“Can you breathe okay?” Demetrius wondered. “Any sharp pains when you inhale or exhale?”
“Not particularly,” Ashton decided after a moment to check. He took a deep breath. “I mean – urg. That hurt. Not sharp, just, you know, bruised.”
“Probably even bruised some of the ribs, Gene,” Gorski suggested.
“Yeah. Could be some green breaks in there, though. Maybe we need to get this looked at, son,” Demetrius said.
“But the Sandman!”
“Can wait until we make sure you’re going to be okay,” Gorski pointed out. “He never went after another victim until the first one had died, anyway. We have some time, here. Not much, but enough. You have lungs, heart, liver, and pancreas all in the general vicinity of that hit, and any or all could have been damaged by the shock of the impact. And any one of those could be bad.”
“The damn assassin must have been hot loading,” Demetrius muttered. “That handgun gotta have had a hell of a kick.”
“Hope it kicks him straight to hell,” Gorski cursed.
Notifying Colonel Peterson of the attack in a VR message, the trio rode the commuter train to their stop, which was IUS Imperial Center. They promptly escorted Ashton to the nearest hospital, which happened to be the Imperial University’s teaching hospital – which was often the one used by Imp City police, in any case. They took him straight into the emergency room entrance, showed their credentials, explained what had happened, and escorted Ashton alongside the nurses as they immediately took him back to a currently-available ER physician.
Half an hour later, and after Ashton had been scanned and x-rayed ninety-nine ways from Sunday, Dr. Anita Brand pronounced him more or less intact.
“He does have some rib bruising, and the muscular hematoma is epic,” she declared. “And I’m sure there is some trauma to the lung, and maybe a bit to the liver. I don’t see any heart problems; the bullet must have struck at an angle. Don’t be surprised if you have some pain when you breathe for a few days, and don’t be surprised if your bowel movements turn rather yellowish, or even greenish, for about a week. Oh, and expect some diarrhea.”
“Bile?” Demetrius asked.
“Exactly, from the liver bruising,” Dr. Brand confirmed. “It could even cause some digestive issues, because a large bile dump can seem to burn its way through your gut, so I’d recommend a low-fat, bland diet for a few days to avoid generating an even larger bile dump.”
“Um, okay,” Ashton murmured. “Can I put my shirt on now?”
“I’d like to pad that bruise a little, first,” Brand recommended. “It would probably feel better. And I’ll prescribe some topicals and a few things to speed up the healing, especially if we can get the nanites revved and working on it. I want you to watch out for a while, though, and don’t dislodge any clots.”
“Huh?”
“Bruises are clots forming under the skin,” Brand explained to the young man. “It’s the body’s way of stopping the subcutaneous bleeding. But you don’t want to dislodge one and have it float through your circulatory system. If it gets wedged someplace – the heart, the brain, the kidneys, the lungs, the retinas – well, it’s just a very bad situation, and it can be fatal, depending on where it gets stuck.”
“Oh,” Ashton said, suddenly realizing. “Stroke, heart attack…”
“Pulmonary embolism, blindness, kidney failure, yeah,” Brand said. “All that nasty shit.”
“So we need to keep his heart rate and blood pressure down, too, right?” Gorski asked. “Does he need to go on medical leave?”
“Mm,” Brand considered. “He’s a detective, right?”
“Right,” Demetrius said, before Ashton could correct the physician’s terminology.
“Normally we come in after something has happened, not while it’s happening,” Gorski explained.
“Do you need him for a case?”
Demetrius, Gorski, and Ashton exchanged considering glances.
“Do you remember the Sandman murders, about ten years ago?” Demetrius wondered.
“Oh hell yeah,” Brand said, expression twisting in disgust, then she started and stared at them, horror-stricken. “Don’t tell me that bastard is back?”
“Yup,” Gorski sighed.
“What, did he come after you guys?”
“No, this is an old enemy,” Ashton said; it was his turn to sigh. “But that was the case we were on when the old enemy came outta the woodwork.”
