ALIENS IN GODZONE
AN ALIEN MURDER MYSTERY
GENESIS COTTERELL
ISBN: 9781483506432
Copyright © Genesis Cotterell 2013-09-01
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are
either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and
any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments,
events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Government Working Party Briefing January 2012
URGENT NOTICE TO ALL GODZONE SECURITY AND POLICE
Please be aware that tensions between Earth’s two dominant species (Humans & Ryxins) are rising daily. All Earth’s laws concerning Ryxin breeding are to be strictly enforced. For your own safety keep in mind that disputes that include/involve one or more Ryxins are not to be policed. Human police and security personnel are forbidden from interfering in any way. Those who disobey will face lengthy prison terms and will lose both their jobs and pensions. No exceptions.
Brief Alien (Ryxin) History on Planet Earth
Came to Earth: 6 April 1905.
Landing Place: Patrick’s Well, Tipperary, Ireland.
Number of First Arrivals: 150 (100 men and 50 women).
Reason for Coming to Earth: Ryxin’s sun burning out (Ryxin is now a dead planet).
Witnesses: James O’Grady, ten years old (now deceased), reported he felt heat coming from the sky and saw a blue flash. He did not see any aliens before they changed into Human form.
April 18 1905: Had changed into Human form and began to infiltrate Earth.
The Ten: Ten Ryxin couples who were ordered to mate only with each other so as to ensure ongoing purity of the Ryxin race (whereabouts unknown).
Government Ryxin Breeding Law: All Ryxins are to breed only with pure-blood Humans.
THIS BRIEFING IS A WARNING THAT TENSIONS ARE RISING IN ALL AREAS OF GODZONE INCLUDING SOME OF THE OUTER ISLANDS, WITH KNOWN INCREASED ACTIVITY ON MURITAI.
CHAPTER 1
Curtis listened carefully as his first client told him her story.
“It was no accident, Mr McCoy. Roscoe’s throat was cut - to be precise, his left carotid artery - and that was before his van went over the edge. I’m telling you, he was murdered. And I had a dream the other night - Roscoe was trying to communicate with me and he told me that blood was spurting from his neck and he tried to stop it. But then he said he passed out before the van became airborne and hit the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. He knew he was finished.”
Curtis observed the blonde woman seated on the other side of his desk. Her eyes were green and she twisted the strap of her lime-green handbag around her mittened fingers. He instinctively knew she was Ryxin, just as he was.
“You mean the beekeeper, Roscoe Chamonix? I always check the basic details you see. It’s part of my training as a PI not to take anything for granted.” He was writing in his notebook as she spoke, but he looked up every now and then. He remembered seeing her at the funeral though he hadn’t known her name then. Only that she’d been Roscoe’s partner. Her face looked haggard and worry lines marred her forehead. She likely hadn’t been sleeping much.
“Yes, he was my de facto husband. You heard about it then? How his van went over the cliff at Moa Bay and they said it was Ryxin error? Huh.”
“I was passing near there soon after it happened. I also attended his funeral.” He looked at her hands. It was a hot day yet she wore mittens. Definitely Ryxin.
On the day in question, Curtis had gone round to visit Claudette Peace, a writer from the mainland who had come over to Muritai Island for a few weeks to work on her third novel. She was an old friend of Marzy, his ex-wife, but had stayed friends with Curtis. She’d been able to see the fiasco their marriage had become and how unfairly he’d been treated.
He recalled vividly seeing the police car by the cliff edge at Moa Bay. There was a small gathering of people silently looking down. He’d parked his car and gone over, then seen Roscoe’s van, crumpled and beaten on the rocks below. As he watched, the woman next to him said, “We’ve just lost one of our own, you know. No one - not even one of us - could survive that.”
Curtis had turned and seen her tears. When she brushed them away with her hand, he saw she had six fingers, the nails painted bright pink. By ‘one of us’ she had meant that Roscoe was Ryxin, like herself.
“I loved him like a brother,” the woman sobbed.
Curtis had walked away, understanding the woman’s feelings of grief. The loneliness he still experienced since his breakup with Marzy was a constant reminder of how losing a loved one can cut you up inside. But he was also aware of how little he really knew about how other Ryxins lived. He’d grown up in a predominantly Human world. Learning how to be inconspicuous meant he’d never had to deal with what it meant to be Ryxin - not until he fell in love with Marzy.
He came back to reality with a jolt. There was Janux Lennan, still twisting the strap of her handbag and looking at the floor as if she were studying it in detail.
“Why did you come to me? Haven’t you told the police?”
“Ha!” she threw up her mittened hands. “Don’t tell me about them. I know already that they’ll be useless. I’m the only person who cares about what happened to Roscoe. This island is like a book and it has conveniently closed its pages. Nobody is interested in how Roscoe died. But I know he was murdered even if it was made to look like a terrible accident. You’ve got to help me. Please. You do believe me, don’t you?”
