“I . . .” Matheson hesitated. No, it’s a stupid idea.
The inspector tilted his head slightly and the right side of his face frowned. “Be blunt.”
Matheson took a deep breath first. What the hell. “This city—Angra Dastrelas—is known as the place you can get anything, be anything, do anything, if you know the right people or have enough money. Maybe someone decided to see if they really could get away with murder.”
Dillal nodded. “That’s good. Wrong, but a step in the right direction.”
“What? Why?”
“You’re thinking beyond what’s been shown to you. That’s good. To the rest: Your hypothesis doesn’t account for the chilling effect of a capital murder charge, or the rest of the facts already in hand. What connection would an out-system visitor have had to the victims that would account for the break in the pattern of the crime?”
The break—? Oh, the unbound couple. Matheson frowned as he thought it over.
Dillal continued. “Most of the victims were local business people and they had all been robbed. The Dreihleat operates on cash and blind e-transfers only, and Spring Moon is particularly lucrative. So, the victims would have arrived with heavy pockets, knowing they would be welcomed after hours, to mingle and relax with their own kind. But none of that is relevant to a thrill-killer. While the money might be attractive, the rest is too messy for an opportunistic thief, and too much trouble for a system-hopper with a mind to murder. There’s also the element of community knowledge, which a tourist wouldn’t have. So, it’s far more likely that the criminals were also local Dreihleen. They would know who would be at Paz that night and that they would carry their day’s receipts with them—because no Dreihle trusts a Corporation bank. Like their victims, they would have access to the club after hours, giving them the ability to enter quietly and wait for an opportune time to bind and rob the other patrons, exactly as they did. Do you concur?”
Matheson thought it over. “I don’t know the Dreihleen like you do, but that sounds right.”
“Good. I also believe at least one of the gang is among the dead.”
“Why?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense of how the crime played out.”
Matheson stared at him.
Dillal made a noise in his throat that could have been a cough or a chuckle. “Consider what you already know—the evidence we’ve collected, the sequence of events so far as we know them, timing, the victims themselves—and build from there. Imagine what happened. How it must have happened. Put yourself in the room.”
Matheson tried, but he could only see the blood-spattered jasso and the bodies. “I can’t. They’re Dreihleen and I’m a . . . an outsystem stranger with less than a month on the ground here. How can I imagine otherwise?” He shivered.
“It’s part of this job—to recognize and fill the voids, putting the pieces you have together to discover the shape of those you don’t.”
Matheson peered at him. He’d been trained as a street cop, not an investigator—certainly not one working for a planet-owning corporation—and he wasn’t sure how to do what the inspector was asking.
Dillal snorted impatiently and motioned to an adjustable stool Matheson hadn’t noticed just beyond the window’s illumination. “Take off your uniform coat—discard SO Matheson. Discard Santos’s ‘this is the way it is,’ and the narrow, physical rote of the Academy. This is not chasing a criminal—this is trapping him by the application of your mind, what you know, and what you infer.”
Self-conscious, Matheson shrugged out of his already-limp jacket and draped it on the back of the stool.
Dillal darted forward, snatched the jacket, and threw it on the floor between them. Matheson stared in surprise and started to bend down to pick it up.
“Leave it,” Dillal barked. “Leave that man—the SO—on the floor, and come with me.”
Matheson blinked dumbly at the inspector. Was he still asleep? Because he couldn’t imagine any other way this could be happening.
Dillal took him to the morgue. He turned on the lights and Matheson was grateful. The thought of stumbling into one of the bodies and destroying evidence, or putting his unguarded hand into a gaping chest cavity or an open skull unnerved him. He shuddered. It hadn’t occurred to him at the crime scene, where everything had been chaos and he’d been too tired to do anything but what he was told. Here, he needed light.