“And Ashton, here, being an excellent detective, came up with some things for us to chase that we didn’t have, before,” Demetrius explained.
“Oh. So you need him. Well…” Brand pondered for long moments, eyeing Ashton thoughtfully. “Okay, do what you need to do. Just be careful. All of you. Sounded to me like that old enemy was perfectly willing to take all of you out, if he could.”
“Probably,” Gorski agreed. “But us two old dogs plan to stick close, and we’re no slouches, with weapons or without. We’ll keep him in the background and defend him ourselves if need be.”
“Good. Let me pad this, get his nanites rolling, and a few scripts filled – including something for pain, to tide you over a day or two – and then you can get dressed, Detective Ashton.”
Roger finally made it back to his apartment and his girlfriend, but she wasn’t alone.
“Oh! Thank God! Stash! Help me. I got shot. That Carter guy nailed me. I’m hurt bad,” Roger murmured, closing the door and sinking down to the floor. “Can you get me some medical help? I need to get the bullet out and get patched up…”
“Sure, Rog, I’ll help,” Gorecki said.
He pulled an airgun and shot Roger point-blank in the chest. He collapsed.
Roger gasped, and stared up at Gorecki in horror, until his eyes glazed and his head dropped to the floor. His body sagged as a puddle of blood formed beneath it. His pulse, just visible in the hollow of his throat, slowed, then stopped.
“OHMIGAW! YOU KILLED HIM!” the girlfriend shrieked. “You said you were his friend! His boss!”
“I was,” Gorecki said, calm. “Shut up.”
He turned and put two more rounds into the girlfriend, who screamed in pain and fear, then toppled to the sofa, bleeding out.
Gorecki watched until she was dead, as well.
Then he turned and left the apartment, locking it behind him.
When the IPD investigated the double shooting later that day, they pronounced it a murder-suicide, despite the lack of a weapon.
The trio left the Imperial University Hospital via the maintenance passages, hopscotching from building to building and staying well out of sight, until they were back at the Imperial City Police headquarters. Most of the team was waiting, including Peterson. Ames ran to Ashton.
“Oh dear Lord! Nick, are you okay, honey?” Cally asked, anxious. She reached for him, but then froze, and pulled back, uncertain about where he had been hit.
“I’m fine, Cal,” he murmured soothingly, laying one hand lightly on his chest, where he had been hit, and the other hand on her shoulder. “I got a few good bruises here, but no busted ribs, and no internal injuries. I was wearing my body armor.”
“Wish we could armor your damn head,” Peterson grumbled from the corner.
“That might be possible, actually, but he’d have to wear a wig, and he would still have a concussion if he got shot,” Mott decided, thinking.
“That’s better than dead, I guess,” Ashton said with a wince. “Let’s think about it and see what’s the best we can come up with.”
“That works,” Mott agreed.
“Maia, have you heard from Lee?” Gorski asked then.
“No, not since I left for work this morning; why?”
“Ping him and make sure he’s okay. This shooter took Nick down first, then zeroed in on me. I suspect, due to the relative ages, he thought I was Carter.”
“Right,” Peterson said. Her expression blanked momentarily, then she came back. “He’s okay. He’s been a
t home all day. I told him what happened, and he said he’d lay low.”
“Good,” Gorski averred. “Nick, you and Cally gonna be okay, there?”
Ashton gave Ames a concerned glance. She slapped on a wobbly smile, opened her mouth to speak…and nothing came out. So she nodded instead, and Ashton said, “Yeah, we’ll be all right, Stefan. Listen, you and Inspector Demetrius…thanks. You two saved my ass today, and I won’t forget it. That round knocked the breath right out of me, and if you two hadn’t been there, I have no doubt I’d be dead now.”
Cally paled, but stood firm beside Nick. She took his hand in hers, then faced the two older men.
“That goes for me, too,” she said in a soft, hoarse voice. “Thank you.”
Demetrius and Gorski nodded, tight-lipped. Peterson, who watched the whole exchange in silence, stepped forward.
