Sins of the Father

by Mitchel Scanlon

  "That's not my problem, Chandra," he heard the man's voice say. Leonard followed the sound, moving cautiously so the noise of his footfalls would not give him away. "And don't try and fob me off with excuses about rush hour traffic. She's a hyper-model, for drokk's sake. We both know she goes everywhere in a chauffeured hover limo."

  The hallway led out into another large room. Stepping inside it, Leonard saw a man pacing impatiently across the floor as he talked into the mouthpiece of a wire headset. The man had a small box-like metal object in his hand. He fiddled with it restlessly as he continued to argue with a seemingly invisible listener.

  "No, that's not good enough," the man said. "In fact, it's unprofessional. I booked her for a three-hour shoot. If she can't be bothered to show up, I've got a good mind to cancel the booking and get someone el-"

  Suddenly, as Leonard moved within arm's reach, the man abruptly turned. As he saw Leonard approach him, his face went pale.

  "Chandra? Uh... I think I'm going to have to call you back..."

  They were the last words the man ever said.

  THIRTEEN

  UNEXPECTED IMAGES

  It had taken a lot of calls back and forth to Control and the Watch Commander at Sector House 45, but within the hour Anderson had received the extra manpower she had requested. Given the city's current chronic shortage of qualified Judges, Farnham had been ordered back to street duties almost immediately. In his place, a dozen cadets from the Academy of Law had been sent to help the remaining Teks with the gargantuan job of sorting through Joseph Kapinski's effects under the hawkish gaze of one of their Judge-Tutors. "A useful field exercise," the Judge-Tutor had called it when she arrived at the apartment. A grizzled, stocky woman with a pair of creaking bionic limbs to replace the legs she had lost in the line of duty, she had set about her business with gusto, constantly barracking the cadets on the need to adhere strictly to the guidelines for handling forensic evidence when opening the boxes. Watching the Judge-Tutor at work, Anderson was given the impression the woman relished the task ahead of her, as though this brief re-assignment to an active investigation - no matter how fleeting - was something she had dreamed about for years.

  At the same time, despite the promptness of the response to her requests, Anderson was under no illusions. She realised the fact that valuable resources had been diverted to aid her investigation had little to do with her own standing within the Justice Department. In the end, it was the Gruschenko angle that had decided the matter. Whatever the nature of the mysterious connection between the death of the Sov mob boss and the murder of Joseph Kapinski, it had been enough to persuade the Sector House authorities to support her efforts to crack the case. Ultimately, it was a question of politics - just as she had indicated to Lang earlier. For years, an extensive criminal network had flourished in Sector 45 under the very noses of the Judges. The belated discovery of that network meant the local Sector House hierarchy had been embarrassed. Naturally, they would now do everything in their power to cover their asses with both hands. There would be more raids and crackdowns. Strong words would ring out about being tough on crime. Judges would be encouraged to apply their sentencing powers in a draconian fashion, at least for the next few weeks until their Watch Commanders and other bosses were assured their positions were safe.

  Politics. Anderson was no knee-jerk reactionary. She supposed, among other Judges, she would be counted as rather a liberal. To her, though, the word "politics" left a dirty smell behind it. In her experience, the concepts of politics and justice were more than just uneasy bedfellows. They belonged to entirely different species.

  Anderson was not a political animal by nature. Still, she was savvy enough not to look a gift horse in the mouth when it cantered up and offered her its bridle. She had a case to solve, and perps to capture. If the connection to Gruschenko and the Organizatsiya gave her the pull to achieve those aims, then she would make use of it to its fullest potential. Unlike some Judges of her acquaintance, she was no robot blindly adhering to a narrow definition of the Law in an attempt to make sense of the chaos of life in the city. No, her devotion to her job came from a more direct and telling imperative.

  Time and again, as she performed her duties on the streets of the Big Meg she was reminded of the words of one of her psi-instructors, long ago in Psi-School.

  "We aren't like other Judges," the instructor had told her. "All they care about is whether or not the Law has been broken. It's different when you're a Psi-Judge. Always remember: we speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves. We speak for the dead. We speak for the victim."

