Rated: X-mas

by Rachel Bo, Stephanie Vaughan

  “-- and you still haven’t told me anything about this bomb squad business.”

  Mrs. Crocker was talking to Dan and Ty now. While she and Suzi had been talking, Mrs. C had started in on Dan. Dan laughed. “Don’t worry, Ma. It’s like Club Med for cops. Regular hours. Weekends off. We’ll be able to come up for visits more often.”

  Val wondered what had gone on between Dan and Mr. Crocker. The undercurrent of tension that had carried through dinner was gone. The frown that had crossed Mr. C’s face when it rested on Dan had been replaced by, if not an actual smile, something close to one. Watching his mother’s face as she looked at her son, their features so similar, Val couldn’t decide how much Mrs. C had known about Dan’s life.

  “You kids are going to be the death of me yet.” Mrs. Crocker was laughing now, too, hugging Tyler, Val, and Dan. “We’ll see you tomorrow then.”

  “See you tomorrow, Mom. Merry Christmas. It’s good to be home.”

  Stephanie Vaughan

  While always naturally artistic, Stephanie Vaughan did not pursue writing until she was challenged by a friend who thought herself ‘too sarcastic and cynical to be a romance heroine.’ Stephanie decided to prove her wrong. The floodgates opened and she found herself bombarded by characters demanding their stories be written.

  A native southern Californian, Stephanie lists her influences as The Marx Brothers, Suzanne Brockmann, Woody Allen, Linda Howard, Dennis Miller, Angela Knight and Ella Fitzgerald. Stephanie still resides in southern California, where she lives with her husband and son, and indulges her passion for great coffee, “nature’s perfect food.”

  Stephanie loves to hear from her fans. You can find her on the web at www.stephanievaughan.com and email her at stephanie@stephanievaughan.com

  * * * * *

  CHRISTMAS NOIR

  Barbara Karmazin

  Chapter One

  It was a plain manila envelope. There was no return address.

  Shannon licked her suddenly dry lips. Every piece of mail that came to her house was automatically scanned by her security system for explosives, drugs, poisons, DNA, and infectious bacteria. There was no reason for her to be suspicious or feel afraid.

  Her name and address had been hand-printed on the envelope in large block letters.

  Shannon opened the envelope and upended it. Twenty holo-photographs spilled out onto her coffee table, shimmering 3D reproductions faithful to the last detail. Twenty perfect images of Meredith.

  The first image showed Meredith lying on her back upon a white fur rug with her arms stretched over her head. A bright fire blazed merrily in the fireplace behind her. Mistletoe hung on the mantelpiece. Long blond hair fanned out behind her head. Her cerulean blue eyes glowed with love and laughter. A faint blush highlighted her pale skin. Gentle shadows caressed Meredith’s sweet, uplifted breasts, pert nipples, the lush curve of her hips, and the silky soft curls nestled at the base of her erect cock.

  The rest of the images were horror personified, a grotesque, blood-splattered rape of Merry’s slashed, twisted, disemboweled body. She lay perfectly centered in a pool of congealed blood. Fear had distorted her face into a mask of agony.

  Oh, god! Not Merry!

  She’d looked so happy yesterday evening when she called on the vidphone and said she was going out on a date.

  Shannon’s heart pounded against her chest. Tears spilled down her face. Poor, beautiful Merry. She never had a chance.

  A single sheet of plain white paper lay beside the images. Two words in solid block printing filled the center of that paper. YOU’RE NEXT.

  Whoever sent this envelope knew exactly how her security system scanned all incoming mail deliveries.

  Shannon swiped at the tears that kept blurring her sight. She focused on the security monitor images playing across the opposite wall. No windows in her house. Too much of a security risk. Snow blanketed the ground, transforming the city streets into a winter night’s fairytale with glittering icicles dangling from trees and shrubbery.