The inspector led him though the bodies, neatly laid out and awaiting attention in their chilly beds. Dillal touched each ID tag and read the name aloud as he progressed, his rolling tone more Dreihleen than Central, “Anza, Tchin, Shimtan, Coupa, Initol, Initol, Leran, Tchillanin”—He pronounced the name “T’chil-HA-nin” with an aspirated hacking in the back of his throat on the H-sound—“Nole, Tonitol, Eshprito, Cheshe, Zashto, Anza, Dohan, Robesh. These are our dead.”
Matheson frowned, taking it in. Dillal noticed and tilted his head the slightest bit as Matheson spoke. “Two Anzas, two Initols . . . Are they related or do they just have common names?”
Dillal gave a flickering smile. “They are related. Hanzo Initol owned the Paz da Sorte. Inela Initol was his wife—she kept his books and managed the bar, where she was found. Loni Tonitol was a cousin of Hanzo’s—you noticed the similar name, I think—he was probably on duty as the bouncer since he was a large man and business tends to be a family thing in the Dreihleat. He was also found in the bar. Tina Anza owned the restaurant and bakery in front of the Paz da Sorte on the main road. The food spilled on the barroom floor came from his kitchen. During times when jassos were less tolerated by the law, the restaurant was its cover and there was a door from the kitchen that opened on stairs down to Paz, rather than using the current door on the alley. The staircase door was covered over years ago.”
“How would you—? Oh, the Dreihleat was your patch.”
Dillal gave a minute nod.
“What about the other Anza? Husband?”
“Tina was male. A widower. Stocha Anza was his son—fifteen years old. The youngest victim. Also found in the bar room, next to the oldest victim, Mahale Eshprito. He was seventy-two.”
Matheson cringed at Dillal’s curiously flat recitation. “Why more men than women? In a club, shouldn’t there have been more female customers?”
“In another jasso, certainly. But this was after hours for the local business owners, and the majority of them are male. Businesses involve the whole family in the Dreihleat, but it’s rare that the women own them outright and alone, even when widowed.”
“Why?”
“Family, usually, but between clan and kind, Dreihleen society can be cruelly labyrinthine. For now, concentrate on the crime before us. We have established they were all killed between 0130 and 0230. But by your report, you were there by 0232 and didn’t trip over their murderers in the doorway. What time did Santos split from you?”
“Didn’t you ask him at the health center?”
“I’m asking you.” Dillal sounded calm, but Matheson detected a stiffening of his shoulders under his suit jacket—it was a paler color than the one he’d worn from the hospital, but it still hung like he’d lost ten kilos.
Matheson had to check his log, though he knew it would have been recorded on the routine hourly upload, which Dillal could have accessed through the GISA network. “0211.”
“Only twenty-one minutes. How long would it take to walk from where you two parted ways to the doors of the Paz da Sorte at your—no, at Santos’s normal pace?”
“Six to eight minutes, depending on weather. If the sidewalks are slick with that sap the goldwood trees drop—like they were my first two days here—it takes longer.”
Dillal seemed irritated by his answer. “The goldwoods aren’t in high sap now so . . . eight minutes or so? After all, Santos isn’t in excellent physical condition for sprinting soundless as a spider.”
Is that from a poem? Matheson didn’t know the source—if it was a poem at all. He pushed the distraction aside
.
“Let’s assume, then,” Dillal continued, looking at the bodies arrayed around them, his posture still a little stiff, “that Santos didn’t walk any faster than usual. In fact, given his reported injury, he probably walked slower, pausing and looking back to ensure you weren’t following him.”
“Are you accusing my TO of murder now?”
Dillal raised his head and pivoted to face Matheson, pressing his balled fists down on the autopsy table between them. That only half his face wore any expression at all did nothing to soften the disturbing effect of his ire and his words stung all the more. “Not your training officer, not your partner. Not any longer. You are seconded to me. Your former routine is no more. You are my hound—faithful, dogged, silent until you find scent worth pursuing. I entrusted the future of this investigation to you by attaching you in the field and I expect you to meet that measure. To discard your sheltered naivety, your disillusionment, and your high-minded assumptions. Do you understand?”
Matheson was taken aback and found himself pressing against a counter behind him without realizing he’d moved. “Sir.”