  We speak for the dead. Throughout the twenty-something years that Anderson had served in Psi Division, those words had been her credo. She was not a religious person. She did not respect any higher power, nor see evidence of divine providence in the works of man. She did not believe there was a deity, watching earthly affairs from afar, who would descend to point out the guilty. No thunderbolt would ever come from the heavens to avenge the act of murder. In the absence of divine retribution it fell to human agencies, and human hands, to do what heaven could not.

  We speak for the dead. Today, that meant she spoke for Joseph Kapinski. She spoke for Konrad Gruschenko. Good man or bad, it made no difference. Innocent and criminal, saint and sinner alike, she spoke for them both.

  She spoke for Joseph Kapinski. She spoke for Konrad Gruschenko. Whether through hubris, or a simple dogged refusal to admit defeat, she felt a certainty deep within her bones. She would not allow this case to go unsolved. Come what may, she would bring their killers to justice.

  The only shame of it was that, by the time she made her first real breakthroughs in the case, another victim had died.

  The call came in from Control perhaps an hour or so after the Cadets arrived. Anderson was checking through the contents of a box filled with used toiletries and old credit statements when she heard the dispatcher's voice call to her over the airwaves.

  "Control to Anderson! Please respond!"

  "Anderson receiving, Control. Over."

  "Homicide at David Bailey Block. Judges on the scene report similarities to the Kapinski and Gruschenko killings. You are asked to get there ASAP. Can you respond? Over."

  She looked at Lang and the Judge-Tutor standing nearby. The Judge-Tutor, Burnley, gazed at her with sharp, dark eyes.

  "You'd better get going," Burnley said. "Both of you. I'll handle things at this end and let you know if anything comes up."

  Nodding, Anderson's attention returned to her radio.

  "Acknowledged, Control. Psi-Judges Anderson and Lang en route to the scene. ETA to David Bailey: fifteen minutes."

  David Bailey was a luxury block, situated in one of the sector's better neighbourhoods and designed to cater for citizens with the money to pay for a higher standard of living than most of the Mega-City One's unemployed masses could afford. Guided unerringly to the block's location by the navigation systems in their bike computers, Anderson and Lang arrived in just under fourteen minutes. As they pulled into the parking bay in front of the building, Anderson noticed half-a-dozen Lawmasters were already parked outside.

  "Guess someone decided to make a party of it," she commented to Lang. "Let's hope that means we've caught a break and they already have our perps in custody."

  It was a vain hope, but it felt good to say it out loud. Having called back in to Control to confirm their arrival and check where the murder had been committed, as the two Psi-Judges stepped from the elevator onto the building's sixteenth floor a street Judge was already waiting for them.

  "Good to see you," he said, holding a hand out in greeting. "The name's Dorden. The crime scene's this way."

  He led them to an apartment at the end of the corridor, then inside to a spacious open plan living room. Passing through the hall and other rooms of the apartment along the way, Anderson saw dozens of Tri-D stills had been hung in pride of place on the walls. They were advertising images: beautiful women wearing bikinis i
n exotic holo-locations, drinking beer and canned soft drinks, or eating fast food with suggestively inviting smiles. When it came to hawking their products to the city's consumers, the Big Meg's advertising industry was hardly renowned for its subtlety.

  "The victim's name was Charles Aron Mayzell," Dorden said as he led them to the body of a man lying dead on his back in the centre of the living room. It was clear the victim had been strangled and, as with the other killings, the words "Your sins will find you out" had been carved into his torso. "He was a Tri-D photographer. Advertising and fashion stuff, mostly. He was murdered fifty-three minutes ago."

  "Fifty-three minutes?" Anderson raised an enquiring eyebrow. "I know modern med-technology is supposed to be a marvel. But that seems one hell of a precise time of death."

