Matheson recorded it all and Dillal rested on his heels, studying them. “These two . . .” he muttered. “Defensive wounds, not bound, no sign of having been forced to kneel on the floor with the rest. Whoever they are, whatever they were to each other, or to the rest, this is the key.”
“How are you certain?” Matheson asked.
“How are you not?” Dillal replied lifting his gaze to Matheson without raising his head. “They’re the anomaly in the pattern.” He returned his unsettling stare to the murdered couple and spoke gently, as if to them. “Explain the anomaly and you explain the crime.” Dillal looked at them for another minute in silence. Then he rose without a word and retreated from the room. Matheson followed.
The alley was no more comfortable with the sun now heating the humid air, but it was a change of scene that was at least less grim. The OLED picto-signs had folded into their leaves, leaving only sunlight to work by. Dillal was no less thorough there. He observed or checked everything, from the removal and recording of twenty-five pictogram handbills from the alley walls—including several political posters with the ubiquitous “Relief, Redress, Revolt!” icons loaded on cheap flimsy—to a sweep of the usual ghetto trash, from the lip ends of cigarettes, food wrappers, alcohol containers, sex and drug paraphernalia, to small injector capsules from single hits of Wire.
Dillal squatted down beside something near the back of the transport and looked back over his shoulder toward the doors of Paz, his unnatural eye squinting with a whispering hint of machinery beneath his skin. “Twelve meters?” he muttered. “Matheson, do you have the visible beam pointer?”
“No, sir,” Matheson replied, closing the distance between them and taking care where he put his feet.
Dillal pointed to the ground just in front of himself—one more bloody shoe print and a broken pen torch lay just past the transport, near a runoff drain. “This is the same pattern as the print by the door. I’d like the true measurement of the distance from the center of one mark to the center of the other.”
Matheson fetched the beam pointer from the transport and set it up. Dillal squatted down again and squinted at the mark as Matheson adjusted the beam to his requirements.
Matheson twisted the handle a little.
“Stop there. Now tell me the distance reading.”
“Twelve-point-one-one meters,” Matheson read.
Dillal grunted. “Mark it, and use your MDD to record the new track, the distance measured, and the beam in place with both evidence markers visible. Please.”
The beam measure could store the information in its own memo, but Matheson did as the inspector asked. The narrowness of the alley made it difficult to back off far enough to get both markers into the mobile’s recording frame. When he’d finished he started to return to the inspector’s side, but the smaller man called out. “No. Stop. Can you see the first mark clearly from there?”
Matheson squinted. “No. Just the marker. The tiles are a little sunken.”
Dillal stood up and waved Matheson to return. “Twelve meters from one footprint to the next, but less than one meter from the last footprint to here. Copy the evidence logs when you put this in the transport, and bring them along. I’ll meet you at the skimmer.”
Matheson fought a yawn in the cool dimness of the transport as he put the beam measure away, and uploaded and copied the logs. What’s the inspector up to? His mind staggered around, groping for answers as exhaustion dragged on him again.
He stepped outside and blinked in the sunshine that had begun falling into the alley like shards of broken, dirty glass as the sunlight finally reached over the walls on the east. In a few more hours, the sun would slice down on the narrow alley like a guillotine and he would be nine hours into overtime. The thought made him dizzy.
Dillal was waiting for him in the same skimmer they’d arrived in, his head bent over his mobile once more. The sun played mercilessly on the patchwork skin and the metal beneath it around his mechanical eye. He didn’t say a word until the vehicle was in the air.
“There are no additional impressions between the first track and the second,” the inspector murmured as Matheson guided the skimmer through thickening traffic. “Take us up higher, please.”
It took a moment for Matheson to realize the two sentences weren’t connected and another minute to bring the skimmer up above the normal traffic limits where only automated freight and emergency craft were allowed. Having an inspector aboard qualifies as an emergency . . . doesn’t it? Matheson was too tired to care if it didn’t. He felt safer up here where the traffic was thinner and seemed less bent on killing him.