  A picket line of angry men and women walked past the sealed gate entrance to her home. Snowflakes whirled around their tightly wrapped coats and scarves. They’d trampled the snow into an ugly gray slush under their booted feet. They remained the mandatory ten-meter distance from the gate. Their holographic signs flashed biblical verses from Genesis about God creating man in his image.

  Shannon raked her hands through her hair. “God created man in his own image. In God's image, he created him; male and female, he created them.”

  Of course, the protestors took those verses out of context.

  In her mind, when she read those words, it meant God was a hermaphrodite. How else could both man and woman be created in God’s image, unless he had the attributes of both sexes?

  To the men and women on that picket line, Shannon, Meredith, and all the hermaphrodites who chose to live within this enclave were abominations. Gaining equal protection under the law for herms had been only the first step in a long, gradual campaign for acceptance in normal, everyday society. Should she retreat from New York City and establish a new enclave in one of the orbital habitats?

  Shannon shook her head. Retreating would only encourage this murderer.

  She’d been one of the lucky ones, born into wealth with loving parents who’d refused to have her altered at birth. About one in every five thousand children was born with ambiguous genitals. In 2062, for a city the size of New York, that came out to ten thousand intersexed people.

  Unfortunately, too many of those children were surgically altered at birth to reflect either a female or male sexual identity. Those herms not surgically altered often faced sexual abuse from their families, and many became prostitutes because of this abuse. Getting the equal rights amendment for intersexed people passed in the World Congress meeting was only the first step in her legal battle for herself and others like her.

  It didn’t matter if she had full-scan vidcams cleverly disguised in simple trims and moldings around all her buildings, and privacy screens activated at all windows. It didn’t matter if there were motion pads at every access, palm and DNA ID locks, and top-of-the-line alarm droids.

  Meredith had used the exact same security setup for her apartment, and now she was dead.

  During the last decade, technology wizards had transformed image creation into an esoteric art form on the web. What if someone had faked those images and sent them in an attempt to panic her?

  She couldn’t stick her head in the sand and hope the images from this envelope were fakes. “Computer.”

  “Yes, Ms. MacNal?”

  “Connect me to the police department in full audio and visual mode. I have a murder to report.”

  * * * * *

  Detective Tannamae Jones arched her eyebrows at her partner, Fergus DeSoto, while their aircar circled the building. The parking protocol was programmed into the computer controls. All she’d had to do was state the name of the street and building and let it find the best parking space available. “Pretty high-class digs here. The only herms I knew when I grew up in Vietnam were prosts.”

  DeSoto stretched his arms over his head and flashed her one of his sexy grins. Six-five and all muscle, half Scottish and half Puerto Rican, with dark red hair and gorgeous caramel brown skin, he could turn her body into pure raging hormones with just one look. The midnight-blue casual shirt and slacks he wore accented his build without binding. It was the perfect combination of style and comfort. “The times, they are a-changing, mi cariña. Herms have equal rights now.”

  She shrugged. Yes, the times had changed. A hundred years ago, her great-grandparents had fought on opposite sides. Now, she existed. Half African-American and half Vietnamese.

  The aircar settled down on the rooftop beside six more police cars. Tannamae and Fergus exited and strode across the tarmac. Puddles of half-melted slush and snow splashed against their boots. A uniformed officer -- a tall, broad-shouldered woman with dirty-blond hair -- stood guard at the emerge
ncy exit access door. The holopic ID on her uniform pocket read “Officer Browning.”

  Officer Browning lifted a portable scanner and aimed it at Fergus and Tannamae. Two quick blips from the device confirmed their IDs. She tapped the golden metal button of the comlink clipped to her left earlobe and spoke. “Detectives DeSoto and Jones have arrived.”

  Tannamae pulled a pair of surgical gloves over her hands, slipped shoe gloves over her boots, and waited for Fergus to don his regulation crime scene duds. “Where is the victim?”

  Browning jerked her thumb at the door. “Penthouse apartment. This gives you direct access through the kitchen.”

