leastways, that's what Control said."

  "He was," Lang joined the conversation. "But Anderson thinks the murder wasn't business-related."

  "It's a hunch." Seeing the street Judge looking at both her and Lang in turn as though trying to read whether there was a disagreement between them, Anderson shrugged. "So far, we haven't got much else to go on. Speaking of which, what have you in terms of physical evidence? I take it a Med-Judge has examined the body."

  "Yeah." Farnham's eyes returned to the display screen of his comp-unit as he scrolled through his notes. "Preliminary examination of the body indicates the cause of death was asphyxia resulting from manual strangulation. The wounds on the victim's chest - the words carved there, I mean - were inflicted postmortem. The Med-Judge found a microscopic metal fragment in one of the wound tracks: probably a piece of the knife that chipped off when the blade hit a rib. He gave it to the Teks for analysis, and they say it's high-carbon steel. Apparently, that means the weapon used to inflict the cuts was either a museum piece or it was hand-forged from a lump of iron ore the old-fashioned way. Nobody uses steel for knife blades anymore. These days it's all plasti-steel, tungsten alloys, or hardened ceramics."

  "Any guesses about what kind of knife it was?" Anderson asked.

  "No." The street Judge shook his head. "The fragment was too small to be able to tell us anything more. Still, if you can find the knife, the Teks will be able to match the fragment to the blade. Apparently, it's as good as fingerprints."

  "Trust me, if we find these perps we won't need to inspect the knife to identify them," Anderson said. "They'd tend to stand out in a crowd."

  "Yeah, I heard," Farnham said. "Control said your profile of the perps indicates one is a kid and the other is a giant. That's one hell of a tag-team, even for this city." Turning away, the street Judge began to pick his way carefully through the fallen boxes and drew the Psi-Judges' attention to the living room wall. "Anyway, I figure there's something else here you'll want to see."

  Squatting down by the wall Farnham carefully lifted one of the boxes aside, revealing a hole at the base of the wall where the grille cover of an air-conditioning vent had been torn open.

  "Looks like this is how your perps gained entrance to the apartment," he said. "The Teks sent a remote surveillance-drone into the vents to try and pick up their trail. Seems the perps got in to the underblock maintenance tunnels via the sewers, then followed the tunnels up into the air-conditioning system."

  "That fits," Anderson said. On the ride over from Sector House 45 she had received a forensics report from Tek-Judge Tolsen on the Gruschenko homicide. Downloading the file into her Lawmaster's computer, she had instructed her bike to use its audio-system to read her the edited highlights as she and Lang made their way to Sigmund Freud. "They used a similar approach when they killed the previous victim."

  "Well, that about covers all the evidence that's been collected so far," Farnham said. Rising to stand once more, he turned back to face the two Psi-Judges. "There'll be more to tell you when the Teks have completed the forensics. But, given the state of this place..." He gestured to the towers of boxes all around them. "It's going to take a while."

  "Understood," Anderson said as she removed one of her gloves. "All right, then. I'd appreciate it if you and the Teks could give us some
time alone with the body. We're going to do a psi-scan of the victim."

  She turned towards Lang and gave her a disarming smile.

  "So, do you want me to go first? Or do we flip a coin?"

  He could not breathe. His heart beat madly in his chest in terror. Looking at the face of his killer, he felt vague, dull surprise to see a child staring back at him. The boy's eyes seemed to burn with fire. He saw his lips move, mouthing angry words, but the rush of blood pounding through his head drowned out the sound. The world began to darken. In a last moment of terrified reckoning, he realised he had been wrong.

  There would be no more tomorrows.

  "Did you see what I did?" Anderson said, afterwards. It was a few minutes later, and she and Lang had both completed separate psychic scans of the dead man's body. She felt a chill sadness run through her heart: the familiar emotion of loss that always came when she read the last memories of someone who had died a violent death. "It was exactly the same as last time. It's like the victim perceived his killers as one collective being. The killer was as tall and as strong as the giant, but when the victim looked at him he saw the face of the child. And then, there were the child's eyes. There was something in them. Hatred. Vengeance. Anger. I don't know what exactly, but whatever it was it was like the kid's eyes were on fire with it."

  "I saw it," Lang whispered hoarsely. Her eyes were downcast and her cheeks were pale with nausea. The psi-scan seemed to have taken a great deal out of her. Watching as Lang put her hand gingerly to her own throat as though searching for non-existent bruises, Anderson was struck again by how young the other Psi-Judge seemed. Experiencing another person's death was hard enough at the best of times, but it only made it worse when you were a rookie virtually straight out of Psi-School.