“I checked the path between the two markers while you were in the transport,” Dillal explained, glancing up and out the front window. “We did not miss more shoe prints—there are none. The second one falls within one very long stride or a short jump to the transport’s door and I saw no other marks proceeding down the alley outside our cordon. There may be more under the transport, but unless ForTech finds some, those two are an interesting conundrum. Did you see any bloody footmarks in the transport?”
Matheson was concentrating on piloting the skimmer, but he said, “Mostly smears.”
“What would you imagine their origin to be? Could they be from whomever left the other two marks?”
Matheson let out a tired little laugh. “You want me to guess now?”
“Not so much a guess, in fact, but what your instinct tells you about the tracks on the transport’s floor.”
“I think they were made by Neme, Orris, and the scene techs. We’ll have no luck picking one particular track out of that.”
The inspector grunted. “I need to find out who left them. ForTech will get elimination impressions from all the GISA personnel who entered the site before we arrived. Otherwise, evidence that the tracks were or were not left by SO Santos will be thrown into doubt.”
“Santos? What? You think Santos did that . . . that?” Matheson felt sick and couldn’t think of a word that fit.
“I don’t. But he may have opened the door and stepped inside before he called you to the scene.”
“Wouldn’t he need a key?”
“Not if the door was open at the time. You have only his word it was locked. His MDD will have recorded his movement, but the detail may not be fine enough to show whether he entered the building or merely went to the door—”
“He broke his mobile’s screen earlier, so it might not have been recording video or position,” Matheson said.
“Broke it? How convenient . . .”
“It was an accident,” Matheson objected. “He fell—”
“While chasing the pickpocket?” The inspector grunted dismissively. “Whatever the case, I’m not certain that he didn’t enter the jasso earlier than you claimed.”
“You think I lied?” Matheson snapped.
Dillal turned a bland expression on Matheson. “No. I think he did. Santos has been assigned to this patch for a long time. He’s refused opportunities to move to other, less controversial areas.”
Matheson’s brain seemed to freeze around any useful thought and he scowled. “Why? If he had the chance to go somewhere better, why stay in the Dreihleat?”
“For the bribes.”
Matheson stared at the inspector, feeling his stomach fall, and then whipped his gaze to the front windshield in time to slip the skimmer sideways out of the path of an automated freight transport. “What?” was all he managed to say.
Dillal had turned his head forward again, but he was clearly aware of Matheson while he spoke. “You haven’t been here long, but I’m certain you haven’t missed it. Bribery and corruption are an endemic part of the system here, even more than the chartered principles.”
“It shouldn’t be that way—one set of rules for the quay and another for the ghetto!”
Dillal shook his head with a slight, twisted smile on his lips. “Should be and are rarely share the same bed on Gattis. Everything here is artificial and shaped
by human desire, from the culture to the depth of the sea. You’ll have to learn to bear it.”
“Bear it? How?” Matheson demanded. “I saw how you were treated today. Is that something you should bear?”
Dillal turned his head and studied Matheson with the same cool absorption he’d given to the dead—the glinting ocular making minute clicks. Then he looked aside again, making a speculative noise in his throat. “We should leave that topic for another time. Return your mind to the case. I started my career in Ang’Das on that patch and I know firsthand that to keep operating, the owners of jassos and other businesses pay bribes to the police—not to someone like me, of course, but to a senior SO or a District Coordinator. If Santos was the bag man—the collector of the bribes—for that end of the Dreihleat, he may have had a key to the club. It’s common enough for the same patrolmen who take the bribes to work as security for the jassos on their off hours. A very close arrangement that ensures that the interests of the businesses are not neglected. Since Paz caters to local businessmen after hours, it would have been a convenient way to contact many of his clients at once. This would have been the reason he separated from you when he had not done so before.”
Santos was too upset by the locked door and I didn’t question splitting the block. I just went along . . . Matheson felt more ill than ever and his mind was leaping and wandering wildly. “But,” he objected, “he fainted when we opened the door.” Shaking down the tourists is one thing. This . . .