  "Medicine doesn't come into it," Dorden said. He pointed down to a comms-headset lying broken on the floor beside the body. "The victim was in the middle of an audio-call when the perps attacked him. When she heard what was going on, the caller on the other end dialled the Sector House and reported a crime in progress. Unfortunately, with manpower diverted to the ongoing raids as part of Operation Lazarus, street patrol is currently short-staffed. By the time I got here, it was twenty-five minutes later and the perps had got away."

  "Twenty-five minutes? They could have still been inside the building..."

  "Way ahead of you," Dorden nodded. "I called for backup ASAP. The grille cover for the air-conditioning unit in one of the other rooms has been torn away. It's obvious that's how the perps entered the apartment. Right now, a couple of Teks are running a remote surveillance drone through the AC vents to see if they can pick up the perps' trail. I've also got another three street Judges checking the access points into the system, and Control is contacting all the block residents via vid-phone to see if anybody heard or saw anything suspicious." He pursed his lips grimly. "So far, though, we haven't found them. Either these two perps are the luckiest sons-of-bitches alive, or they're drokking invisible."

  "You've warned the Teks and the street Judges to be careful?" Anderson asked. "These perps have killed three people already, and at least one of them is probably superhuman."

  "Don't worry." If Dorden felt aggrieved to have a Psi-Judge tell him his business, he gave no sign of it. "It's been done. They all have orders to report back immediately and call for backup if they find anything." He gestured at the dead man. "You only need to take a look at this guy to see these perps ain't taking any prisoners. In the meantime, though, I figured you'd want to have a look at things while the crime scene was still fresh. Also, I've got something you'll probably want to hear."

  Opening one of the pouches on his utility belt, Dorden pulled out a miniature digital audio-recorder and held it up before them.

  "We've got one of your perps on digi-tape," he said. "Chandra Lockhart, the woman who was on the other end of the line with Mayzell when he was attacked, works as a booker for a modelling agency. The agency records all calls as a matter of course. Apparently, when she realised what was happening, Lockhart used her vid-phone to call the Sector House instead of the audio-line she was talking to Mayzell on. Her audio-line captured the beginning of the attack and the Teks got the agency to send us the call recording via webmail. This is what it sounds like..."

  He hit the play button, boosting the volume so the Psi-Judges could hear it clearly. At first, there were two voices. A man and a woman were arguing.

  "That's Mayzell and Lockhart," Dorden said, supplying commentary as the argument continued. "There was a model supposed to be coming to Mayzell's apartment for a shoot this morning and she was running late." He cocked his head towards the recorder. "Wait... yeah, this is it. Listen. The perps must have sneaked up on Mayzell while he was still talking..."

  There was a pause in the argument, before the man's voice spoke on the recording in a hoarse whisper.

  "Chandra? Uh... I think I'm going to have to call you back..."

  There was a muffled cry, and the sounds of a struggle. Then, a child's voice could be heard clearly, the tone shrill and vengeful.

  "Kill him, Leonard!" the boy's voice shrieked. "He's one of the bad men! He's one of the men who hurt me! Kill him! Kill him, Leonard! Now!"

  Abruptly, there was a crunching noise and a wail of feedback. Then, the recording fell silent.

  "That's all that was on the tape." Dorden handed the recorder to Anderson. "As close as we can tell, Mayzell's headset must have fallen off during the struggle." He pointed at the damaged comm-set beside the body. "Then, somebody trod on it and broke the connection."

  "Still, it confirms what a witness told us at the first homicide," Anderson said. Accepting the recorder from Dorden, she placed it in one of the pouches on her own belt. "One of the perps is a child. And now we know the name of the other one. The giant's name is Leonard."

  "You've got more than just his name," Dorden said. He went to his belt again, in a gesture that reminded Anderson incongruously of a sleight-of-hand magician about to pull a stuffed rabbit from his hat. Taking a folded square of paper from another pouch, he opened it out and handed it to her. "Now, we even know what this Leonard looks like. It ain't a pretty picture."