Dillal softened his tone a little. “You must abandon everything but the job, and proceed with me. This is your future with GISA and you must exceed their expectations or we both fail. Do you understand?”
Matheson had to catch his breath and swallow before he could reply. “Yes, sir. I do understand.”
The inspector stared at him for a long moment, then made a soft huffing sound, the tension in his shoulders falling away. “Not quite. You’re angry with me and suspicious. You have a right—I shouldn’t have led you into this when you had no idea what the situation truly was. But you are not yet corrupted by this system and this is not just a murder case—this is a trial. I need the best, the least biased, the most willing assistant I can get on my side. Or there is no chance of this case being solved.”
“You could have just said so!” Matheson scowled at Dillal. The man might be out of his mind, but he cared about the case—which was more than anyone else seemed to.
The inspector waited a while, then sighed and threw up his hands. “I was wrong to co-opt you without explanation. I apologize. Does that satisfy you?”
“Not really,” Matheson replied, then he looked aside. “But it’ll do. I didn’t exactly get what I wanted here and I’d be stupid to pass up this opportunity.”
“No one gets what they want, here. And my point was not to accuse Santos of murder—the timing does not allow it.”
Matheson looked back at Dillal, whose head was turned sideways so only his natural eye was exposed. All trace of his volatile temper was gone and he seemed uneasy. “Do we proceed?” the inspector asked.
Matheson took a deep breath, smelling the cool air and chemicals of the morgue, and braced himself. He’s a few steps sideways of normal, but . . . “Yeah. We do. I guess I’m your dog.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Day 1: Night
Dillal nodded, and when he spoke again, his voice was much quieter, and slower. “Then, having eliminated Santos’s direct involvement, let us start with who died first.” He glanced at the nearest body and folded the sheet down only low enough to reveal a young woman’s head—Venn Robesh—her golden-rose face sickeningly misshapen and burned a dark, blood-streaked brown on one side. One hazel eye was completely missing as if it had been forced out of her skull while the other stared. Her long black hair had been unpinned and laid in a careful coil beside the head block.
Matheson wanted to turn away from the horror of it, but he couldn’t. I’ve seen her somewhere . . . before the jasso, before . . . this. It haunted the corners of his brain with the same disquiet that he felt walking almost anywhere in Angra Dastrelas.
Dillal stared at the mutilated woman, half his face turning downward in a scowl. Matheson could hear the mechanical clicking of the inspector’s artificial eye. “Can you bring up the scene schematic and reference stills of the Paz da Sorte rooms? They’re in the file.”
Matheson finally tore his gaze from Robesh—Mother of stars. She’s just a girl, no more than a teenager!—and used his mobile to locate the file in GISA’s database. He directed it to the large central monitor above the empty dissection table.
“Well done,” Dillal said, looking up at the screen as the thumbnails unfolded.
Matheson wished he felt smug about it, but he couldn’t wipe out his anger, or the horror and frustration that swept him when he looked at the dead. He centered the schematic of the murder scene with the appropriate sets of stills linked to various hot spots in the picture and the information bar situated on the left. He tapped on the name “Venn Robesh.”
“Not yet,” Dillal said. “Just study the schematic for a moment. Then tell me how this crime proceeded. As you see it.”
Matheson looked at the bird’s eye view of the crime scene. Three rectangles: a wide, but shallow one for the entry; then a larger, nearly square one representing the bar; and, at a right angle, another almost three times as large representing the gaming room with a long, narrow box showing the position of a single step down from the bar. A small row of blocks represented the washrooms and office on the far side of the bar and vestibule, but they contained no markers—nothing of value collected. There were twelve body icons in the game room; only four in the smaller bar room; none in the tiny foyer. Ten of the markers in the game room made a fat, curving line down the middle of the long axis between the gaming tables, each shape lying mostly under the next like fanned playing cards, while the remaining two were separated, crisscrossed near a gaming table closer to the back of the room and the plastered-over door Dillal had mentioned. The four icons in the bar room were untidy, without any apparent pattern.