The inspector shook his head. “It may have been a sham, or he may not have seen the extent of the slaughter within until you brought your Sun Spot to the scene. You reacted strongly on seeing it a second time—why wouldn’t he?”
Matheson latched onto the next thing that jarred his mind. “How do you know I used the Sun Spot?”
“It’s academy protocol to illuminate a dark and suspicious area in such a situation. Didn’t you do so?”
“I—” Matheson hesitated. The memory was hazier than it should have been and he had to try hard to get it. “I did.”
“And what did Santos do when you shined the light on the scene within?”
“He made a noise—maybe he said something. I didn’t hear it well. But he was in front of me. I followed him back out—we’d only stepped over the threshold. But his knee gave, and he ran into that pillar so hard he brained himself.”
Dillal nodded to himself. “Went jumpwise. I’ll ask him.”
Matheson’s own thoughts were a scattered mess. The city was awake and bustling now and he had to concentrate all his attention on piloting the skimmer to Public Health or they’d end up smashed on the crater floor. But he did it.
Once again Dillal was out of the skimmer and striding toward the building first. Matheson dragged behind the inspector, tripped over the health center’s doorsill, and stumbled, banging his right shoulder into the nearest wall. Just like Santos. He shook his head to clear it and wondered why it was so dark inside. He shook his head again, resting his weight against the wall to fight the dizziness that washed over him.
“Matheson.”
He couldn’t get Dillal in focus. Is that someone with the inspector? No . . . just a big shadow. Why’d they dim the lights?
The shadow glided forward and touched Matheson on the shoulder. It stabbed his eyes with a bright light. “How long since you slept, ofiçe?” The shadow had a rumbling voice. Matheson could hear Dillal’s voice, too, but he couldn’t understand it.
“Don’t know . . . forty-two?” Matheson replied.
The shadow rumbled a little more and started towing Matheson down the hall. Long, dark hall . . .
CHAPTER SIX
Day 1: Late Afternoon
“Water poppy reaction,” the nurse affirmed, and made notes on his data pad as Matheson was removed to sleep it off. “Happens to most first-time users with that kind of sleep dep. Forty-two hours?”
“So he says,” Dillal replied. “My guess is forty-six or more.”
The nurse shook his head. “Cops . . .”
“There is another ofiçe—Eron Santos—I’d like to speak to him.”
The nurse checked his pad and replied without looking up. “Discharged. Not much wrong with either of these guys that rest won’t cure.” He held out the pad. “Sign off.”
Dillal entered his hashmark on the pad and turned away.
“Wait.” The nurse caught his arm and stared at his face. “You’re J. P. Dillal? Your surgeon wants to see you. If you have time.” His tone implied that Dillal had better have time or make some.
The inspector heaved an annoyed sigh and pulled his arm free. “Very well.”
“Her lab’s just past—”
“I know where her lab is.”
Dillal made his way through a tangle of slideways and corridors to Andreus’s domain. There, he suffered through a physical exam and a raft of questions about the state of his pain, and how his interface and forensic equipment were working. She seemed unconvinced by his answers as she ran her gloved fingers over recent surgical scars among scrawls of older, rougher marks on his chest and head.
“So . . . nothing oozing or nonfunctional? Nothing that just feels wrong?” she asked.
“No,” Dillal replied. “Uncalibrated, still integrating, and, of course, I’m not used to it, but to say it’s wrong would be ridiculous in light of certain arguments against the whole program. Don’t you agree, Doctor?”
Andreus gave him an indecipherable glance from the corner of her eye. “Yes. All right. Let me scan the system before you hare off again.”
“Hare off?” Dillal repeated.
“Yes. Don’t you have hares on this planet? Wild rabbits with long ears and legs?”
“No.”
The doctor made a huffing sound through her nose at the conversation’s crib-death.