  It was a 2-D photo-scan on glossy paper, its grainy texture and flattened angles indicating it had been forensically enhanced and re-configured from a Tri-D photo. It showed a close-up of the snarling face of a mutant, seen from a strangely askew downward angle, his features illuminated in the light of a photo-flash. The mutant's skin was grey and leathery, his face disfigured by a series of bony ridges, his nose a strange leaf-shaped thing with a broad, deep crevice at its centre. But for the long greasy hair that hung down from his head, the mutant's face might have put Anderson in mind of some kind of giant bat.

  "You're right," Anderson said, as she passed the photo-scan to Lang. "With a face like that he wouldn't win any beauty contests. How did you get this?"

  "When I entered the scene I found a Tri-D camera lying on the floor alongside the comm-set," Dorden told her. "When I gave it to the Teks for analysis, one of them found a picture in the camera's memory. The time-stamp indicates it was taken at the time of the attack. Best I can figure it, Mayzell was probably already holding the camera when the perps attacked him. Maybe he tried to use the camera-flash to ward them off, or he just pressed the activation button by accident. Either way, he caught the mutant on camera. Extraordinary, I know. But it can be like that with investigations. Sometimes, you just catch a lucky break."

  "Don't I know it." As Lang passed the photo-scan back to her, Anderson stared down at the image again as though trying to read some portent in the lines of the mutant's face. "All right, so we've got audio on one perp and a visual on the other one." She looked back up at Dorden with a sardonic half-smile. "I don't suppose you managed to find their driving licences and social security numbers while you were at it? Or maybe just their addresses? You know, anything to make our jobs really easy."

  "Sorry," Dorden gave her a grim but good-natured smile in return. "Can't help you there."

  "Have you thought maybe this helps explain some things?" Lang said to Anderson. "We were wondering why the victims saw the killers as one corporate being. Take a look at the mutant, though. Guy's so ugly, he must have scared them half to death when they saw him - never mind the fact he then started strangling them. Maybe that's why the victims always put the boy's face on the mutant's body. Maybe their minds were trying to blot out the thing that frightened them, even as they died."

  "It could be." Far from convinced by Lang's theory, Anderson gave a noncommittal shrug. "I'll admit, I wouldn't like to run into Leonard here in any dark hallways. But I get the impression there's a lot more going on here than we realised. I don't know what it is yet, but there's something here we're just not seeing."

  "Another hunch?" Lang asked.

  "I suppose you could call it that," Anderson said. "We're Psi-Judges. Sometimes, bizarre and unexplained hunches just go with the territory. I'll say one thin
g, though. The words the boy said while the giant was killing Charles Mayzell confirm that there's a personal motive behind these killings. You heard what he said about Mayzell. 'He's one of the men who hurt me'."

  "I heard it," Lang said. She stared for a moment at the body of the dead man, reading aloud the message written on his torso. 'Your sins will find you out'. The question is, what were the victims' sins? And what did they do to the boy to hurt him? We already established that we thought Joseph Kapinski was an innocent who wouldn't hurt a fly. What could he have done to the boy to make him want to kill him? What could any of them have done for that matter?"

  "I don't know. But the perps' motives are the key to this whole case, I'm sure of it." Anderson sighed and rubbed her eyes tiredly. "Grud, even with this new evidence, it still feels like we're chasing our tails. Give me a simple purse-snatcher over a serial killer any day. At least then, there's a motive you can understand."

  Anderson shook her head as though to clear it, before she continued.

  "Anyway, enough theorising," she said. "I think we'd be better adopting a practical approach. Our next step is to psi-scan Mayzell's body and see if it gives us any more leads." She turned to Dorden. "Meanwhile, can you forward a copy of the picture of our perp to Control? Ask them to release it to the news media with the announcement that it's the face of a suspect wanted for questioning in three murders. Have them give the media the names of the victims as well. Maybe if we start to make things hot for our giant, he'll be forced to reveal himself in some way or he'll make a mistake that will lead us to him."

  "You think that will work?" Dorden asked her. "After all, we're not talking about a citizen here. The guy's a mutant. If he's living in the Big Meg, he's used to staying underground and keeping out of sight."