Matheson glanced at Dillal. “You already have an answer and just want to watch me jump the course,” he said.
“Yes.”
Matheson couldn’t refuse. “All right . . .” He stared at the schematic a moment. “Presuming that the couple—Robesh and Leran—are the first victims—”
“Why do you presume that?”
What? Matheson stared at the inspector in confusion. “Because you—”
“No.” The correction came gently this time. “Not because I say so, or because I show you a body, but because the facts and your own observation tell you it’s true. Go on.”
Matheson looked back to the monitor, taking a few breaths to clear his mind—and his irritation. “‘Explain the anomaly and explain the crime.’ All right. All the victims are bound except Robesh and Leran. If they weren’t part of the gang, they would have run when the shooting started, but their positions and the defensive wounds suggest that they were . . . talking, or arguing with each other. Or . . .” He turned to Dillal as a detail edged into the front of his mind. “She had a broken fingernail. That’s odd for a woman who was so well-dressed. Is there debris under her remaining nails?”
Dillal nodded and turned the edge of the sheet up to reveal the woman’s right hand, not exposing more of the naked body than was necessary. He lifted the hand carefully—the death-stiff joints resisted a little. “She had Leran’s tissue under her fingernails,” Dillal affirmed. “She may have broken the one fingernail off in his cheek or jaw.”
“You found it in his skin?” Excitement sparked in Matheson’s chest, smothered by instant guilt.
“No,” the inspector said, and walked a short distance down the double column of corpses to fold back the sheet covering Leran’s head. Matheson recoiled at the sight. He’d seen it before, but the damage seemed obscene in the bright lights of the morgue: the head distorted by the passage of a bullet that had exited through the bottom of the man’s face, leaving a mangled red void where the mouth and jaw should have been.
“Denenshe Leran,” Dillal said. “Called ‘Denny.’ Petty criminal—the usual sort of stupid crimes that stupid boys get caught up in.” This time Matheson didn’t have to bring up the files; the information bloomed onto the screen, apparently at the inspector’s whim.
“I haven’t found that part of his face,” the inspector continued. “I may not. Although I suppose there’s a possibility we’ll discover it among the other scene evidence, if centipedes didn’t devour it.” As if it were detritus dropped carelessly on the floor. Matheson winced at the thought. People as bodies become objects, parts of objects scattered like bits of broken machinery in floods of fuel and lubricants, not limbs, faces, blood . . .
Matheson’s stomach turned uncomfortably and he covered his mouth a moment, thinking of the way Robesh’s face was ruined by the heat of a pen torch. “If he were part of the gang . . .” He raised his eyes to read the monitor rather than look at Leran’s face. He hadn’t been as pretty as Venn Robesh and the clean tidiness of the room only made their wounds more horrific.
Matheson read, “Petty theft, misappropriation of skimmers, second-degree assault, fraud, a couple of gambling charges, some public misconduct—what does that actually mean around here, anyway?”
“Could be park-bench rabble-rousing, roaming outside the Dreihleat during a curfew lock-down, but more likely it’s being a bad sport about losing bets, or aggressively soliciting street games.”
“So Leran was a street punk and a con-artist with a sideline in putting the arm on tourists for short cash . . .”
Dillal nodded. “That was my assessment.”
“If Robesh knew him or she just didn’t want to be touched . . . Merry hell . . . He knew her. He killed her.”
“Why do you think so?”
“She wouldn’t pick a fight with a stranger if she thought she was going to die for it. All the other victims are so neatly tied up it’s like they went along with it. But Robesh didn’t. She fought. She fought with this man well away from the rest.” Matheson glanced at her destroyed face and away again. “That’s a contact burn. He put the pen torch against her temple and—” He squeezed his eyes closed, trying not to imagine how the heat of the plasma would have flash-boiled the fluids in the girl’s skull that then rushed to exit through any opening or weakness—the entry wound, the eye socket . . . He took a shaking breath and forced his gaze back to the schematic—just diagrams, just information, not people. “But why kill them all?”
Blood Orbit_A Gattis File Novel Page 7