  The short staircase took them past a basic security cam setup to a solid titanium-alloy door wedged open with a chair. Two droids whirred back and forth on cushioned track feet, scanning for fingerprints, DNA, hair, fibers, and other evidence.

  White ceramic-tiled floor and gleaming silver countertops greeted them. Two plates of uneaten food and two full wine glasses rested on the teakwood table between matching chairs. Two candles had burned out long ago.

  Fergus went first and eased open the living room door. They stepped inside. The smell of blood and feces hit her first. Blood splatters on the wall, sofa, and floor detailed a violent struggle. The techs had already sprayed fluorescent markers on the blood. Every drop glowed bright red.

  Two more uniforms and four techs waited outside the open door of an adjoining bedroom.

  Tannamae and Fergus circled the living room without stepping in the blood, then entered the bedroom.

  The victim had been positioned in the middle of the blood-drenched bed with her intestines draped over her legs and her amputated cock jammed into her open mouth. The murderer had posed her with sliced-off breasts in her cupped hands.

  One of the techs stepped forward, a short, blond man wearing full surgical suit and half facemask. “The scene’s already been recorded. We got all the angles and did the trajectory layouts and splatter analysis. The coroner has already declared her dead and is waiting for you to release the body for autopsy.”

  Tannamae sighed and exchanged a weary stare with Fergus. It didn’t matter how many times the techs had recorded the scene or how well they’d gathered evidence, nothing beat actual physical observation by the detectives on duty. “Everyone vacate the area,” she said. “We need to be alone now. After we finish making our own recordings and observations, we’ll call you on the comlink to remove the body.”

  Chapter Two

  Shannon landed her aircar on the rooftop of the Herm Foundation office building. She scowled at the security vidcam images on her dashboard showing yet another group of picketers at the ground floor public entrance. Droid guard units patrolled the pedwalks and kept them away from any physical contact with her employees. With only two more days until Christmas, they should have more pleasant plans for their holidays than wasting their time waving signs and shouting ugly slogans.

  A blizzard was predicted for this afternoon. The extra misery factor of trudging through the storm should dampen their enthusiasm. She grinned at the thought of them stumbling half-frozen through the snowdrifts.

  Shannon exited the aircar. The anti-theft alarm system automatically went live when she locked the door. She strode across the rooftop. A fat snowflake landed on her cheek and melted in a warm trickle. She lifted her face to the sky and spun around in a circle. Yes! Let the snow come and drive away the protestors.

  Finally she stopped, went to the private elevator entrance, and placed her hand on the ID panel. It glowed under her hand and the door slid open. Merry had looked so happy in the first image. How long had she experienced the joy of feeling loved and cherished by another, even if it was a lie?

  The elevator slowed to a stop. The door opened and Shannon entered her office. She tossed her coat on the couch, went to the desk, reduced the exterior vidcam images of the picketers to one small corner of the wall screen, and pulled up Meredith’s job schedule for the week. Two red flags glowed on emails from the Social Service departments at Memorial Hospital and City Hospital. Merry’s basic administrative duties and files could be divided among her co-workers, for now.

  Shannon opened the emails. Parent consultation interviews were scheduled at nine and ten tomorrow morning. Both mothers had gone into labor this morning and the ultrasounds had already confirmed the ambiguous sex of their babies. Too late to schedule another worker to take those interviews.

  She would have to conduct those interviews and see if she could convince the parents to move into the hermaphrodite-housing enclave. Young herms growing up within a community of well-adjusted adult hermaphrodites limited the potential psychological damage of their sexual identities.

  She clicked on the office interior communications system and programmed it to send a full audio and visual transmission to every employee in the building. Green lights flashing across the top of the screen signaled that her programming had taken effect.

  She folded her hands in her lap and gazed into the vidcam’s lens. “I’m sure you’ve all seen and heard this morning’s top news story. Meredith Jackson was brutally murdered yesterday.”

  Her employees, men, women, and herms, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and mixed-raced, stopped in mid-motion at their desks and turned to their computer screens. Their shocked faces gazed back at her in overlapping images from the full-sized wall screen like the images from an insect’s multiple eyes.