Her voice had become faster and louder. Her lovely eyes filled with tears. Curtis put down his pen. He was inclined to believe her, but needed more facts. Even he, a relative newcomer to the island, knew that the police force here consisted of two constables who were eyeing up their retirement pay-outs and Detective Soubert. Soubert was in charge and had a reputation for bungling important cases. She looked down at her hands, now folded in her lap. He thought she was rather beautiful. Like a Madonna with large, sad eyes.
“Okay, but you must understand that this is my first case and I won’t be fully qualified until I have solved it and given a detailed report on how I achieved this. Only then will I be a bonafide PI. Also I have lived here for less than three months. How did you find me?”
“I saw your advertisement on the supermarket noticeboard - down in the village. I guessed you were new here but that’s the way I like it. You see, I don’t want everyone to know what I’m doing.”
He had advertised himself as Private Investigator, willing to take on all cases. Considering the island was no more than fifteen kilometres from end to end and populated by around 20,000 people, he reckoned she was right in thinking that almost everyone would know each other. He had the advantage of relative anonymity.
“Let’s get started then. I will need a down payment of $1500, and the rest when the job’s done. Of course the final figure will depend on how long it takes. Okay?”
She looked straight at him. “Yeah, sure, whatever you say.”
“Do you have any suspects? For example, someone who had a grudge or who hated his guts?”
She scowled. “There’s that big-shot Sly Onyx. Roscoe drank at the same pub as Sly and had a few encounters with him. I did too once. I reckon he’s capable of murder - he’s got no soul. They say he’s the leader of a group of Ryxins who are out to make trouble. I’ve heard a few things lately.”
; “Does it have anything to do with Changeover Day next month?”
“I dunno. But he tried to hit on me one time, in the pub. Told me he could get me pregnant and I could have my own baby on the mainland - that he’d see to it the papers were okay. I told him I wasn’t interested in giving birth to a monkey. He got mad then, but Roscoe turned up so he went away.”
“So you kept to the Human Breeding Laws, I take it?” Curtis asked.
“Of course we did, and adopting a Human child didn’t appeal to me and Roscoe.”
“Okay, but this Sly fellow was willing to get fake papers for you if you allowed him to father your child?”
“He likes to throw his weight around, but I’m just not interested in him or any of his kind.”
“What kind is that?”
“I’m told he’s a pureblood and likes to portray himself as some sort of authority figure. I’m not into bowing and scraping to anyone.”
Curtis found the determined set to her jaw appealing. “Here’s my card - let me know if you think of anything else. I’ll begin the investigation immediately. And don’t worry - if it’s any comfort to you, I am also Ryxin.”
She smiled, and immediately looked even more beautiful.
After she’d left, Curtis picked up the paper from the front steps where it had been thrown earlier and retreated to his back porch. It was the only paper printed on Muritai and came out once a week on Sundays. From this side of his cottage he could look out onto Tauiwi Bay, which always soothed his mind and gave him hope for the future. Admittedly he hadn’t always felt such hope - especially when he’d first arrived on Muritai. For one thing this was now to be his permanent home, having once been his and Marzy’s holiday home. Though he would be living here alone. Marzy had remarried - this time to a Human, with whom she hoped to have plenty of legal children.
Curtis had told Marzy he was Ryxin before they married, but she’d said it didn’t matter to her. They were both in love, and although her parents didn’t know Marzy said she’d tell them when the time was right. She never did. Then one night, a few weeks after they were married, her parents invited them over for a barbecue and her mother saw his bones glowing. He’d forgotten to wear his anti-glow bracelet. No amount of apologising and friendly gestures on his part could thaw her mother’s open hostility towards him after that.
Marzy told him her mother’s prejudice was based on her inbuilt fears of her daughter having a child born with alien features. Defects, she called them. Marzy told Curtis her father didn’t mind, but her mother threatened to disown her if she didn’t get a divorce straight away. Marzy immediately began taking the free contraceptive pill.
Curtis could see how her mother’s attitude was changing Marzy irrevocably. She became frigid and told Curtis she had to have a fully Human grandchild as her mother insisted. On no account could she conceive with Curtis as the father. Marzy eventually gave in, and shortly after the divorce started dating a Human of her mother’s choice. Curtis knew this man had been chosen to father children with Marzy and it sickened him to the bones of his male being, which glowed even brighter at night with the heightened emotion.
He opened the paper and on Page 2 there was a large advertisement for the upcoming Changeover Day celebrations for 18th April. The ad stated there would be a marquee set up on Sly and Mistle Onyx’s property in Ngahere Road. All Ryxins were invited to attend, but first they must come to the Onyx home and be screened to prove their Ryxin ancestry. Curtis studied the ad, then carefully cut it out and pinned it to the corkboard in his study. Now he had a reason to visit Sly and Mistle Onyx.
CHAPTER 2
Next morning Curtis drove to the Onyx property, which turned out to be the only house in Ngahere Road. There it stood at the end of a long driveway where some sheep were grazing at the edges. As he approached them they took fright and bolted somewhere to the back of the homestead, one leaping in the air as it ran.
He was about to climb the wide, sweeping concrete steps to knock at the front door when a woman’s voice called, “I’m round here, aren’t I?”