She picked up a data cable that was connected to a medical analyzer suite and located the tiny socket behind Dillal’s left ear. “There’s some damned weird stuff going on in your brain, but so far it’s all positive—I’m not seeing any sign of rejection or system over-reach . . .” she muttered. With her other hand, she swabbed the plug and socket with disinfectant. “Well, the socket is healing all right.” She connected the cable to his head. “Good firm seat and no sign of infection. Your chimeric physiology and immune function have been boons in the flesh-and-bone end of this, in spite of insufficient convalescence. Let’s just see what’s going on in the cybernetic and mechanical end.”
She turned away from him and put her attention on the analyzer equipment, which made some discreet whirring and clicking sounds as graphs and numbers began to fill the various displays. Dillal sat rigidly still, except for his fingers and the lid of his normal eye, which twitched in repeating cycles of two, three, one, two, three, one . . . until the doctor was satisfied. She gestured over the screens, and the small noises stopped, the graphs and numbers no longer changing.
She peered at the monitors. “Some of the connections aren’t returning the sort of sensitivity or stability I’d like to see, and the antenna isn’t coming online every time. Any trouble accessing the main system via remote?”
“Occasionally. But I was in the Dreihleat, where the microtransmitter density is lower.”
“Shouldn’t have been a problem. Analysis suite is operating at only eighty-seven percent. Well. I’ll give it a few days to build over the scaffold a little more, but I’m not pleased with the response.” She turned, pursing her mouth, and cast a speculating glance over him. “You’ve just come back from a crime scene. How did it go?”
“In terms of system performance—marginal.”
Andreus growled with disgust. “In light of this . . . ‘marginal’ performance, what was the response of your colleagues—and Pritchet?”
“I’ve not seen the Regional Director yet. And I don’t have any intention of telling him that the initial phase of the investigation was more dependent on my experience and ability to lie than on your system.”
“Was it, indeed?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
Dillal stared back at her. “Connectivity was problematic, but the system did give results once I’d adjusted it sufficiently.”
“You adjusted it manually? Did you have to reset the ocular?”
“Yes. But it wasn’t inconvenient. Better to control it manually than have it overrule my normal senses without authorization.”
“Hah!” she scoffed. “That’s how you see it, is it? A control issue? Well, if it were doing its job as I designed it, that wouldn’t be a problem.”
“It is not a problem now. I prefer to push the system rather than be pushed.”
The doctor laughed cynically. “I’ll bet you do.”
Dillal made no reply.
Andreus studied him for a moment. “If it doesn’t start to function and integrate as I’d intended, I’ll have to go back in there and modify a few things—which would be very risky.” She pointed at him. “You need to be vigilant about the possibility of infection or malfunction, because anything of that nature could be fatal and you know the protocol demands deintegration if the system fails. I don’t want to have to scrap you—even though you’ve been a major pain in my ass. Let me know what it’s doing—especially anything that doesn’t meet spec or fails to respond.”
“I will.”
“I’ll pretend I believe that.” She stripped her gloves and turned back to her machines. “I’m going to adjust a couple of the sensor parameters so you don’t get fades and overloads like the ones I’m seeing here on the particle intake and spectrum shift. It’s firmware, so it’ll take a few minutes.” She made some gestures over the screens and the suite of equipment hummed again for a few moments while Dillal winced, his fingers spasming into hooks and releasing in swift repetitions.
Once the doctor shut off her machines and returned to her patient, he was sitting as still and upright as she’d left him. She looked Dillal over with narrowed eyes, then got several boxes out of a cabinet and handed them to him. “The lower edges of the ocular interface frame aren’t closing with the tissue well and that tear duct may prove to be a problem. Use these wipes—and wipe is a misnomer here, since you need to dab gently with them—around the area three times a day. Tell the pharmakids to give you the Paracemid I’m going to set up for you—that would be a particularly bad place to get an infection, and it’ll dull some of the pain.”
Blood Orbit_A Gattis File Novel Page 5