  Her mouth felt dry and raw, as if she’d swallowed ashes. She sucked in a deep breath and willed herself to remain calm. “When the police conduct their interviews of Meredith’s friends and co-workers, it is vitally important that everyone cooperates fully with their investigation of her murder. Because I have no idea when her body will be released for cremation, I am holding a special memorial service two days from now, on Christmas Eve.”

  Her breath hitched, forcing her to take a gulp of air. Shannon unwound her fingers and rested her hands on the desk. She must present a calm and dignified appearance in front of her employees. The treacherous tears streaming down her face weren’t helping matters any. “I’ll send a memo around the office with specific details of this memorial.”

  She blinked away her tears, and murmured, “End transmission,” then slapped her hand on the cut-off switch.

  Shannon activated the employee handbook file on the computer and inserted the appropriate codes for paid bereavement leave and counseling services for all employees. She stopped to check the memo over one last time. What had she missed?

  Two red arrows flashed again on the organizational chart indicating Merry’s liaison appointments. How could she forget that very important detail? She needed to create another memo opening Merry’s job position for new applicants.

  Later. She’d do that after the holidays. The office would be shut down from Christmas Eve through New Year’s Day anyway.

  The memory of Merry’s happy face in that first image flashed across Shannon’s mind again. Was she going to die without ever experiencing love? She wasn’t picky. All she wanted was to love and to be loved. You’d think being a herm and having the capabilities to love either sex would make it easier instead of harder to find someone to love.

  She’d kept her distance from Merry just like she did with all of her employees because she didn’t want to be sued for sexual harassment. Damn it! It wasn’t fair! She had enormous wealth from her parents’ computer stocks and even more income generated from the orbital habitats they’d built. She’d spent her entire life striving to help all herms. And in the end, she sat alone in her office, too afraid to risk losing her heart to another.

  I'm sick and tired of being lonely! Sick of using sex toys to satisfy myself. I want someone to love.

  Shannon hit the send key for the bereavement leave memo and shut down the computer.

  I wish I had someone I could trust never to betray me. Someone to love me forever. The way Mom and Dad loved each other.

  The security link chimed. She activated it. “Is
there a problem?”

  Rolf Danner’s familiar face appeared on the viewscreen. Standing six-and-a-half-feet tall, with strawberry blond hair and piercing blue eyes, he reminded her of a Viking prince instead of a modern-day security operative. He leaned forward and studied her face with an intent stare. “I just wanted to know if there’s any way I can help you. Meredith’s death must have been a total shock.”

  Shannon shook her head. She dared not trust him or anyone Merry knew. Not now. Not after what had happened. Why was he making friendly overtures to her now, after two years on her staff? He’d always kept his distance before. “I’m fine. I’ve already contacted the police. I expect you to cooperate with them fully.”

  He nodded. “Just remember. If you need me, call me. Anytime, day or night, and I’ll be there for you.”

  * * * * *

  Fergus paused the monitor screen, sat back in his chair, and quirked an eyebrow at his partner. Tannamae’s hair flowed past her neck in a cascade of soft black spirals. Spirals he loved to twist around his finger whenever he kissed her. “So far, we have fifty-six regular contacts in the victim’s email. The basic security scans eliminated forty-nine as valid suspects. As for the other seven contacts, guess who was the most recent?”

  “Shannon MacNal?”

  “Of course.”

  Tannamae shook her head and sent her curls bouncing again. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would she contact the police and report a murder if she was the one who did it? Why would she murder another herm after working so hard all her life to obtain equal rights and legal protections for them?”

  She had a point there. He shrugged. “Murder doesn’t have to make sense. Maybe they were lovers at one time and Ms. MacNal got jealous when a new lover came on the scene. Maybe she reported the murder in order to throw us off the scent. What I want to know is who shut down the victim’s security system so that there’s no audio or visual records available of her death.”