“Let’s go on through to the bullpen and see what we can coordinate on the Sandman,” she suggested.
“It’s a plan,” Ashton agreed.
Background Work
“…So what have you guys found while we’ve been ducking and dodging?” Gorski asked, when the trio entered the bullpen back at ICPD headquarters, followed by the others.
“Nuthin’,” Compton grumbled. “Not anything that would be useful, anyway.”
“Mm. Well, let us help, maybe,” Demetrius offered. “Perhaps Stefan and I can bring our experience to the matter. Are you game, Stefan?”
“Sure, Gene. It’s gonna take an hour or so before the puff testers get here, so we got time to kill.”
“Puff testers?” Weyand wondered.
“Yeah, Nick had an idea, and it was a good one...”
While Gorski and Demetrius explained Ashton’s idea to the others, Ames signaled Nick from her desk, and he moved unobtrusively to her side.
“Hey, Nick?” she murmured. “I...I got something, here, and I’m not sure what to make of it. I only just found it when word came in you’d got shot. I wanted to run it by you, see what you thought, before I threw it out for public consumption. Especially, now, in front of the detective and inspector. But…are you up to it? I mean, damn, honey, you…I…”
“I’m fine, Cal. I swear I am.”
“You’re sure?”
“Doc said and everything. And she has my nanites workin’ away, and I got meds and the whole bit.”
“Oh! Are you loopy?”
“Nope. We made sure she gave me something that wouldn’t bother me like that. She knew I’m on a case.”
“Um. Okay. So I got this thing. Could you look at it?”
“Sure thing, Cal. You know I’ll help, honey. Whatcha got?”
“Pop into channel 111.”
“Okay.”
Ashton took the adjacent chair, and they both entered VR. They were silent, sitting still with blank expressions, for long moments.
When the explanation was complete, and Gorski and Demetrius had shown the younger investigators the best way to sort and collate the information, Demetrius glanced around the room to see how things were going.
“Hm,” he murmured, elbowing Gorski. “What’s going on over there?” He gestured toward Ames’ desk, where Ames and Ashton were both patently in immersive VR.
“Dunno, Gene,” Gorski replied softly. “Maybe they’re just reassuring each other in private for a few minutes.”
“I don’t think so,” Peterson said, easing over beside the two men. “Channel 111 is active, and that’s the one Cally has been working in all morning. I’d bet she’s getting Nick’s opinion on something, before she shows it to the rest of us.”
“Well, if they come up for air soon, or if Nick does, it’s probably nothing,” Gorski decided. “But if they stay in there a while, I’m betting they got something.”
In the VR meeting room she’d prepared, Ames showed Ashton the specific files she’d uncovered; there were quite a few. He sat down in the nearer of two armchairs and read through the files, skimming at first, then going back and rereading closer. Finally he looked up into clear blue eyes.
“Damn, Cal, I think you have something, here,” Ashton said then.
“But what, exactly, is the connection?” she wondered. “I mean, there’s a connection there, but...I guess I’m just not understanding it.”
“Each victim of the Sandman is a close friend or relative of a member of the medical treatment approval board at, or shortly before, the time of the first murder,” Ashton pointed out. “Best friend, lover, spouse, parent, or sibling. Somebody was – is – striking back at the board members through their loved ones. Because Lana Rounder is the sister of William H. Rounder, who chaired the board at the time.”
“But what’s the rationale? Why strike at someone close, rather than the board members themselves? And why didn’t any of the board members speak up?”
“Cal, the board reports directly to Lord Falmouth, Councilor of the Department of Health,” Ashton explained. “He’s on the Council. The whole mess is corrupt all the way through. Have you ever had anyone that you knew need permission for a rare or expensive treatment?”
“Um, no...”
“My dad’s favorite uncle did. This board is responsible for determining whether or not the treatment would work, or would be worth the time and expense. It’s a kind of triage, but it’s mostly driven by money and connections. If you don’t have the connections, you damn well better have the money, or you won’t get the treatment. Worse, if you have the connections and the money, but you’re on the wrong political side, you can get turned down, too.”