He went in the direction of the voice, to the left side of the house, and saw a woman hanging washing on a straight wire line. Her hair was ginger, short and spiky. She looked about thirty-something and was skimpily clad in shorts and a top with spaghetti straps. Curtis was suddenly aware how overdressed he was for such a hot summer’s day. His long trousers, shirt and tie, shoes and socks now seemed cumbersome. Already he was dripping with perspiration.
“Hello,” he said. “I’ve come to see Sly Onyx. Is he home?”
He was struck by her pale skin and delicate beauty. Finally she said, “I’m Mistle, his wife, aren’t I? Sly’s not here so youse better come back tomorrow.”
Curtis stayed put. After all, he was information gathering. “I’ve come about the fete next month, to find out about it. Curtis McCoy’s the name.” He held out his right hand but she ignored it.
“Youse mean Changeover Day, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s right. Is it open to all?”
“It’s a private party, understand?”
“Oh, I see.” Curtis pretended to be disappointed and began to turn away.
“Hang on, tell me about yusself. Sly won’t like it if he knows youse went away. He told me to invite Ryxins who don’t like what the Flim-Flams are doing to our race - know what I’m saying?”
“I’m Ryxin,” Curtis said quickly. He felt strong in being able to say it without shame. Standing before this woman, he knew that being a Ryxin meant acceptance. It was a nice feeling. But then he remembered, he was here to find Roscoe’s killer.
“Show me your ID then, can you?” She put down her clothes pegs and came over hesitantly.
Curtis pulled out his card with the x-ray image on it of his glowing Ryxin skeleton and also a recent photo of his face alongside his full name and address. This identity card had to be updated by all Ryxins every year with new photos and x-rays taken. For the women, finger and toe prints had to be renewed each year as well. Any Ryxins who didn’t comply faced heavy fines and sometimes imprisonment.
She inspected his ID carefully. “I haven’t heard about youse. What’s your wife’s name?”
“I’m divorced.”
“Do youse know what’s happening here on 18th April?”
“Some sort of celebration for Changeover Day, I’m told.”
“That’s right. Youse come back tomorrow same time, and Sly will be here, won’t he? If youse are not genuine Ryxin he’ll get mighty angry, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I’ve heard that,” he lied.
“So youse will like to go under the scanner, isn’t it?”
“Yes, if I have to.”
“No, you must say, Yes, Master, I will do whatever you ask. Don’t it?”
“You mean if I’m not subservient there’ll be trouble?”
“It depends. He likes to take charge, isn’t it?”
“Does he treat you the same?”
She was silent for a moment and then turned away to hang washing. “I’m his wife. Come on, tell me if I’m not, isn’t it?”
As he walked back to his car he thought about what she’d said. Obviously she was totally controlled. But she fascinated him all the same and he found her to be strangely provocative. She seemed innocent. He supposed she was Ryxin too, since from what he’d heard he couldn’t imagine Sly marrying a Human. She probably had accessory toes; her hands were noticeably humanoid. Perhaps she was lucky. He corrected himself. If he was thinking like a Ryxin, wouldn’t he think she was lucky if she had six fingers on each hand or six toes on each foot? It was certainly considered a mark of good breeding among his kind. But during his marriage Curtis had lived under critical eyes and had lost pride in the differences of his race.
He took a right out of Ngahere Road and drove to the western side of the island, wanting to revisit the crime scene at Moa Bay. He tried to imagine how the murderer, if Janux was right, had managed to kill Roscoe and then somehow get
the van over the cliff with Roscoe inside. Perhaps, if the murderer was a Ryxin male, he had levitated the van over the cliff after stabbing him in the neck. He tried to visualise a person sitting beside Roscoe in the van. How did they come to be there? Or was the murder done somewhere else and then Roscoe’s body driven to Moa Bay in his own van?
He drove on, past the Ferry Terminal at Seal Bay and through the upmarket Pohatu Cove residential area. He reckoned that if the person was someone Roscoe knew, then he may not have been suspicious of them. Janux was sure it was Sly Onyx. Everyone knew Sly was a big shot in the Ryxin world. But what motive did he have?
Once at the Moa Bay lookout he sat in his car and pondered the murder. Could the killer have been a honey customer? Or someone Roscoe had given a lift to? There weren’t many vehicles on the island and the sole bus was completely unreliable so people often thumbed rides off others to get around.
Curtis only stayed there for a short time - the lonely feeling had become even stronger. It was almost as if Roscoe himself was beseeching him to find his killer and bring him or her to justice. So he quickly backed his car out. But instead of heading home he drove further north, hoping to find Janux at the home she once shared with Roscoe at Chamonix Beach.
CHAPTER 3
He drove for about five kilometres before seeing the signpost. There were only a few baches scattered along the strip of land separating the beach from the native bush behind it, but which one belonged to Janux? The beach was covered in golden sand and had a wild, deserted look that he immediately liked. He kept driving until he reached the northern end where the sand dunes petered out. Here stood a brown, box-like cottage backed by an expanse of green land. At one end were beehives and nearby a large shed. This must be the beekeeper’s home. He stopped the car just a few metres away and waited.
He eventually saw Janux coming out of the shed. He supposed she’d had to take over the beekeeping and honey business.
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