“Damn!”
“Yeah. My great-uncle made it...barely. Because Dad and the rest of the family managed, between ‘em, to scrape together the money to pay off the board.” Ashton paused. “Imagine if somebody’s loved one didn’t make it, because they didn’t know the right people, or they didn’t have enough money, or the board didn’t approve of their politics, or whatever. That’s a good motivation for a murder spree. But – they can’t go to the police...or at least, to us, and all the Sandman murders were largely in our jurisdiction...even if they realize people close to ‘em are being killed off, because that might risk exposing the corrupt way they make their decisions.”
“Ooo. But what about the IPD? The bunch around here are just as corrupt as they are.”
“True. And chances are, the IPD does know about it, but either they’re not too worried since it isn’t their circus, or they’ve gotten themselves wrapped around the axle with all of their own deceptions and disinformation, and they’re having a hard time figuring out who’s telling the truth to whom.”
“Huh. So...what? We need to go back through the records of the board’s approvals and disapprovals and see if we can put together a list of disapprovals, and the surviving family or something?”
“Exactly! Don’t forget best buddies in that list of possible suspects, too.”
“Right.”
“Now, shall we go tell the others what you found?”
Ames grinned, and Ashton grinned back.
“Well, well,” Demetrius decided, once Ames and Ashton had explained what she had turned up. “I think we have a thread to follow to the end now.”
“Sounds like it to me,” Gorski agreed. “Now, once the puff testers get here, we should be able to start narrowing down the actual crime scene for our current case.”
“Those two make a good team,” Weyand observed, and both Ashton and Ames flushed. The others grinned.
“Let’s help Cally see what she can dig up about the board’s decisions, then,” Gorski opined.
The entire team set to work.
By the time the case of puff testers arrived, the team had collated a list of active members of the medical treatment approval board from a decade earlier, as well as negative decisions by that same board. They passed the data over to Callista Ames in VR channel 111, and she set to work scanning through it for possible suspects.
Eugene Demetrius opened the case of testers while that was occurring,
and he pulled one out. It consisted of a small canister containing two tiny tanks, and a small bulb sprayer on the top. The chemicals in the tanks would, when combined, react with the core RNA of the G.A.S. virulosin. The resulting reaction would turn the residue a bright pink.
“This looks good,” Demetrius decreed. “I think we have something here.”
“Go get ‘em, tigers,” Smith said with a grin. “Head back to the office and the apartment and see what you can find.”
“No, now wait a damn minute, here,” Ashton said, annoyed. “As hard as I worked to get that stuff bagged and tagged, we got evidence right here to test. Inspector Demetrius, where’s that tote with all the evidence?”
“Ah! Yes, you have a point – just a moment; I dumped it off on my desk,” he said, scurrying into an adjacent room and emerging seconds later with the large tote bag of poly-bagged evidence. “Here we are. Let us spread it out on the tables and see about ‘puffing’ all of it. If any of it changes color, we have the source of the virulosin contamination.”
They set to work.
“Damn, Nick,” Smith said with a laugh, “you even bagged the leftover coffee from the cups?!”
“Well, I figured, if it had been contaminated, it would show up even better in that than in the mugs, which you notice I also grabbed,” Ashton pointed out. “And there wasn’t much. Just be careful and don’t spill it everywhere.”
“What is it with you and crime scene coffee?” Jones asked. “Didn’t your first case with Detective Gorski have a couple coffee samples, too?”
“It did,” Gorski remembered. “All right, so we should have two coffee samples here…”
“Yup. One with cream and one black,” Weaver observed.
“Yeah, one was hers and one was her boss’s, but I couldn’t remember which was which, so I bagged ‘em both separately,” Ashton explained.
“I think he said his was the one with the cream,” Gorski said.
“That fits my recollection, Stefan,” Demetrius agreed.
EMPIRE: Imperial Police Page 13
